One Too Many Mornings…
Morning,all.
My usual greeting to you in my article.
I don’t actually know what is the most relevant word in the above. Is it morning? Is it greeting-as I came so close to last night,mainly from frustration. Or is it usual?
I think it is the latter now,like Groundhog Day whenever we play in Europe. Yes,we took it to the opposition,but again,we are no longer a surprise package,teams now know what to expect when they face us. And at this level,we have seen that they are more than capable of coping.
Shakhtar are a very good side,but they are no world-beaters despite having some wonderful individuals. (Including some names from the past,like Matt Bianco and Sebo?) But every time we burst forward,trying manfully to breach their defence,there was always our fear and their expectation that they would always get the ball back- a loose or optimistic pass,an unlucky bounce,some straightforward quality defending-and that they could do what everyone else has this season.
Hit us hard and fast on the break,over-committed as usual up front.
So it proved,and in truth they could have done more damage than they did. Some excellent last-ditch defending,a couple of good saves,a miss like you haven’t seen in decades,they saved us from a hiding.
But that is to ignore our own contributions to the game,contributions that on another night-like,probably not in Europe!-would have seen us in a commanding lead,out of sight. There wasn’t a player who had a bad game,even if some of us will point to a lack of quality when needed. Everyone was doing the job of three men as we tried to cover every blade and every option.
For some,it was clearly a physically draining night,for others a mentally draining one. It has the potential to give us a hangover going into the next game.
And as I think this article should be mercifully brief,the headline is an appropriate one if we want to talk about hangovers. That one too many mornings,the regrets from the night before. But hey,who hasn’t had regrets about the night before without also having the occasional flash of the pleasure that was involved too?
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Above article by BMCUWP
JOBO POTY
sencelpoty@gmail.com
Hail Hail
BADABING
Yo,bud.
I hope you see the minor difference between my article and your earlier comment. And,as you can guess,I hope you are right,and not me!
BMCUWP
One of the best Dylan covers I have heard in a while. She doesn’t lose what made the original a great song, but I think she gives it nice fresh take
Partisan ( From last night )
IniquitousIV
What the fuck is that all about? Haha.
Really, you hate the idea we might win a point here or there,
I wont to tell you to fuck off, then fuck off again and again. Guess I’m not allowed to.
————————————————
Articulate response to the facts. Maybe you were in a debating society? If you are happy with ONE goal in FOUR AND A HALF hours of football at Fortress Celtic Park, then good for you. I’m not.
Morning Bobby:
Very appropriate article. When I explore my own feelings, they are more like resignation, because as I mentioned yesterday, I had hope but no expectations.
We saw Mudryk score belters against Scotland and against us in the first game. So did we prepare by doing anything to curb him? No, we did not. So of course he did it again. Yet Shahktar had 2 or 3 men on Haksabanovic, as they would have had against Jota. Arrogance, stupidity or carelessness? Take your pick.
The main difference between the teams was this. The Shahktar players had instant control when receiving a pass, and knew where it was going next before they received it. In one first half phase, they must have had 60 or 70 consecutive passes, mostly one touch, while we chased shadows.
By contrast, we often bobbled it, then picked a difficult pass, which was frequently intercepted. Hatate, who I like as a player, actually passed directed to Shahktar players numerous times. As we have seen for decades now in Europe, if you can’t retain possession, you are dead in the water. Pointlessly throwing in corners into the box when they were winning everything in the air was not the smart thing to do.
We scored from a fast low cross from Haksabanovic, then stopped doing it. And our free kicks continue to be simply atrocious.
We are not too savvy. At 1-0, why not sit deeper, let them come to us, and try to hit them on the break instead? Jenz and CCV were often far too far up the park in the second half, ( I was yelling at the screen, “WTF are you doing!?”) leaving us wide open at the back, and we paid the price when O’Riley once again screwed up a free kick, followed by Hatate not retaining control. Simply put, we shot ourselves in the foot, yet again.
Sorry if some think this is blasphemous, but Ange was again out-coached in Europe, and his record so far does not exactly excite envy. I haven’t checked, but I think his record is something like 5 wins out of 16. Must do better.
