Back
Steffen Schmidt - August 2, 2021
Jablonec vs Celtic
UEFA Europa League Qualifications,
Date: Thursday, 5 August 2021
Kick-off 16:45 UK/ 17:45 CET
Venue: Stadion Strelnice.
Celtic will try and rescue the season with a result in the UEFA Europa League third qualification round tie against Czech Jablonec.
Celtic are not pulling up any trees this summer. The Scottish giants are going through their toughest moments in the last decade, following a season of failures in the previous term of the Premiership.
The Bhoys finished the previous Premiership season 25 points behind arch-rivals Rangers. It is pretty big of a downgrade from winning the competition in nine successive years beforehand.
Nothing seems to have changed under the former Australian national team head coach Ange Postecoglou either.
Celtic are struggling badly this summer. They have already been eliminated from the UEFA Champions League to Danish Midtjylland and they got off to a disappointing kick-off to the new Premiership campaign as well.
The Bhoys fell 2-1 at Hearts on Saturday afternoon. Can they get their campaign up and running with a result in the first leg of this Europa League tie against Jablonec?
Jablonec have been a regular contestant in the UEFA Europa League Qualifications in the last decade.
They reached the playoffs in 2013/14 and 2015/16 runs before finally making it to the group stage of the competition in the 2018/19 campaign.
Since then, they have failed to pass the first obstacle in two years running, suffering eliminations to the likes of Pyunik (1-2 on aggregate) and Dunajska Streda (3-5 after extra-time in one game last year).
The two sides are about to take on each other for the first time ever this Thursday.
Jablonec will also enter the match on a low, following a tough 3-0 defeat to Mlada Boleslav in the second round of the new Czech Liga season. However, they generally tend to offer much better displays on the home patch and the Bhoys could struggle to get a result in this first leg in Czech Republic.
Jablonec won seven and drew one of the last eight domestic league games (seven from the last season and one in the opening round of the new campaign). We can see them scoring and holding the struggling Celtic to a draw here.
[su_button url=”http://localhost/Projects/ll/europa-league/” style=”flat” background=”#047074″ color=”#ffffff” size=”5″ wide=”yes” center=”yes” radius=”0″ icon=”icon: soccer-ball-o” icon_color=”#ffffff”]Read all Europa League Predictions here[/su_button]
