Craig Harrison eyes Conference League knockouts after historic TNS win

Craig Harrison believes The New Saints can make the knockout stage of the Conference League after creating Welsh football history by beating Astana.

TNS became the first Welsh Premier side to win a group game in a major European competition as goals from Rory Holden and Declan McManus, from the penalty spot, secured a 2-0 victory at their temporary Shrewsbury base.

Harrison believes seven points will be enough to make the knockout phase – and TNS have remaining games at home against Djurgarden (Sweden) and Panathinaikos (Greece), with away trips to Shamrock Rovers (Republic of Ireland) and Celje (Slovenia).

“If we keep putting in performances like that and keep clean sheets we’ll ask questions and see where that takes us,” said Harrison, whose Welsh champions lost their opening game away to Italian giants Fiorentina 2-0.

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“We want to get as close to seven points as possible. We think that may be enough to qualify with a good goal difference.

“We lost 2-0 in Fiorentina and that could be the difference between getting through to the top 24.

“I think seven points and a good goal difference will do. Eight points definitely. If we get seven points we’d be really disappointed if we didn’t make that top 24.”

Astana are experienced European campaigners and claimed the scalp of Manchester United in the Europa League five years ago.

But manager Grigoryi Babayan’s decision to leave 11 players at home with only a few weeks of the Kazakhstan Premier League season left and Astana in the title race backfired on them.

Harrison said: “It threw us off a little bit because we’d done two days of planning and we expected a completely different team.

“It was always going to be a special night no matter what happened being our first home game (in a group stage).

“But I’m extremely proud of the players and everyone at this football club.

“We had to get the balance right, we couldn’t go gung-ho and just go for the jugular.

“They’ve still got international players and they are regulars in European football.

“It was only five years ago they beat Manchester United 2-1, they’ve been in the Champions League and they’ve got a lot of history,

“But we took advantage of the moments we had and their goalkeeper made three or four good saves, as well as the two goals we got.”

Babayan said he had no option but to play a weakened side in Shrewsbury.

He said: “It’s a very long distance, we had to get a public flight, and we have a very important game on Sunday.

“The team we played and the long journey did not work out for us.

“We regret the result, but we could not match our opponents and we did not take our chances.”