Tight defence vital to Hoops, says Gordon

Keeper says clean sheets vital to Celtic’s hopes of progress in Europe

Celtic demolished Astana 5-0 in the first leg of their Champions League play-off tie on Wednesday night, but goalkeeper Craig Gordon says a water-tight defence remains key to their European progression.

The Hoops all but guaranteed a place in the group stage on a dramatic night at Parkhead, where Scott Sinclair grabbed a double and James Forrest notched, with two own goals to boot.

Brendan Rodgers’ side have yet to concede in five qualifying ties and the Scotland keeper wants to keep that record intact in the return game in Kazakhstan next Tuesday, and moving forward in Europe this season.

Gordon said: “We have done well, especially defensively, we have looked really solid.

“We have not given up any goals so we are happy with that.

“If we can go and do that away from home I will be very happy because I am sure we can nick something on the break. We still have to go and do the job over there, be organised and finish it off.

“It is a great start. We don’t want to be too over the top at this stage.

“We certainly put ourselves in a great position and if we go out there and defend well we are confident we can get goals at the other end.”

To back up his point about the importance of keeping his goal intact, Gordon pointed to last season’s play-off tie against Israeli side Hapoel Beer Sheva.

Celtic scored five goals in a 5-2 home win in the first leg and were left hanging on in the 2-0 defeat in the return game.

The 34-year-old said: “It is a good result, a big result. We scored five the last time in the play-off but obviously the two away goals were difficult and nearly proved costly in the end but we managed to scrape through there.

“This time we scored the same amount of goals and managed to keep a clean sheet. So we are very happy with that.

“That was a big focus going into the game, trying to keep a clean sheet so we have got that and the added bonus of five goals is huge.”

The former Hearts and Sunderland keeper admits it was a result he did not envisage, even when the Scottish treblewinners led 2-0 at the interval.

He said: “It probably didn’t look likely halfway through the first half where we struggled a little bit to get on the ball and they had spells of possession.

“Even at half time I probably didn’t see that coming.”

Picture: SNS. Craig Gordon said Celtic’s focus against Astana had been to keep a clean sheet, and scoring five goals had been a “huge” bonus.