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Lennon stresses job only half done

Neil Lennon is battling against expectation and assumption ahead of Celtic’s Champions League play-off game against Helsingborgs at Parkhead tonight.

The Hoops are 2-0 up from the first leg in Sweden, with most people believing the return game in Glasgow to be no more than a formality.

Perhaps the Celtic boss was worried defender Thomas Rogne, skipper Scott Brown, striker Georgios Samaras and midfielder Kris Commons, who all missed Saturday’s 4-2 Clydesdale Bank Premier League win at Inverness, will fail fitness tests and leave his squad stretched to the limit.

However, several times during the pre-match press conference at Lennoxtown yesterday, Lennon was at pains to stress that the tie was far from over.

“I am sitting here a lot more comfortable than I would be if it was 0-0 or 1-1 or we were chasing the game,” he said. “We are at home but we know the tie is not over yet.

“I am not getting ahead of myself. We still have to qualify against a very good, motivated Helsingborgs team.

“I can’t look too far ahead. Football has a funny way of kicking you when you think you have cracked it.”

“We have prepared as low-key as we possibly can for this game because we know there is a lot of hype surrounding it and we are trying to protect the players from it. Really, we just want to get the game started.”

Defender Charlie Mulgrew sang from the same hymn sheet as Lennon as he revealed his gaffer has warned against complacency.

“Nobody in that dressing room thinks the tie is done, not at all,” he said. “The manager has drilled that home to us that we can’t get complacent, it is only half time and there is a long way to go.

“Of course the mind is wandering, thinking of who you could play, but you have to try your best not to do that and to do the job first.

“We are not thinking we are 2-0 up. It will be in the back of our mind somewhere but we have to go out and do the job and try to win the game.

“We are playing at Celtic Park and we will go and look to win the game and hopefully we will do that.”

Lennon, who is looking to take the Parkhead club in to the group stages of the competition for the first time since 2008/09, did not look too confident when discussing his injury concerns.

He said: “We still have a few nagging doubts regarding the boys we left out at the weekend so we will see how they are [today].

“Thomas has an ankle problem, Kris has an ongoing ankle problem and Scott [is a doubt] with a sore groin.”

Helsingborgs boss Age Hareide believes his side can overturn the 2-0 deficit tonight because they were “better than Celtic at everything” in the first game in Sweden last week.

The former Norway boss was animated at the pre-match press conference at Celtic Park last night as he explained why his players can provide what he admits would be the best result of his managerial career.

Hareide said: “To be honest, I thought we had a fair chance to beat Celtic before we played them in Helsingborgs.

“I was disappointed that we gave them the chances to score goals and we didn’t score ourselves.

“But I seen all the stats in that game and we were better than Celtic at everything; in possession, we ran more than the Celtic players, and we actually played really well apart from the beginning and the end of the game.

“But the vital thing in football is to score goals. You can’t take that away from them, they did that.

“They got the goals and we have to chase them — and we will chase them.”

Hareide stressed the importance of belief to his side’s chances of pulling off what would be a remarkable feat.

“There is always a possibility and it is always about believing,” he said. “Bigger things have happened than Helsingborgs beating Celtic and we have to believe in it.” Home

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