Bobby/IniquitousIV
Good comments from both but as I, St Tams and no doubt others have said, we are too open in the midfield. There is no real defensive guy in that position, Ange doesn’t seem to address that position, so we have to get used to it😕
PRESTONPANSBHOY
I couldn’t agree more,which is why I have been arguing on here for some time that we should be looking at a 4-1-3-2 line up in certain games,such as in Europe.
Morning all! “AngeBall kills us again” could be this morning’s headline. Certain players take lots of criticism, others less so. CCV, Hatate and GG my choice of hardest triers last night – despite the criticisms on here and my own. JJ left exposed at Mudryk’s breakaways but in truth he’s a Ukrainian Missile! When he finds his big team we’ll remember last night’s goal…possibly the goal of the Round. Hatate was all over the midfield and worked his arse off to find openings that weren’t there and looked poor at times because of it. Big GG is the proverbial Bull at times, he works as hard as anyone n the team and delivered another one touch finish last night. But overall we were poor. We were naive. We are very inexperienced at this level and so is the gaffer. I’m not sure how much longer our patience with him lasts but another Euro campaign like this would be challenging for a lot of people. There has to be a point in our development when this turns around, this ability to dominate teams only to be turned over due to our own lack of awareness, our own naivete. The last 15 minutes was the most frustrating for me…Mooy – rotten, Forrest – rotten, Maeda – rotten and Turnbull – rotten…when we needed space and pace we had none. Too many delayed passes. Too many mis-placed passes. Too many players wanting the ba’ to feet rather than a wee reverse pass or a dink into the channel. Too many players hiding behind Ange’s instructions and not brave enough to force the play. O’Riley and Hatate took a doing in the comments during and after the game last night but they showed constantly throughout the game for the ba’ and tried to open the play. We scored from a cross along the deck into the 6- yard box then never did it again for the rest of the match. This has been a feature of AngeBall but we’ve lost the way with it!
Need to go to work!! Catch up later…
Bobby
Groundhog Day indeed. As you say, Ange has forgotten more about fitba than most of us know. Freely admit there is much that escapes me watching a game which is why I really enjoy reading the folk with tactical knowledge and insights.
Pointing out individuals for errors or poor performances in these games seems superfluous and acknowledge you didn’t.
When we see these same mistakes week after week in domestic fitba ..and it’s glaring – that the standard of opposition seldom punish us in domestic games doesn’t disguise the issues.
Simply, we have better players wearing down journeymen. Week after week.
Some folk love that and good luck with that!
For me Europe is all that really matters.
Our record in recent times is appalling, but winning Quadruple Trebles seems to be enough to keep the majority happy .. or happy enough to tolerate abject failure when we meet the big boys.
Can’t see anything changing when our players can’t pass to feet, shoot low and hard and get a clean tackle in.
They are hired and selected by the club, so the folk responsible for that are .. well… responsible. How they are being coached and organised and set up isn’t their fault either.
Fans must demand better quality all round and it seems they don’t .. not really.
Watching us ritually pump SPFL teams and being satisfied with that just doesn’t cut it.
Having said that, last night we gave as good as we got. They ripped us open a few times, but we created enough chances to at least match them
The Sentinel Shakhtar blog will be praising their result last nite – by the sounds of it their players and staff were having a party after the game.
They were absolutely delighted with their result.
It feels we are at a crossroads in Europe- we need better quality players ( not necessarily more expensive..) and we need our coach to recognise that games ebb and flow
If we don’t see some out/in transfers in January, we can expect more of the same in Europe next season because this group cannot execute on Ange’s plan.
Better quality players
Or
Also rans.
We were the pot 4 team in our group and that’s exactly how its played out. Yes, we huffed and puffed our way through every minute of every game and made the other 3 teams uncomfortable at times, but ultimately their superior quality enabled them to wait for the right moment and simply picked us off.
I suppose we can look back and say that we’ve drawn 1-1 twice with the pot 3 team. However, I doubt if anyone watching last night would have considered us as the better team even though all the stats were in our favour.
I can’t see how we change this while we remain an SPFL team with all the restrictions that brings. I reckon this is as good as it gets unless we can somehow get out of this league.
The only person who should have any regrets from last night here is Mags and his outrageous drawing of parallels between cancer and bigotry, then this ‘f you support Celtic you’re a Hun’ nonsense, thereby leaving no room for any pleasure, only a deep anger and wholly justified disdain.
