Lyon now lead 4-2, Alejandro Gomes Rodríguez, who was born in Venezuela but plays for England at youth level, with the goal!

Red Star Belgrade 1-1 Celta Vigo (Duarte 89)

And instantly it’s 1-1!

Red Star Belgrade 0-1 Celta Vigo (Lopez 87)

That goal puts Celta down to 16th.

Lyon lead PAOK 3-2 with a couple of minutes left! Adam Karabec with the goal soon after missing a penalty!

Sturm Graz now lead Brann! That will knock Brann out of the playoff places, and Young Boys climb to 24th!

Real Betis 2=1 Feyenoord (Tengstedt 77)

Panathinaikos 1-1 Roma (Jan Ziolkowski 80)

Ten-man Roma back into the top eight!

Meanwhile, Genk score a belter against Malmo and lead 2-1!

The table is moving too fast for me to even comment on it! We cannae take much more of this!

LATEST TABLE:

“Hi Luke!” writes Benjamin.

“Unclear to me why Villa decided to give Salzburg two goals and an hour before we showed up, but perhaps that’s just how confident Emery has the lads, now?

“Lovely intricate passing work at times in the last 15 mins or so. When Villa are good, they really can be very good…

”Am really intrigued to see whether the stripping of several critical cogs in the midfield derails this team for the run-in … rather hoping not!”

Midtjylland are of course playing Dinamo Zagreb, not Genk, thanks to Vlado for the email.

Midtjylland 2-0 Dinamo Zagreb (Victor Bak Jensen 74)

Villa third, Forest 11th, as it stands.

FCSB 1-1 Fenerbahce (Cisotti 71)

Midtjylland 2-0 Dinamo Zagreb – the Danish club could finish top two!

“Apart from on commentary, where else on Earth can you hear the word aplomb being used?” asks Dave via email.

Lyon 2-2 PAOK (Meite 66)

We are approaching the business end of the business end of the Europa League league phase now. And I’m excited.

Dinamo Zagreb are now 24th, with Ludogorets up to 23rd.

Villa down to fourth with Freiburg and Midtjylland above them in third and second respectively.

Panathinaikos 1-0 Roma (Taborda 58)

Ten-man Roma trail in Greece. That pushes them out of the top eight! Bologna slot in the final automatic spot as it stands.

Sturm Graz 1-0 Brann(Kiteishvili 56)
Lyon 2-1 PAOK (Merah 55)

BOOM! What a hit by the centre-back Sandro Lauper for Young Boys! He absolutely smokes a right-footed volley from a corner that flies unerringly into the net! It’s 2-2 now between Stuttgart and Young Boys.

Maccabi Tel-Aviv 0-2 Bologna 2 (Orsolini 47)
Midtjylland 1-0 Dinamo Zagreb (Gue-Sung Cho 49)

So Roma, Braga, Porto, Real Betis, Midtjylland, Aston Villa, Freiburg and Lyon are going straight to the last 16, by virtue of finishing in the top eight. As it stands.

But for the presence of Midtjylland, that would be the easiest-to-spell top eight in Europe League league phase history, my statistician tells me.

“I don’t know what to say about the Celtic penalty, Luke, except that it wasn’t a penalty,” emails Simon. “The Celtic player headed the ball down on to the arm, which was pointing downwards, of the defender who was powerless to do anything about it and wasn’t even looking at the ball, which would have hit the ground half a second later about twelve yards from goal.

“Another case of VAR refereeing the game from off the field and compelling the referee to change his decision for an ‘error’ that was neither clear nor obvious. The time it took the referee to make the decision suggested he still had his doubts even on viewing all the angles, but gave it anyway having been called to the monitor. At least it shouldn’t affect the result of the game, but still. Apart from that Celtic have been decent against a poor Utrecht side, who still could have had a second goal just before half time but for a good save by Schmeichel.”

Live table below.

Ludogorets are going to sneak into 24th place as it stands: they lead Nice thanks to Petar Stanic’s 42nd-minute goal.

Celtic, Forest and Villa are all going through – but Villa were nailed on for the last 16 already, and Forest had already assured their place in some kind of playoff. O’Neill’s side needed to win to be sure and they’ve done the business so far.

