Mowbray: We did enough to win

Posted Thursday, October 01, 2009 by PA

Celtic manager Tony Mowbray admitted to huge frustration after a 1-1 draw with Rapid Vienna kept his team bottom of Europa League Group C.

Scott McDonald's 20th-minute equaliser got Celtic back on track after Stephen McManus's misplaced pass led to Nikica Jelavic's third-minute goal.

But McDonald had a shot cleared off the line and both Shaun Maloney and Gary Caldwell missed great chances as Celtic failed to take advantage of some sustained pressure early in the second half at Parkhead.

The draw followed Celtic's late defeat in their opening match at Hapoel Tel Aviv and leaves them with an uphill struggle to qualify for the knockout stages with a double header against Hamburg to come.

"My emotion is frustration," Mowbray said. "We did enough to get three points but didn't score that second goal. We pushed hard but it didn't come. You've got to give them credit for defending well.

"The big frustration is giving them the early goal, knowing the way they play on the counter-attack.

"It was a very evident individual error. That's football, players make mistakes and you get on with it."

The Celtic boss was disappointed to see negative features of their recent home games against Hearts and Dundee United repeated.

"It is a concern and we have talked about it, that we have not converted enough chances," he said.

"We also have an unfortunate habit of conceding goals in the first five minutes in three home games on the bounce. Concentration is one of the things we talked about.

"But I take the positives from football. I know if we play as well as we did here for long spells, we'll be fine."

Mowbray also remained upbeat about Celtic's qualification hopes.

"I think there's enough evidence from this game that we can go to Vienna and give them problems and I know we can give Hapoel problems," he said.

"I don't see why not, everything changes when you win a football match. Hamburg will be a tough test, I said all along they are probably the favourites.

"But we can still win football matches - performance levels have got to stay high, strikers have got to take chances and defensively concentration levels have got to be better than they were for the goal."

Rapid manager Peter Pacult was delighted with the point, which keeps the Austrian team top of the group.

"I'm very happy with the result and the performance," he said. "We fought all the way. Scottish teams always play 90 minutes at a full tempo and for us that's difficult because in Austria we don't play that way.

"In the second half we took on the fight and deserved the point."

Pacult was kicked in the groin by a Celtic fan when the teams last met 25 years ago in a neutral third game at Old Trafford following a bottle-throwing incident at Celtic Park.

Banners among Celtic fans proclaimed 'unforgiven' Rapid as 'cheats' and 'conmen' after Rudi Weinhofer feigned injury in that Parkhead encounter, but Pacult did not feel the welcome was particularly hostile.

"The atmosphere was very good and I must say, in inverted commas, I'm surprised there wasn't any aggressive behaviour here like there was in 1984," he said.

While the meaning of his comments were somewhat lost in translation, he elaborated further.

"The atmosphere in British stadiums is not as aggressive as it was 20 years ago," said Pacult, whose team knocked out Aston Villa in the qualifiers.

"There used to be much more enthusiasm. That's not to say there is not enthusiasm today but football here has learned from the problems in the 1990s."

He added: "Half the fans were not old enough to come to the stadium 25 years ago. It's a new generation of fans."