30 Sept 2021
Recent Form
Celtic suffered a crushing 4-0 defeat hosting Bayer Leverkusen on Thursday, having already shipped four goals in a thriller with Real Betis in their opening group game.
The defence was a considerable source of uneasiness in the last campaign, especially when contrasted with Rangers’ formidable record in that department, but despite changes in personnel, it’s looking equally unsteady this time around.
In part, Ange Postecoglou’s gung-ho approach doesn’t help in that regard, nor do injuries to Christopher Jullien and Greg Taylor, with inexperienced left-back Adam Montgomery filling in for the latter.
Celtic have registered just two clean sheets in eight appearances now, both coming on home turf against struggling Ross County and second-tier outfit Raith Rovers.
Although Celtic failed to score against Leverkusen, the German outfit are a quality side and head into the weekend in second place domestically, while the Hoops weren’t without their own chances on Thursday.
Indeed, they had 18 shots in total, forcing as many as six key saves from man of the match Lukas Hradecky. They’ve still only failed to score in three of 17 matches across all competitions this season to date, with one of those away against Rangers at Ibrox.
Both Teams To Score
Despite the midweek result, Celtic were at least handed a boost with the surprise returns of Callum McGregor and Kyogo Furuhashi, with the latter looking particularly lively even if he couldn’t take one of his chances.
The Japanese international had already racked up seven goals before his enforced absence since arriving this summer, and having him back fit and firing will go a long way to easing Celtic’s current woes.
Aberdeen represent an excellent opportunity for the visitors to get back on track, with Stephen Glass’ side in horrendous form at present.
They’ve suffered six defeats from their last eight games in all competitions, failing to win any of these, which includes losses to Motherwell, St. Johnstone and St. Mirren in their past three outings.
The Dons were struggling to keep clean sheets even in the early stages of this campaign, where they won their opening two league games and navigated the early qualifying rounds for the Europa Conference League.
It’s left them with just a solitary shutout from 14 appearances this season in total, with both sides scoring in nine of these.
PREDICTION:
BOTH TEAMS TO SCORE
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