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Celtic have a chance to put their recent woes behind them in this much-delayed semi-final. They held on for a 2-2 draw at Lille on Thursday, surrendering a two-goal advantage, though in truth they should have fallen behind after just 12 minutes as they failed to clear their lines from a corner.
Still, the French outfit were much fancied ahead of the tie as they sit level on points with PSG at the summit of Ligue 1, and along with a 3-3 stalemate away at Aberdeen last weekend, the point has at least stopped the rot for Celtic after back-to-back home defeats to Rangers and Milan.
However, it does leave them winless in four ahead of this clash as they conceded 10 times across the space of 12 days, with the switch to a back four in their last two games unable to shore up the defence.
Celtic To Win And Both Teams To Score
Aberdeen will certainly be confident of landing a blow and in fact, both teams have scored in each of their past three meetings with the Hoops.
The visitors have also netted 12 times in five games now, including seven in their past two outings, so they’ll be sure to test Celtic’s shaky rearguard.
That’s especially the case after Kristoffer Ajer came off injured midweek as the Norwegian won’t feature here, while Christopher Jullien is already out of action.
Neil Lennon will presumably be forced to select a partnership of the much-criticized Shane Duffy alongside Nir Bitton, who has only just returned from a spell on the sidelines.
The Hoops have registered clean sheets in just seven of 16 domestic matches since mid-February, as only one of those came against a team in the current top five of the table, though they rarely fail to score themselves. Indeed, they’ve only drawn a blank in one of 37 appearances at any venue since mid-December in all competitions, which came against Rangers.
In domestic matches alone, they’ve scored twice at a minimum in 31 of 34 games since mid-October when excluding results with Steven Gerrard’s men, as well as three times or more in 15 of 23 in 2020 alone.
Over 2.5 Goals
Celtic have scored at least twice in each of their past six encounters with the Dons, as each of these games saw a minimum three goals.
Given the hosts’ attacking record, their stumbling defence and Aberdeen’s recent goal spurt, this should prove an entertaining clash for the neutral. We’d expect Derek McInnes’ team to take advantage of any vulnerability Celtic display, but with similar prices, we’d prefer to stick on over 2.5 goals rather than both teams to score.
0.5pts: Celtic To Win And Both Teams To Score At 14/5
CELTIC V ABERDEEN ODDS AVAILABLE HERE
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ODDS ARE CORRECT AS OF 30/10/2020 HOWEVER ARE SUBJECT TO FLUCTUATIONS