How he continues to get away insulting the contributors like this is beyond ridiculous, all he seems to do is insult every Tim on the site with the same old outdated bullshit time and time again, though even for him last night was a new low.
I was pissed off enough after the match but as I began to read through his ever more insulting comments I realised it was best just to let the lunatic curmudgeon have his say and point out later that were any other contributor to this fine blog come out with such vile nonsense they would have been banned long ago were they ever to write such things even once, far less repeatedly.
We all know the Celtic board colluded with OldCo & NewCo, I myself have been calling out this conspiracy and collusion in the Scottish game for around a decade, with details attached, and getting banned from every site I mentioned it on, but this guy’s downright nasty sneers and witless barbs have now gone beyond the pale.
I was banned from here once for simply pointing out that Celtic’s operating expenses are terribly high in relation to the wage structure so how this guy gets away with repeatedly insulting the fine Tims of this site with nearly every snidey comment he writes without even a call to decency is beyond my comprehension.
Is it really the case that he’s beyond reproach because he decided to help set up a blog just so he could insult Celtic supporters for ‘funding the cancer of bigotry by supporting Glasgow Celtic’ (sic) as he claimed last night?
Then he further uses this twisted analogy to claim that he’s been ‘vindicated’?!
Was this site really set up to allow one of its founders to sit back smirking to himself while insulting nearly every last one of its posters?
I’ve read some crap out of him down the years but that cancer analogy last night warranted a 10 minute beating with the righteous stick while also leaving me with a level of pure disdain I thought I could never find for anyone.
Yet here it is.
So cheers, Mags.
You happy now you’ve pissed someone off so much they think you deserve a good battering to try and knock some sense into you?
SeS we had one of their “better quality players,” Shved, and didn’t give him a chance to perform.
Well said TLR!
The Euro learning curve is flatlining somewhat.
It is clear the squad we currently have is fit for domestic purposes, I have absolutely no fears on that parochial level, but inadequate against good second/ third tier European opposition.
As for the elite clubs, they are so far ahead we would need years of consistent Euro involvement to get close to them.
That situation is unlikely to change over two transfer windows. Next season may not be hugely different.
The bright side of our CL campaign:
We have matched the third pot team on a head to head basis.
However, we are some distance away from achieving the outlier results Shakhtar have against first and second tier teams.
1-5 v Leipzig and potentially worse versus a RM team requiring a win to top the group, leave us as also rans in the group, as we were expected to be.
However, progress at this level is incremental – we actually secured a couple of points.
Not the 5, 6, 7 we naively thought was possible.
Missing two certainly, perhaps three key players can be used as a partial excuse, but their contributions in previous games were hardly game changing performances.
The work in progress continues.
Until we find better players and are able to deconstruct a bloated squad into a better sum of its parts, we will never know if tactically Ange is on the right track or not.
Reading back, it seems some have ALREADY lost any faith they had in Ange to make a mark at this level.
Outside of a bit of naivety while attacking, I really did think we were good last night.
Having said that, I do agree with those calling for a proper DM to be there when teams break on us in transition.
As much as I hate what the European cup has become (A closed shop for the mega rich), I believe Ange will make a mark given the time and backing.
KTF!
Ps, still think JJ should have put Mudryk into the stand! We can’t keep being so nice
Frodsham Bhoy – aye buddy that’s a few now have moved on to do quite well – didn’t seem to get a fair crack at Paradise.
T L R
I have taken M McG to task before re his relentless offensive descriptions, and made the same point as you that he seems to have some sort of immunity on here due to his initial support of the site.
I agree that last night was a new low.
TLR,
Try hard to just concentrate on your own imput, my friend.
When things aren’t going for us, it can be a hard read on here, but no sense you paying the price again.
Try and have a good day, pal 👍
Morning all
First time contribution after some lurking- I see Mad Mitch is back on CQN so I’ll be steering clear of there for a while.
