We deserve to reach last 32, insists Craig

JOHN McGARRY

AS the final whistle sounded, no one seemed to know whether to laugh or cry. When enough time elapsed to view the journey as a whole, though, a feeling of deep satisfaction had taken hold.

Even against an excellent Salzburg side, it was impossible to deny that Celtic were poor last night. Over the course of six games which have yielded nine points, however, the job was unquestionably a good one.

Celtic Park will witness European football after Christmas.

‘It’s just a feeling of huge relief that we’ve managed to get through in the end,’ said goalkeeper Craig Gordon, who had more reason than most to be pleased.

‘I don’t think many people gave us a great chance of getting through, so it’s a great achievement. We’ve progressed from a difficult group and over the piece we deserved to do that.’

It was a totally surreal night. At two goals down, fans were heading for the exits, resigned to their fate.

It was an uncharacteristic error of judgment from Gordon that allowed Fredrik Gulbrandsen to ease Salzburg into a twin-goal lead.

‘It doesn’t happen very often that a striker presses the keeper’s distribution from hand like that, so it’s something you don’t expect,’ he explained. ‘I was trying to get on with things quickly as we were chasing the game at the time.

‘He’s read the throw and got the block. You could say it’s good striker play, whatever you want. I could beat myself up about it all night but the main thing was that we got through.

‘I’m grateful for that and in terms of my performance, I thought I was playing really well in the game. I had a number of saves to keep us in the game until the first goal and then I made a few saves as we were going for the equaliser.’

It was a Norwegian’s unlikely goal in Germany that was greeted with a noise last reserved for Harald Brattbakk 20 years ago.

‘We came into the game knowing we had the chance to be playing in Europe after Christmas as we had it in our own hands,’ Gordon added.

‘We didn’t get the result we set out to but thankfully Rosenborg scored and did us a favour.

‘Listen, we were wanting to do it ourselves but we’re very pleased. We’ve managed to get there and that in itself is a great achievement.’

It was a night of mixed emotions. But they will take that over the misery of going out on a head-to-head with Leipzig all day long.

‘I’m just thankful we are through,’ Gordon said. ‘These type of crazy nights can happen time and again and we’ve seen things like that happen in bigger games than this.

‘It doesn’t happen very often but it happened tonight and thankfully in the end we managed to get through.’