Celtic manager Tony Mowbray took a positive view of his side’s 2-0 win over Hapoel Tel-Aviv despite the Parkhead side being knocked out of the Europa League. Celtic’s win was in vain as Hamburg beat Rapid Vienna 2-0 to ensure Mowbray’s team could finish third in the group at best.
Celtic secured a first home European win of the season through goals from Georgios Samaras and Barry Robson. The manager said that he was pleased with the performance and his side could maybe count themselves unfortunate to go out.
"I think it was a solid and disciplined European performance,” he told ITV Sport.
“We took our opportunities whereas in the first four games we've probably had as many chances and not taken them.
"It's a very fine margin in football and you take your chances and you miss some. They've all been tight games and we've been a little bit unfortunate that we're out.
"But I think we can take encouragement from tonight. We won pretty comfortably in the end and we've got to take what we've learned this year into hopefully a Champions League campaign next year."
Aiden McGeady was a constant thorn in the side of the Hapoel defence before being substituted after the second goal. He said that Celtic had to accept that they had not performed well enough in the earlier games to justify making it through.
"The first half we played the way we started the season,” he said.
“It's been a bit up and down and I think it (criticism) is justified because we've not been playing the way we can.
"We've only got ourselves to blame for the position we've got ourselves in. It's down to games we should have won and chances we've missed. But hopefully this will give us the platform to kick on for the season."