After 55 years of watching us play in Europe I am finally getting used to us not being very good playing in it. I do though think that this season has been better than the results suggest – Shakthar are a decent enough side, but we should I think have taken at least two more points than we did from the games against them. We ran out of steam against RBL for sure but felt in other seasons we have taken more from games like those ones whilst playing worse. (RBL 4 years ago we won a game despite not playing particularly well is an example) Big failing is, at is has been for most of the last 50 years, not that we are not good enough defensively (although we often have not been) but that we don’t take the kind of half chances other teams do against us. Other than Larsson, Sutton and Hartson (and perhaps Dembele and Nicholas first time) we have not had forward players who are good enough at that level since I was a child. (I am 61 now) That is possibly because we play against really pretty poor teams regularly who we get half a dozen chances a game against, so our players are not sharp enough. I thought that with the European games being less spread out over the autumn than in previous years playing against very good teams regularly might have sharpened our attackers up a bit but that has not happened- and that is the biggest disappointment for me. Indeed, overall, I am not sure that other than maybe Taylor and Hatate (for the first hour of games at least) any of our players look better than they did on the day Truss became PM.
Yours waiting for the gas board
Jimbo
PS That miss- worse than Rozentahl’s but not quite as bad as Van Vossen’s.
Not much that can said , that hasn’t already been said this morning.
With some excellent posts.
But if Ange isn’t going to change for Europe , we’re in for more of the same , as we aren’t going to attract the players that are needed for his system to us to succeed in the CL.
Good morning, friends. Some great posts on hete this morning. Some not do great ones last night.
Ange won’t change his approach. So for me, the question is ‘is Ange more good than bad’ and it’s a resounding yes. So I hope he remains at the helm for years to come even though the style in European games might frustrate us.
Been thinking of the Serenity prayer a lot! 🙂
ps SENCELPOTY@GMAIL.COM
St Tams
This is Ange’s first go at it, nearly every Celtic fan I know think we are far too open at this level… but the important person in all this is Ange he is going with his way and think the majority of the fans are with him, but again this is a very young inexperienced Champions League squad, who knows another hopefully successful domestic season and after this seasons CL experiences we might start collecting 3pts here and there … hope you enjoyed last night … just think this time last year a number of people thought Greg Taylor would be able to compete at this level …
All kidding aside I think (results apart) every CL game there has been far more positives in this team than daft negatives like the pot 4 team ending up in 4th place
Livvy is now the aim for another 3pts, keep winning till the World Cup starts then Callum will be back to give us another wee boost
Some good points from this mornings posters.
Reality is that our European campaign was predictable though i expected us to score more goals.
Before the season started i said we were not equipped for Europe and it was not about playing personnel but an incomplete system with very flawed spacing.
We are expansive in the wrong areas and compact at times in others reducing creativity.
Glad McCaff stood up for Hatate as though he had a poor night he never once gave up.
Last night Shaktar held position defensively knowing our timid build up play would lead to turnovers and an easy outball as the area between midfield and defense was huge.
The breakaway for their equalizer demonstrated such and we got lucky on a few other occasions when the same scenario could have led to a large defeat.
They like most good sides are a team of anticipation like most good European sides and while we fostered around with multiple touches while searching for a teammate they often played ball into open space anticipating a teammate would be there.
The coaching gulf was clear.
It resulted in us using too much energy chasing while they played at their pace with intelligence and energetic bursts when required.
That we tied with them twice was more down to effort than matching their quality.
We have the nucleus of a squad to compete in Europe with some specific additions but our coaching and tactical approach has to improve.
Obviously Greg Taylor “wouldn’t be able” that should read … trying to post on your tea break is always a rush
BAD…I’ve not given up on Ange but the players seem to be learning quicker than he is! We’ve come a long, long way in a very short period of time and we’ve mostly bought into his philosophy but at some point we’ve got to become more pragmatist than idealist. I love watching the team play at the moment but it’s hard when we continually make costly ‘schoolboy’ errors!
Afternoon all.
The gasman still doth not cometh
Reading this and other sites today I see how much criticism there is – constructive or otherwise- of Ange Postecoglou. ‘Too unwilling to change’ sums up what many now feel it would seem.
