Camara given vote of confidence

Celtic manager Martin O’Neill claims the club’s supporters never doubted his decision to sign Senegal striker Henri Camara.

The Wolves man was given the daunting task of trying to replace Henrik Larsson, who returns with Barcelona tonight, and many felt he was nowhere near the same class.

But Camara opened his goalscoring account with a double against Dundee, which came at the perfect time ahead of the arrival of the Catalan giants in Champions League Group F.

“Despite what was said about Henri, I would have to say that 60,000 people here weren’t writing in to me to say he hadn’t done enough,” said O’Neill.

“He only started two games before Saturday and scored a couple of goals and his confidence is high.

“He was put under pressure, which is nothing new, but he will do fine, I am sure.”

Celtic prepare to open their Champions League campaign tonight and Neil Lennon believes their first opponents have got a stronger squad than fellow Spanish giants Real Madrid.

“I’d say they’ve got a stronger squad than Real,” said the former Northern Ireland international.

“They are quite similar to Real last season in that the first 11 picks itself, but look at the players on the bench.”

Celtic will also face AC Milan and Shakhtar Donetsk in Group F and Lennon believes that his team-mates can go through to the knock-out stages if they stop being naive.

He said: “We know we’ve got to pick up points away from home and we are well capable of doing it.

“You can put previous failures down to bad defending or bad luck, which has been a monkey on our back.

“But we’re going all out to rectify that and maybe looking to improving when we’ve gone in front.

“We’ve failed at the last hurdle and a couple of refereeing decisions have gone against us, but we have been naive.

“But that’s part of European football and we’ve got six games to show what we can do this time.”

Larsson returns to Parkhead having left Celtic for the Nou Camp during the summer and Lennon has promised to make it as uncomfortable as possible for the prodigal son.

He said: “If the ball’s there to win, you have to go for it.”

Larsson became a cult figure in the east end of Glasgow with his record-breaking goals and O’Neill does not expect his famous tongue-thrusting celebration to come out tonight should he hit the net against his former club.

O’Neill feels a Larsson goal would recreate the subdued response of Denis Law when he scored against Manchester United for rivals City.

O’Neill said: “United went down that season and I can understand Denis’ reaction and I don’t think that if Henrik scores we’ll see him celebrating so much.”