Bhoy's knock 'Pool out of Europe

Liverpool 0 Celtic 2 (Agg 1-3)

Celtic claimed a historic “Battle of Britain” victory at Anfield tonight to secure their first European semi-final spot in 29 years.

Martin O’Neill’s men hit back from their unfortunate CIS Insurance Cup final defeat to Rangers to became the first Scottish team to beat Liverpool with glorious strikes from Alan Thompson and weekend villain John Hartson.

The heads of the home players were beginning to go down as Carragher failed to pick out the run of Owen in the box before Douglas was booked for time-wasting.

But Celtic suffered another injury blow in the 72nd minute when Lambert was forced to hobble off and was replaced by Jackie McNamara.

But the Hoops came within a whisker of scoring their second of the night and what surely would have been the killer goal just moments later.

Larsson peeled away from his marker to flick Petrov’s corner on target, but Dudek miraculously touched the ball onto the top of crossbar and over.

O’Neill, who had felt the wrath of UEFA with a touchline ban this season, was clearly getting anxious and he was spoken to by the fourth official.

But the Northern Irishman was celebrating wildly with 10 minutes to go as Larsson found Hartson and he made room for himself before drilling an unstoppable right-foot shot past the despairing dive of Dudek and into the top corner of the net.

Liverpool will have to make do with the Worthington Cup while O’Neill’s men will now be confident of going all the way to Seville and a possible treble.