It’s all looking a bit half-timey now, and here is the live table.

Genk 1–1 Malmo (Heymans pen 45)

Freiburg are up to second on goal difference as it stands.

Stuttgart 2-1 Young Boys 1 (Gigovic 42)
Basel 0-1Plzen 1 (Panos 39)

A lovely clean hit by Gigovic screams into the top corner in Stuttgart.

Lyon 1-1 PAOK (Himbert 33)
Maccabi Tel-Aviv 0-1 Bologna 1 (Rowe 35)

Ollie Watkins goes off injured for Aston Villa. Looks like he’s tweaked something as he stretched for a ball in front of him.

And another!

Real Betis 2-0 Feyenoord (Ezzalzouli 32)

Antony dinks in a lovely curling cross, that only needs the merest of touches off Ezzalzouli’s forehead to nestle in the far corner of the net. Lovely goal.

The live table is here. Forest are 11th as it stands.

PAOK lead Lyon 1-0 thanks to a goal by Georgios Giakoumakis on 20min, so Villa are top.

Celtic are 20th, comfortably making it into the knockouts, albeit in the lower, unseeded section of the playoff places.

Other, common-or garden goals:

Lyon 0 PAOK 1 (Georgios Giakoumakis 20)
Maccabi Tel-Aviv 0 Bologna 1 (Riccardo Orsolini 19)
FCSB 0 Fenerbahce 1 (Ismail Yuksek 18)

Antony has Betis ahead at Feyenoord with a lovely shot from the edge.

Looks like Celtic may have a penalty for “handball”.

And they do! But there’s a goal at Forest …

Gianluca Mancini is sent off for Roma at Panathinaikos after 15min. The seventh red card of his career, apparently.

“Stuttgart scored two very simple goals in rapid succession,” writes the friend of the live blog, Kári Tulinius. “Lorenz Assignon crossed low from the left to Denis Undav, who was unmarked in the box and finished smartly. The latter then turned provider by putting Ermedin Demirovic through, who didn’t miss. And even though both goals came within just a few minutes of the start, the goals felt like they’d been coming. So far it’s been men versus, well, Young Boys.”

Like it, thanks Kári.

Ferencvaros hit the woodwork at Forest. A fine glancing near-post header by Kristoffer Zachariassen cannons off the post.

Stuttgart 2-0 Young Boys: Deniz Undav and then Ermedin Demirovic!

Malmo in front at Genk through Taha Ali.

Huge chance for Villa! Ollie Watkins smacks a shot from the edge. Alexander Schlager saves, but spills the ball in front of him. Harvey Elliott follows in and taps the ball past the goalie, and it bizarrely bounces off his boots and out! An inadvertant and very fortunate save. “A scorpion save,” is Smith’s handy phrase on TNT Sports.

“The biggest shock so far is Harvey Elliott’s luscious locks gracing the turf at Villa Park,” emails Wil. “So many fans have wanted to see more of him and less of the much-maligned Evann Guessand - but none of us have the faintest idea of what is going on here.”

SORRY it’s five changes for Forest, not four. Ryan Yates is the other player on the teamsheet tonight who didn’t start at Fortress Gtech.

“We want the good feeling of winning games,” says the Nottingham Forest manager Sean Dyche. … it’s getting back to performance levels.

“Some of those players are going out there tonight and giving me a marker, about their performance levels, that they are ready to go.

“We’ve been navigating that [the fixture pileup] and I think we’ve done pretty well …

“It’s that feel-good factor. We want to win … but we want to keep that group mentality going forwards.”

“Chirpy, front-foot – that’s Sean Dyche for you,” remarks Matt Smith on TNT Sports.

Forest can secure a home second leg by not dropping lower than 16th, says the estimable Matt Smith on TNT Sports. Sounds entirely plausible.

I simply have to share the quote of the day from the Australian Open. Aryna Sabalenka on her brush with an umpire during her women’s singles semi-final win against Elina Svitolina:

“How do I say in a nice way? She really pissed me off.”