I have to say I am not a great fan of the school, philosophy even, of coaching that has been best expressed, unwittingly perhaps, by Mark Warburton, who stated ‘ there is no Plan B just do Plan A better.’ Great coaches or managers from the now distant past like Jock Stein, Rinus Michels and Marcello Lippi undoubtedly had a wish to see football played in a certain way but were smart enough to adapt their horses for the courses they were running on – but since the rise of Pep Guardiola the No Plan B approach has gained too much support for my liking. I thought Brendan Rodgers was a pretty good coach- and I don’t think he’s a crap one even now- but when he lined Celtic up to play PSG as though we were playing Motherwell (and we lost 12-1 in aggregate) my opinion of his basic intelligence lowered.
Ange does not seem to me to be a stupid person and other than last night when we looked to me to be a bit light in midfield before a ball was kicked, I have no quibbles about the teams he has picked for the Champions’ League matches. Aside from Joe Hart’s aberration in Leipzig we have not gifted goals as we have in the past in Europe, which is actually an improvement, but our big failing has been in front of goal. I like Kyogo and hope he comes again, whilst GG is a good instinctive finisher in the goal area but overall, our finishing in Europe it, as it usually has been, inadequate for this higher level. We have not got the money to buy a really top striker and it’s 40 plus years and Charlie Nicholas since a really good one came through our own ranks, so the coach and the players we have must find a way to sharpen up which is the kind of thing I’d have thought a coach was supposed to be able to help with.
I am disappointed we are out of Europe and would have liked to have seen how we did in the Europa League in the knockout -which would actually be a measure of whether we have improved or not in comparison with last season, but it is not to be. But if we do play in next season’s CL then I think another year of ‘might have beens’ will be far less acceptable than this season’s frequently exciting if fruitless campaign.
Jimbo
After the game last night, I was sitting in the car park listening to radio.
John Collins was on talking up our campaign so far and saying that he had been impressed, but we just lacked that bit of quality when it mattered and also had to change our setup for Europe .
He also said Ange would be scouring the world for a good defensive midfielder to play alongside Calum. I hope he is right , but not convinced.
Incidentally, we had 2 on the bench.
GFTB
With the greatest respect, at the start of the campaign, you said we would finish second.
Like others I had hope that we could get a win last night. My expectations were grounded in hope rather than rational judgement. Frankly, there was no good reason to expect anything other than a loss or a draw at best. The previous games in the CL demonstrated that, as others have indicated.
The real issue is why did we fail, because it is plain and simply failure, especially against Shaktar, who are not the force that they once were.
Watching the game last night, I thought SD simply have better players than we do. Technically and tactically, they are better. In error, I thought that this was so because they had assembled a more expensive squad. However, a look at the facts suggests otherwise. According to Transfermkt, the Celtic squad is valued at 107m euros and SD at 80.3m euros. Apart from loans, their top incoming fee was around 2.5m euros! Heck, their manager only arrived in July of this year.
So, NO, we were not up against a team that was better resourced, financially, than us.
If we are to learn anything from how Shaktar resource their squad it is perhaps how they build a team. The spine of their team….keeper, CB, Striker…..constitutes the highest value in the team. The keeper is valued at 8m; the best CB at 11m, and Mudryk at 15m. The majority of the rest are valued at 3m or less.
Under Ange we have specialised in finding bargains. The Japanese lads, Hatate, Maeda, Guchi were all bargains at less than 3m euros. Ditto for O’Riley and JJ and Hart. Each of these players could fetch substantially more, one year after we bought them, but none are in the same class as Mudryk, or Matvienko their CB.
So, what can we learn? instead of exclusively buying value for money, bring in one or two higher value players into the spine of the team. If money is a problem, which I do not think is the case, fund it by selling some of the bargains at a profit. Selling JJ, O’Riley, and Abada, for example, to buy a gem would not be a bad Shaktar idea.
Rebus
McCaff, I agree with most of that, buddy. As you say, massive progress in a short period of time, and hopefully only at the beginning of this upward trajectory. I just worry some have already lost faith that Ange is the man to help us get our credibility back. I really want to see what Ange can do if he is given the time to learn at this level. I also agree we are good to watch …sometimes great to watch!
