MATT O’RILEY echoed the sentiments of a lot of Celtic fans on Saturday, branding Blackburn a bit ‘nasty’ as the bhoys played out a 2-2 draw with the Championship side.
Blackburn scored with their first attack, but it became very clear after that Celtic were the superior footballing side. Blackburn knew it and went about trying to leave the boot into Celtic players during the friendly match. There were three Blackburn players in the book before the break.
On another day, some of them could have saw red.
Matt revealed Anthony Ralston had his boot split opened, such was the heavy handed tactics of the English outfit.
The Dane told Football Scotland: “Blackburn were feisty and a bit nasty. They left a bit on a few of us. Tony Ralston’s boot was split in half, but it was competitive and that’s what we want.
“We have to handle that because we’ll come up against teams in the Premiership who will kick us to try and stop us.
“But if we’re on it with our counter press and we’re crisp on the ball, the rest will take care of itself.
We haven’t looked that far forward to the Champions League just yet, but we’re already putting plans together in training with how we’ll set up when we play better opposition.”
Celtic went 2-1 in front and looked likely to win the game. However, as many pre-season games go, Ange gave his entire squad a run out and by the end, the fragmented Celtic side conceded a free kick to play out a 2-2 draw.
Matt is right that it’s probably a good warm up for what’s ahead in the SPFL but it doesn’t say much for the English Championship. Blackburn looked right at home with a bottom six SPFL team on Saturday.
