Lincoln crash out of Europe, while mixed results for British entrants

Plucky Lincoln Red Imps’ European adventure has ended after a 2-0 home defeat to Danish Champions Midtjylland in the Second Qualifying Round of Champions League. There hopes of facing APOEL Nicosia in the next round were dashed after conceding a crucial away goal just before half time and then in the second half the Danes wrapped it up with their second of the game. But the Gibraltarian side can take great comfort in their performances over the two rounds and would have certainly gained some vital experience for future campaigns and done their countries co-efficient no harm at all. With a few more performances like that they may not even need to start the campaign in the First Qualifying Round in future seasons, plus they have fared a lot better than their National sides efforts in EURO 2016 Qualifying action.

As for the British Sides there were mixed results, most of them negative unfortunately with only Celtic progressing to the next round with a routine 4-1 win in Iceland against Stjarnan. Celtic will now face an arduous trek to Azerbaijan to face Qarabag in a tie that could be a potential banana skin, especially away from home.

For the other British sides in action over the last few days. There was heartbreak for Welsh Premier League side The New Saints who managed to take Hungarian side Videoton to extra time after cancelling out the 1-0 deficit from the first leg but Videoton managed to level matters on the night and go through 2-1 on aggregate.  Crusaders of Northern Ireland won 3-2 on the night against Albania’s Skenderbeu with two goals in injury time but at this point the tie was already over and they crashed out 6-4 on aggregate. While Irish champions Dundalk fared no better as a 0-0 draw in the second leg wasn’t enough for them to overturn a 2-1 defeat against BATE Borisov from the first leg.

Here are the rounds results in full:

Team 1	Agg.	Team 2	1st leg	2nd leg
Hibernians	3–6	Maccabi Tel Aviv	2–1	1–5
APOEL	1–1 (a)	Vardar	0–0	1–1
Qarabağ	1–0	Rudar Pljevlja	0–0	1–0
Sarajevo	0–3	Lech Poznań	0–2	0–1
Maribor	2–3	Astana	1–0	1–3
BATE Borisov	2–1	Dundalk	2–1	0–0
Ventspils	1–4[A]	HJK	1–3	0–1
Midtjylland	3–0	Lincoln Red Imps	1–0	2–0
Molde	5–1	Pyunik	5–0	0–1
Malmö FF	1–0	Žalgiris Vilnius	0–0	1–0
Celtic	6–1	Stjarnan	2–0	4–1
Trenčín	3–4	Steaua București	0–2	3–2
Partizan	3–0	Dila Gori	1–0	2–0
Ludogorets Razgrad	1–3	Milsami Orhei	0–1	1–2
Dinamo Zagreb	4–1[A]	Fola Esch	1–1	3–0
Skënderbeu Korçë	6–4	Crusaders	4–1	2–3
The New Saints	1–2	Videoton	0–1	1–1 (a.e.t.)