WE’VE NO TIME TO SULK
Pressure on Celtic to respond to Euro exit by beating Hibs... and that’s how Matt likes it
MATT O’RILEY may have bought into the grand European ambition laid out by Ange Postecoglou but, even if he had time, the midfielder sees little point in moping about Celtic’s comprehensive defeat to Bodo/Glimt.
One doesn’t have to be an arch cynic to conclude that Postecoglou simply calculated that the Europa Conference League play-off was gone after a 3-1 reverse in Glasgow and therefore decided to throw out a shadow side for the second leg in Norway.
So much for wanting to go all out and win the competition.
For O’Riley, who a week earlier had confidently proclaimed his belief that Celtic were more than good enough to overturn the deficit, a truly miserable evening ensued in the Arctic Circle.
Paired again with Tom Rogic in an advanced midfield role, the game bypassed both players completely to the extent each was taken off at half-time.
Subbed on and off on his professional league debut for Fulham, O’Riley (right) will bounce back from that setback. In any case, he has absorbed the fact that life at Celtic allows little time for reflection.
The demands are constant, all-consuming and there’s always another trophy to try and win.
O’Riley welcomes that demand. It’s why he chose to escape the comfort zone of League One football with MK Dons for Glasgow in the January transfer window.
‘The pressure is very different here but I’m enjoying it more. This is where I want to be,’ he says. ‘I’d rather be playing under pressure every week because it makes you play better. It makes you perform.
‘That’s the challenge I relish. In that sense, it’s been really enjoyable so far. The demands are much higher because a draw is considered a loss here — no matter who you play against. But I think that’s pretty cool. It’s cool that you’re expected to win every game because it gets the best out of you.’
If O’Riley’s first exposure to European football brought a cold, harsh lesson, domestically things have gone swimmingly since his move north.
Surprisingly handed a debut away to Hearts just days after signing, O’Riley strolled through what might have been a tricky and physically exacting test at Tynecastle.
The visit of Rangers a week later went even better, with Celtic deposing their rivals at the Premiership summit courtesy of an emphatic 3-0 win in which O’Riley shone.
Today, it’s a trip to the other side of Edinburgh to face Hibs, as the quest to take the Premiership title approaches the closing straight.
‘The title is definitely there for us and it’s our intention to win the league,’ he says. ‘It’s still early days, there’s lots of football to be played. But if that wasn’t our intention, there wouldn’t be any point.
‘We’re feeling good and ready to push on now. There are lots of important games coming up, so we’ll focus on them and see where it can take us.’
The European exit could also have the beneficial consequence of easing the load on a group of players required to operate at high intensity by their manager’s relentless training and tactical approach.
While Rangers will have at least another two games due to their impressive exploits in knocking Borussia Dortmund out of the Europa League, Celtic will be resting as their title rivals take on Red Star Belgrade in the last 16.
‘That will help us and that has to be the focus for us now,’ adds O’Riley. ‘We’ve got the league and the Scottish Cup to concentrate on. We want to win both of them and we feel we can. The mood is still good in the camp. We’re all disappointed about Thursday night but it gives us more chance to focus on the league.
‘A lot of people outside, like the fans, won’t feel this is the end of the world because we can concentrate on the title and Scottish Cup. ‘Of course, it’s disappointing to lose any game of football but the mood on the flight home from Norway wasn’t too bad because we still feel we’re in a good place, generally.
‘We know we didn’t play at our best against Bodo but we’ve been on a good run of form and everyone in the camp feels good mentally, so we’re okay.’
There’s still some mystery to the way Celtic capitulated against the Norwegian title holders.
While it’s merely stating the obvious that Postecoglou’s risk-andreward gameplan leaves Celtic open to quick-witted opposition, there was far more menace about the team even as it fell to hefty defeats to Bayer Leverkusen and Real Betis in the Europa League group stage.
Not only are both those sides demonstrably stronger than Bodo/ Glimt, but Celtic were far weaker in those early stages of the season as Postecoglou rebuilt a fragile squad which has only started to look robust following the capture of four first-team signings last month.
As one of those recruits, O’Riley has limited insight into what went before but he can at least try to explain why the team should fall to a 5-1 aggregate defeat at a time when its domestic form has been consistently strong.
‘There were numerous factors to it,’ he says. ‘In the league, we’re used to teams who sit deep against us — they all play a similar way.
‘Bodo were different because they were more expansive. When they were able to beat our press, they looked dangerous on the counter attack. That was a new challenge for us to deal with and it’s where they really punished us.
‘We didn’t play our best at Celtic Park but I still don’t think it was a 3-1 game. It felt like every shot they had went in.
‘We weren’t good enough in the final third. It came down to both boxes and they were better in ours than we were in theirs.’
The trouble with the ‘both boxes’ explanation is that neither O’Riley nor Rogic spent any meaningful time within the confines of the 18-yard lines and the combination was clearly malfunctioning in both games.
‘Good players can play with good players and the defensive side of things comes down to more than just two players,’ retorts O’Riley. ‘We’ve only started two games together and it’s been against, arguably, the best team we’ve faced this season.
‘So it’s never going to be easy. If we started with a different midfield, it could have been worse — or better.
‘It comes down to more than that. As a team, we just weren’t good enough on or off the ball. We got picked off at times.’
On a personal level, the European results have not been too damaging to O’Riley. Watched by Denmark assistant coach Morten Wieghorst and Under-21 boss Jesper Sorensen in the in the first leg, O’Riley had a subsequent conversation with the latter which looks likely to yield an international call-up for the country of his mother’s birth.
He added: ‘I’ve said that if I get called up, I’m not going to say no. It’s a country I feel a strong connection to, so if it does happen, I’d say yes.’