CELTIC captain Scott Brown has been around the block enough times to know that bold proclamations about what his team might achieve can often come back to bite you, so he isn’t about to get ahead of himself when it comes to his European aspirations.
Yes, the Celtic captain does harbour dreams of emulating his manager by playing in a European final, with Neil Lennon’s frequent reminisces on the subject a reminder of how much such a feat would mean on both a personal level and for the club as a whole.
Brown believes that the current Celtic squad may well be made of the right stuff to reach such heights once again this season, but he is all too aware that if they take their eye off the immediate task at hand, they can kiss goodbye to such aspirations.
“The manager always talks about going to Seville and what a great occasion it was,” Brown said. “I’m not saying we’re going to get to a final but to get through this would be a huge step for this bunch of lads and a new manager coming in for his first season back as well.
“People fancy us to win home and away no matter what. Our fans expect us to dominate the game and win the game whether it’s the Scottish Premiership or Europe and here’s hoping we can do that [tonight].
“We’ll try and get a good result, a solid performance, then take it back to Celtic Park and take it from there. It would be huge to get an away goal and keep a clean sheet, but we’ll need to work hard to do that.”
Brown’s own record away from home in European football over the years with Celtic gives him enough reason for caution ahead of this fixture in the Telia Parken, but those chastening memories are offset somewhat by their more recent record on their travels this term.
“There’s pressure on us to win every game,” he said. “We’ve done well away from home this season in the Europa League, which hasn’t happened a lot in the past, especially for myself, in Europe. Hopefully that’ll continue [tonight].
“We’ve been working on it, when we were in Dubai we worked on different formations, different styles. The manager and his staff are huge on us trying to keep as many clean sheets as we can, so I think it’s all just coming together.
“If you’re not conceding a lot of goals away from home, you get that belief that you can come here and sneak a 1-0 to take back home under the lights at Celtic Park.
“If we get a good result [tonight], we’ll always fancy our chances no matter who it’s against, because we’ve proved that in the past. It’s the away form we need to tick off first.
“I’ve just looked at the pitch and it’s brand new, so hopefully it’ll play well.”
Celtic manager Lennon has been vocal about how much the club’s reputation is enhanced by how well they do in the European competition, and Brown is confident that the players have it within them to surpass their own pre-season aims by getting past the Danish champions and into the Europa League last 16.
“At the start of the season when we were in the Champions League, we wanted European football after Christmas, so we just keep pushing for as long as we can,” Brown said.
“Copenhagen’s going to be difficult, it’ll be physical but for us it’s about how we play. We might chop and change between formations but whoever plays we’d fancy someone to put the ball in the back of the net.
“We want to come here and play football, try to dominate the ball and depending what formation we play we’ll work on that.”
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