Football fans are used to seeing a goalkeeper charge upfield for a set piece in the last few minutes of a game. Jan Tomaszewski, the Polish “clown” who denied England a place at the 1974 World Cup, may have been the first to do so, and it has become normalised in the 21st century. On Wednesday in Lisbon, there was a new twist on an old tactic. In the 98th minute, Benfica keeper Anatoliy Trubin legged it upfield – at a time when his team were leading Real Madrid.

I saw Brentford 0-2 Nottingham Forest with my own eyes, and Sean Dyche’s team were excellent. People said it was a classically Dyche-ian display, defending solidly and hitting on the break, but it was also somehow a tribute to Nuno Espírito Santo, whose Forest team won 2-0 at Brentford last season playing the same way. Murillo and Milenkovic were both back to their miserly best in central defence.

“It’s clear,” O’Neill says of Celtic’s task tonight. “Executing it is something else. It’s at home. We’ve got some advantage there with the big crowd … we’ve made it difficult for ourselves, but even so, it’s a game to win.

“We’ve expended a lot of energy in the last couple of weeks. The bench will play a very important part.

“It’s bringing it forward. It’s more games to look forward to, if we make it [into the knockouts]. If you are trying to chase down the league, I’d be delighted if I was the opposition, if Celtic progressed … but it’s all part of it. You’ve got to make the most of it.”

What are your hopes, expectations, dreams and fears? You can email me.

Tonight’s latest Europa League scores are available here.

I mean, they will be after 8pm UK time / 9pm CET. At the moment, it’s 0-0 everywhere.

“Villa feel like a proper club again,” says your roving reporter Martin Keown at Villa Park. Not sure what “proper” means there, but OK.

“They can win the Premier League. Everyone’s saying they can’t.”

Can they? Do they? Are they?

Steve Sidwell there, with some thoughts on Martin O’Neill’s management style. He said the current Celtic interim manager didn’t get too involved at training in his experience but come each Friday “he would come into his own”, engendering a “siege mentality” and making players feel “10 feet tall”.

Celtic are one of five teams that could drop into the elimination places tonight. Young Boys, Brann, Lille and GNK Dinamo are the other four. In other words, fewer than 10 points in the table, and you’re at risk.

It’s half an hour after attempting to watch 18 football matches at the same time on the final match day of the Champions League group stage, so it’s still a little early to tell whether I think it was a brilliant night of football or not.

The information overload from a TV, laptop and phone means I may need a couple of weeks to really process it – by which time of course this will all be forgotten and we’ll be wondering whether one point from three Premier League games is enough for Thomas Frank to keep his job.

Here’s a dash of transfer news for your delectation:

The following 13 sides secured their place in the knockouts after Matchday 7, otherwise known as last week:

Bologna, Braga, Celta Vigo, Crvena Zvezda, Fenerbahçe, Genk, Nottingham Forest, Panathinaikos, PAOK, Porto, Roma, Stuttgart, Viktoria Plzen.

Meanwhile Lyon, Villa, Ferencvaros, Freiburg, Midtjylland and Real Betis were already through as of Matchday 6.

And again, Aston Villa and Lyon are the two teams guaranteed to be in the round of 16 already. Clear?

Martin O’Neill’s involvement in celebrated European moments in Celtic’s history means he is entitled to bridle at the belief that domain is no longer a priority. O’Neill used pre-match media duties for the Europa League visit of Utrecht on Thursday to point towards what has the potential to be an uplifting few days for the Scottish champions.

“We got a result in Feyenoord and fought our guts out in Bologna,” he said. “We don’t now want to just throw it away. We want to try and go for it if we can. We could still lose the game. We might not win the match and we might go out of the competition, but we want to give it a go.”

Tonight we reveal the Uefa Europa League table – IN FULL and UNREDACTED:

As it stands, Lyon, Aston Villa, Freiburg, Midtjylland, Braga, Roma, Ferencvaros and Real Betis are the clubs in the top eight.

As ninth-placed Porto are on 14pts, it means that Lyon and Aston Villa, joint-top and both on 18pts, are the only clubs mathematically guaranteed to finish in the top eight, and go straight to the round of 16.