Hope you’re good, my friend 👍
HH
St Tams 12.42pm
Not even an optimist like me would have said that …from the day the draw was made I understood we were the bottom seed for a reason, just have a look at the strikers who scored against us Vinicius Junior, Nkunke, Mudryk …. These are top notch strikers who take the few chances they get
I said we “might” get out of the group, my top aim was 3rd and hopefully Europa after Christmas … honestly after watching Celtic in Europe under many many mangers there is no way I would have said Ange would get 2nd place in his first ever Champions League debut
(Although thinking back with a bit of luck … we might have)
Lunchtime over … back to work , now doubting myself in case I did say Ange would get 2nd …. Maybe I was thinking of next seasons group stages 🙂
Excellent post gone missing. Oh, and one of mine has as well!
Rebus
GFTB
Aye buddy, a good point on a bit more luck at the right time. My best hope was 3rd place.
the top notch players you mention have some experience in CL
If we exchanged luck for some composure under pressure …feel we might start to see it happen in a second or third season.
HH
REBUS67
Thanks for the nod,restored from the filters.
Test.
TLR @9:32am
Excellent post he is a madman , could have been a good night for after match discussion but he sure spoiled it.
One of the changes i would have made late on when pushing for a second goal was to move Mooy into cm and O’rielly out to the right.Mooy saw quite a lot of the ball when he was on the right with Forrest but his crossing was very poor………..no left foot.
They have a good youth system that funnels players to the first team ours get picked off by teams from England, Germany etc. about seven in the past couple of years.Don’t know what the answer is.
Billy Bhoy at 9:28am
“We were the pot 4 team in our group and that’s exactly how its played out.”
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It was only inevitable because we were predictably ill prepared. During the transfer window, many posters on here pointed out that at least 2 major upgrades in midfield were necessary to mitigate against us flopping in the Champions League. We got Mooy – enough said.
Bruges are a Pot 4 team, first of 32 to qualify, well coached, sitting comfortably in first place, in a Group with Porto, Atletico Madrid and Bayer Leverkusen. You will recollect the latter took 8 goals off us last season. How many posters can name any Bruges player off the cuff?
We are also forgetting that Leipzig’s win yesterday means Real Madrid have to beat us to ensure winning the Group. Forlorn hopes that they would field a second string against us are just that. One can also hope that they will take the foot off the gas at 3-0 or 4-0.
As I boarded the flight to Glasgow we were winning 1 0.
That’s a good sign I thought.
On disembarking it was 1 -1 which was disappointing but hey I’m still alive. (The first check I do when I wake up)
The point about Ange’s approach is that it does not matter a feck if the midfield is more open as result of the system as long as we score more goals than the opposition! That applies just as much at home as it does in Europe.
James P said in another comment ” but that we don’t take the kind of half chances other teams do against us. Other than Larsson, Sutton and Hartson (and perhaps Dembele and Nicholas first time) we have not had forward players who are good enough at that level since I was a child. ” and there you have it.
Now if I recall correctly, we qualified in the group stage for the post-Christmas round under Gordon Strachan but the accusation about his system was that the football was turgid (a correct description imo).
As the Stones sing
https://youtu.be/jv9sDn_2XkI
But if you try sometime, you’ll find
You get what you need.
What I love (not need) is a Celtic team playing enjoyable football and if you want more than that then do you really not care if we lose or draw?
IniquitousIV 3.32pm
Bruges ??
They have been in the champions league consistently for a number of years gaining valuable experience, (think they have also been in the receiving end of a few humpings as well in earkier seasons) they have surprised a lot of people this season, especially the teams in their group, I did read somewhere that they spent about 60 million (euros/pounds) in the summer so surely pot 4 teams can also be operating differently
Am disagreeing with you on the need/want us to be better in Europe but in Ange’s first time I think he has gave us much to be positive in each and every game, not sure how Bruges done when virtually no players had played in this competition…
Anyhow the CL / Europa is now in the past for this season apart from a jolly for the fans heading to Madrid
Onwards to the Spaghettiad or whatever Livvy stadium is now called
SES
Celtic have been unlucky in Europe since I have been alive, I think it’s our penance for winning in 1967 🙂
Offski … good reading today on the fitba
IniquitousIV
FFS … that should read “am NOT disagreeing with you” on the need/want to do better in Europe
Offski this time
IniquitousIV
The main difference between the teams was this. The Shahktar players had instant control when receiving a pass, and knew where it was going next before they received it. In one first half phase, they must have had 60 or 70 consecutive passes, mostly one touch, while we chased shadows.
