Champions League Qualifying Round: Wednesday August 14th

Celtic 3

FC Basel 1

0:1 Giminez (1); 1:1 Larsson (3 pen); 2:1 Sutton (52); 3:1 Sylla (88)

Att: 58,520

Ref: Gonzalez (Spain)

Celtic: Douglas; Valgaeren, Balde, Mjallby; Sylla, Lennon, Lambert (McNamara 77), Petrov, Petta (Guppy 55); Sutton, Larsson

Job half done. After a start straight out of our worst nightmares the Celts showed the necessary steel to put some daylight between themselves and FC Basel.

While this was not a comfortable night for the Bhoys, this is the kind of game that we've been getting all too rarely these days. We were stretched in every area of the pitch, no passengers could be tolerated, and weak attitudes were found out. But by and large we came through.

Heroes of the hour were Sutton (who could be playing his way in to the all time Celtic team about to be announced), Douglas (the arrival of Hedman has obviously had the desired effect - Rab was wearing his European Superman cape again) and, bizarrely enough, Guppy. The Gupmeister took over from Petta who was having one of 'those' nights, although in his defence it must be pointed out that many of his problems stemmed from trying to cover for an unusually slow Neil Lennon.

Larsson scored one from the spot to bring us level, but missed one that would have given us 3:1 with 20 minutes to go. After the game the talk was of getting someone else to take them in future and not rely on Henrik all the time. Fair point, but Henke isn't dominated by a large ego, and as we saw at Killie last year, if he isn't 100% happy to take it, he'll pass it on.

Lennon had one shot bouncing down the London Road in the first half: his effort in the second was on target, but wasn't going to get by the goalie until Sutton redirected it and we were away.

After that it was basically all Celtic. Guppy kept up a constant barrage from the left, and Momo was giving them trouble from the right. Eventually the pressure took its toll when Momo scored a wonder volley, and all we had to do was hold it for a couple of minutes. We did, and we're halfway there.