Tempers are starting to flare ahead of the second leg between Celtic and Shakhter Karagandy in the Champions League playoffs.
The Kazakhstan squad won the opening leg at home by the score 2-0 and recently stated that it could easily score two goals on Celtic's turf.
The Scottish team's coach Neil Lennon took exception to the comment and fired back.
"I think it is very dangerous and it can always come back to bite you," said Lennon, according to BBC. "I don't need to motivate my players for tomorrow night. But if they want to keep talking the way they are doing then that's fine"
We know we have to win the game by three goals," he added. "If they score, we need to score four, if they score two - according to their manager - then we need to score five."
He noted that despite losing in the opening leg, his team was the better team.
"Looking at the first game in the cold light of day, there is no doubt that we were the better team and created the better chances," Lennon said. "We have 90 minutes to score two goals. Regardless, we could score the first goal in the 75th minute or 80th minute and that would still give us 10 or 15 minutes to get another one...There is no rush on our part to come out all guns blazing and try to force the early goal."
"So we will let the game take its natural course, as long we have control of the game that is the most important thing."
Celtic qualified last season with a 4-0 aggregate win over Helsingborg. The team made a run to the round of 16 but was promptly eliminated by Juventus.
Prediction: Celtic will put on a show for its fans and pull off a 4-1 win.
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