The End of Twente Twente Four

Celtic will bow out of the Women’s Champions League this week having so far picked up no points and scored just a single goal. I covered it last week, but there’s a lot of reasons for that as the women’s game across the world tries to find itself in a period of growth, with a success that varies from location to location.

For Celtic’s part in their first appearance in the Women’s Champions League, they haven’t been embarrassed. The 4-0 away defeat and last time out’s 3-0 home defeat against Real Madrid aren’t even close to the biggest score lines that we’ve seen in this season’s group stage.

Nor was the 3-0 defeat away to Chelsea.

Tonight’s opponents, FC Twente, have been battered more away to both Real Madrid (7-0) and Chelsea (6-1 last week) in this group after all.

Nevertheless, FC Twente sit three points ahead of Celtic going into this final game by virtue of having won the opening match day game 2-0 at New Douglas Park.

It’s also worth nothing that both teams have the same -13 goal difference, mainly due to that win but also due to the fact that Twente’s other two games were narrower defeats at home.

They do seem to be better in the Netherlands than on their travels, which is why they’ll be expecting to finish off this campaign the way they started it – by beating Celtic.

Barring a collapse of epic proportions tonight, Celtic won’t be bowing out of the competition with the worst record. Galatasaray are currently sitting with a -24 goal difference, having only scored a single goal just as Celtic have. But their best result so far was only losing 3-0 to Lyon. Celtic at least had the narrower 2-1 defeat to Chelsea at Celtic Park.

For Celtic to avoid finishing bottom, they need to not only beat FC Twente tonight but to win by two goals or more. That would cancel out the 2-0 defeat at home, and if they won by two goals then goal difference overall in the group would be the next tiebreaker which would be in Celtic’s favour. Anything less than a win and Twente are head on points, if it’s just a narrow single goal win then Twente’s better head to head record would keep them in third.

It’s a similar story at the top of the table. Real Madrid just have to beat Chelsea at home in the final game to top the table. Anything less than a win and Chelsea top the group on points. The game between the two in London was a 3-2 victory for Chelsea, so the goals scored would be at least level with a Real Madrid win and their goal difference is better than Chelsea’s as things stand so they would top the group regardless of how many they win by tonight. Finishing top and finishing second is the difference between being seeded and not seeded in the knockout round.

But, sadly, that’s not of any relevance to Celtic now. And with the Women’s Champions League changing to a similar format to the men’s competition as of next season, it’s not going to be relevant to anyone soon!

As noted last week, Celtic had the weekend off and the SWPL has carried on without them – albeit not quite as much as was expected due to a few postponements last midweek due to the weather. Celtic now find themselves nine points behind leaders Glasgow City with two games in hand, as well as seven points behind Rangers and five points behind Hearts, also with two games in hand. They’re also point behind Hibernian, but with only one game in hand. Celtic will be back in action this Sunday when they travel to face Spartans, and won’t play their catch up games until January.

FC Twente didn’t get the weekend off, instead they were winning 2-1 at home against Zwolle. They’re currently fourth in the league, five points behind PSV and Ajax and two behind Utrecht, all with a game in hand. Next up is a visit to AZ Alkmaar this coming Sunday.

Good luck to Celtic tonight, the game in a 5.45pm oor time kick off and like all of these games it’s live on DAZN which you can find on YouTube like all the videos on this blog!