Strachan expects Hoops to bounce back

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First-half goals from Shaun Maloney and Aiden McGeady - either side of the soft red card shown to Guille Franco for raising his hand to Hoops defender Gary Caldwell - gave the home side their first win in Group E although they still ended up bottom of the table.

Strachan said: "The longer we stay as a group the better it is for everybody. If we stay together and don't have to sell anybody, then that will be smashing."

He added: "We had a penalty at home against Aalborg and (if we score) we win the game and that's three points.

"We did enough in Aalborg to win the game, everybody in this room whom I met has said we deserved to win.

"We had a smashing performance against Villarreal away and we were six minutes away from beating against Manchester United here although we obviously had our backs to the wall.

"If you look at that then you can count up a few points that went missing."

Strachan refused to dwell on the performance of under-fire keeper Artur Boruc whose error against Hibernian at Easter Road on Sunday was instrumental in the 2-0 defeat which ended the Hoops' 12-game winning run in the SPL.

The Celtic boss resisted calls to drop the Poland international and was rewarded with a fine display by Boruc, topped by a brilliant second-half stop from Villarreal substitute Nihat Kahveci.

Strachan, however, restricted himself to saying: "Artur did well. I did my bit by picking him, that says everything."