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Daily Record
Daily Record
Sport
Michael Gannon

Elias Hagen braced for Celtic onslaught as Bodo Glimt key man reveals what his side struggled with despite first leg win

Bodo/Glimt ace Elias Hagen insists the Norwegian cracks are ready for Celtic to come at them all guns blazing.

And the midfielder warned his side have no intention of shutting up shot to see out the Europa Conference League knockout tie.

Celtic head to the Arctic Circle on Wednesday aiming to overturn a 3-1 first leg deficit after a bruising night in Glasgow last week.

Ange Postecoglou ’s men will go for broke but playmaker Hagen insisted the Norwegian champs only know how to play one way – and they won’t be sitting back.

The 22-year—old said: “It’s not finished. We need to recreate the performance in Bodo. I expect Celtic will give it a real go.

“They will go hard on us because they need goals.

“Our only focus is on our performance. If we can play at our best level we will do well.

“We will not change the way we play. We have a saying at Glimt, our focus is on the performance, not the score.

“If it is 1-0, 1-0 or 2-0 down, we continue to do the same thing. We want to perform well and if we do that we know we will win.

“But we don’t think about winning.

“Are we confident we will finish the job? We are confident in our abilities.

“But we still need to put in a good performance because Celtic are a good team.

“Hopefully we can do it.”

(SNS Group)

Hagen won’t write off Celtic but he admitted Bodo are in a commanding position after the first clash,.

Kjetil Knutsen’s side stunned Celts with their lethal counter attacks and the midfielder reckons the Hoops might have been guilty of taking his side lightly.

Bodo want a repeat performance tomorrow night and Hagen said: “We played a really good game in Scotland, it was a solid performance – and we showed we have a lot of quality in our team.

“Maybe Celtic underestimated us a little bit because we are in our off season. They obviously knew what we had done in previous European games but perhaps they felt we were not going to be at the same level because it was our pre-season.

“Celtic are in the middle of their season but we worked really hard at our training camp in Spain to try and decrease any advantage Celtic might have had.

“We stuck to our plan and played the way we always play, no matter the opponent or the occasion.

“It worked really well for us.

“It was a very good game. Both teams were going on the attack and both struggled at times with the high pressure because of the offences.

“We were happy with the performance and the result. Hopefully we can do it again.”

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