Tommy Wilson has told The Scottish Sun that Celtic must be aware of the set-piece threat Midtjylland will pose in their Champions League qualifier at Parkhead on Tuesday night.
Ange Postecoglou will oversee his first competitive game at the helm against the Danish Superliga outfit after replacing Neil Lennon. The Hoops must win three rounds, each contested over two legs, to reach the group stage proper.
Midtjylland will travel to Glasgow for the first leg of their second-round clash with Celtic. And former St Mirren star Wilson warns Postecoglou that it would be naïve to focus solely on Ulvene’s set-piece threat, but must take measures to limit their dead ball creativity.
Wilson got a first-hand taste of Midtjylland’s belief in set-piece situations while doing his coaching training at the MCH Arena. He has since taken up a Director of Academy role with Philadelphia Union, and hopes Ulvene’s methods will rub off on the MLS franchise.
“Their training session started with set-pieces,” Wilson said. “When players were fresh in their mind, they did their set-pieces then they did the rest of the session after that. Normally, you’d do the set-pieces at the end, and I’d never really thought about it that way.
“Whether you like it or not it’s hard to argue with. A third of goals were scored from set-plays. If you think about it like that then we should devote a third of our training to set plays – but you don’t. But here was Midtjylland elevating the importance of that and hiring and having caches whose focus was solely on set-pieces.”
He added: “They don’t qualify for the Champions League through only long throws. It would be naïve to think that, and Celtic won’t do that.”
Celtic must keep it clean against Midtjylland
Postecoglou will have done his homework ahead of Celtic hosting Midtjylland, but Wilson’s warning will have further alerted the Greek tactician to one of the key threats they will face.
Celtic must now keep it clean in the defensive third to limit the corners given up and restrict Midtjylland’s creativity. The Hoops were one of the poorer units in the Premiership last term for goals allowed from set-pieces. Which Ulvene boss Bo Henriksen will want to exploit.
Only Ross County conceded considerably more from set-pieces (15) than Celtic (11) last season, per WhoScored. A vast contrast to in open-play, where only Rangers (8) allowed less (12), while Hibernian and Aberdeen held the third-best records (24).
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