=================
In the ladder of reasons we fail against top teams I would place this alongside James P comment on top strikers
First touch for me is a natural thing. I had it not long after I started playing football age 11.
All first-class players have it and they get paid big bucks for it. Bigger bucks than we have.
It makes all the difference between a good pass and a bad one as you can be looking at where you are going to place the ball next, not the ball itself, confident in the belief you are master of it.
Rebus67
Like others I had hope that we could get a win last night. My expectations were grounded in hope rather than rational judgement. Frankly, there was no good reason to expect anything other than a loss or a draw at best. The previous games in the CL demonstrated that, as others have indicated.
————————————————————-
Agreed. Sums up my pre-match expectations.
HH
Rebus
The spine.
Even as an amateur player who at 30 found himself as manager of a scratch team consisting of players not good enough to join the not very good parent team, I knew a spine was needed. Chances are Ange does too.
The goalie -God rest him- bowed under managerial pressure when the head of Dept, after him talking to me about the first result (lost 11 0), leaned on him.
We had a reasonable CB but I stalked the wee fella in another Department who was the real deal as a CF until he gave in and joined. (He opened up a stationary cupboard I was in it)
Next season was about replacing whole hearted but not up to the standard of the new arrivals whilst keeping the original lads to enjoy the post match socializing (Moussaka and chips and a beer at the Alhambra in Waterloo Street)
I only mention because your post reminds me of the situation Celtic were in when Ange arrived. Really poor standard of player, not enough cash to go to European level, hopefully sorted by qualifying for Europe.
It’s just a matter of patience, often the first baby to be thrown out with the bathwater in the mad world of instant gratification that is football.
If only Ange had read the Celtic fan blogs before the CL started this year …that was his big mistake …cause they are crammed full of football experts!
It’s very common to read how important a player’s first touch is. But there’s a good argument (even though I might be the one that does it!) to say that it’s a player’s last touch which is most important! 🙂
SENCELPOTY@GMAIL.COM
The playing field is skewed so we won’t know if Ange is making progress, or not, til we match up with teams of similar capabilities.
Shakhtar comes into that category as a pot 3 team. We achieved two draws; weirdly a victory for each would not have been grudged in the respective away legs.
It would have been instructive to see us play in the EL, after Christmas to gauge real progress.
With the requirement of satisfying FSR, we are unlikely to see much change within the squad in the next two windows. Unless a cull of a third or so of the bloated squad is possible.
Hopefully a couple of serious additions, and the return of quality players like Calmac and Jota may make us competitive enough in next years CL to actually achieve third. Incremental progress.
Ange is worth backing for that trajectory- we have more than enough to dominate our parochial patch for a few seasons to come.
MAGUA
Are you going for the collectors edtion
https://shop.visionsp.co.uk/products/the-celtic-jersey-collectors-edition
Don’t watch much TV or films.
Got cinema tickets for this though,Saturday night:
https://youtu.be/uRu3zLOJN2c
Really looking forward to it.
HH. 🍿🎥
Reading back,and without reference to any particular posters,a few responses to various comments.
I think O’Riley has the potential to be as good as or better than Joe Ledley. And everyone knows how highly I rated Joe. But,while he has proved recently that he can play in the centre mid role,it is not his position. We have better and more experienced players for that position.Lining up with two v five last night,dear me no.
I’ve only once criticised Ange for his selections/substitutions,etc,and that was in Leverkusen a year ago. 2-1 up,bring off the front three and replace them with strangers to each other. Nothing stuck,midfield buckle under pressure,defence collapses. I know he knows what he wants,it’s the same thing we all want.
I remember pointing out to ATHINGOF BEAUTY about a decade ago,when she complained that our domestic football under NL Mk I was bloody awful,that I thought he was schooling the players in public,telling the players to play the way he wanted them to play in Europe. And quite rightly too.
Is Ange going down the BR road of playing how he thinks it should be played,regardless of the opposition? Tactics don’t count?
Our greatest manager was also renowned as our greatest taction,after all.
I don’t think he is,I think he is trying to adjust his line-ups to the opposition. I certainly don’t think he is being lackadaisical or blase about it. But recent Euro games suggest that he is not quite there yet. I’ll back him to have that sorted by this time next year though!