Author: wayofthecass

I wax lyrical about all things irrelevant.

Life Under Kennedy: the agony continues at Ibrox and beyond.

wayofthecass

I haven’t been very active on the blog recently.

Party to do with a new job which has been taking up a lot of my time and party due to the fact there isn’t much to write about.

After the 6-0 crushing of a lame Livingston team three weeks ago tomorrow – which I noted at the time was as much due to the visitors meagre efforts as opposed to a sudden upturn in fortunes by us – an element of our support had convinced themselves that we were going to turn over Rangers in the cup eight days later.

There really is a section of our support who are in complete denial about where we are right now.

Managerless, 20 points behind in the league and out of every other cup competition before they even really got started a 6-0 skelping of a team with not much to play for doesn’t change any of that.

Having already secured a top-six place, lost in the League Cup final and been told by UEFA that even if they were somehow able to catch fourth-placed Aberdeen that they wouldn’t qualify for next season’s new European Conference League anyway as a result of abandoning their youth academy the team from West Lothian really had pretty much heehaw to play for.

Taking them apart proved little.

Anyway to Ibrox we went and predictably we were once again overawed by the men in light blue jerseys with an opening goal from Steven Davis after 10 mins and an own goal 24 minutes later by on loan Jonjoe Kenny sealing our fate.

Rangers are in Celtic's heads claims Charlie Adam as squad unrest blamed for weak derby performances - Daily Record
Frenchy Eddy’s Ibrox contribution in a nutshell.

In the second half, we created a cacophony of chances which included a penalty being won by Leigh Griffiths only to be pathetically executed by Odsonne Edouard who had already shinned an earlier attempt over the bar with the net gaping in front of him.

No surprises when you consider this is the same Edouard who preferred to dive than put the ball into an open net against the same opposition at Celtic Park only weeks before.

Mohamed Elyounoussi also missed a sitter but really it all means nothing.

Not of it was even remotely surprising when you consider the personnel on the pitch and the big wet blanket in the dugout.

In the days leading up to the game, John Kennedy had produced his latest cracker by claiming that we were a better side than the Ibrox men.

Apparently being 20 points behind after 30 odd games somehow is tangible evidence of superiority.

This is actually identical to the same sort of eye-watering pish that was being spouted by ex-Ibrox manager, serial loser and unrepentant fantasist Pedro Caixinha some years ago.

It was embarrassing coming from them but even more so when our own ‘manager’ blindly wades down the same dimly lit path.

And just like with Pedro these bold predictions always end up blowing up in your face and leaving you looking like a total imbecile.

The following Wednesday we rolled into Pittodrie and drew 1-1 with Stephen Glass’s Aberdeen.

The home side were the better team and missed some absolute sitters before Leigh Griffiths equalised with a header seconds before the ref blew for full time giving us an undeserved draw.

Another dismal display and another two points dropped against a team who were then turned over 3-0 at home by Dundee Utd four days later in the Cup.

John has put a hold on his long term chances.

Of course, the dropped points thing aspect means nothing now.

The title race was over long ago and we aren’t playing for pride either as our current squad have none.

With our tenth draw of the season, we are on course for our lowest points tally in 22 years that being the infamous Barnes / Dalglish campaign of ’99/2000.

Jeez. Did we ever think we’d return to those dark days again?!

That time around we could only muster up a measly 69 points so at least we’ve eclipsed that total though not by much.

On Sunday we’re back at Ibrox for another round of torture.

The only saving grace is that none of our fans are having to pay for the ‘privilege’ of seeing it live in the ground due to ongoing restrictions.

Off the field, the situation also remains the same.

No manager and no director of football.

Howe continues to be rumoured but God knows.

The Howe to Celtic storyline feels like it’s been a longer running saga than the OJ Simpson trial.

He remains the favourite but at this stage, nothing surprises me.

At least Kennedy has been given enough rope to hang himself.

The board’s fantasy of him taking on the reins permanently have been well and truly sunk by the big man’s total ineptitude in the dugout since coming on as ‘caretaker’ and that’s all he’ll ever be.

Safe to say his time at Celtic is done in any capacity now.

I take cold comfort in that but at this stage, anything is better than nothing.

Maybe by the next time I write something, we’ll have beaten Rangers and have an actual manager with a backroom team and DOF in to take us forward.

But I’m not holding my breath and neither should you.

Honestly how did it ever get this bad?

Oh yeah………………………Lennon, Lawwell, Desmond, Barkas, Ajeti, Duffy, Nick Hammond, Ferencvaros, Ross County, Dubai……………………………..

Celtic begin summer clearout and the season ticket debacle begins.

wayofthecass

The pre-season is now officially upon us and not surprisingly due to what’s going on in the world teams are shedding players from their squads across Scotland at a rate of knots.

That would usually be the case to an extent up here in any case what with so many signed on short term contracts these days but it really is quite startling just how many out of contract players have been allowed to depart without being offered new terms from the moment the calendar hit June 1st.

As for Celtic, the club has pretty succinctly bid farewell to first-team squad players Jonny Hayes and Jozo Simunovic with fringe player Calvin Miller also exiting.

All three players were out of contract and under normal circumstances, Hayes and Jozo may have been offered season-long extensions but in these precarious times, it would appear there is no room for sentiment or a bloated squad.

After impressing at Aberdeen where he was their star player Jonny completed a dream £1.3 million move to Celtic in the summer of 2017 and went on to make a very respectable 68 appearances for the club over three seasons, some of which was impacted by injury, and scored two goals.

Mostly fitting in as a utility player on the left side he offered cover for the left-back position and from the subs bench, he was often deployed in a more attacking role.

The highlight of his time at the club was undoubtedly him scoring the second goal in injury time to secure a resounding 2-0 win over a fancied Rangers side at Ibrox on a sunny day on the 1st of September 2019.

A bit of a marmite player amongst the Celtic support no one can ever deny the fact Jonny gave 100% for the jersey and was happy to play in any position where cover was required.

Celtic's Jonny Hayes celebrates his winner during the Ladbrokes ...
Jonny bids farewell. 

Personally, I’ll never forget the tireless shift he put in during our memorable 2-1 win over Lazio at Rome’s Stadio Olimpico last year.

Soon to turn 33 it would be no surprise to see him turn out for a top-six Scottish Premiership or English Championship side next season.

Now we move onto Jozo Simunovic, the Croatian under-21 internationalist who was the biggest signing of the Ronny Deila era after being brought in for a significant fee from Dinamo Zagreb in the wake of Virgil Van Djik’s transfer to Southampton in September 2015.

Big Jozo cost anywhere from £3.5 to £6.75 million depending on what source you read which was a considerable chunk of the initial £13 million Celtic received for Dutch internationalist Van Djik though Celtic ultimately received far more than that for the Dutchman over the years due to various contractual add-ons.

Either way, he wasn’t cheap and much was expected though sadly injury blighted much of his initial time at the club.

He nearly departed for Torino in the summer of 2016 as Brendan Rodgers was beginning his Celtic revolution but the move fell through at the last minute and it was credit to the big Croat for how he reacted throughout.

Sitting outside a sun-kissed cafe, in Turn, awaiting news on developments a Sky Sports News reporter had tracked him down and was determined for him to say something that might be a slight to the club he was on the verge of departing but big Jozo apparently well aware of the politics of football just smiled and stated he had no ill-feeling towards Celtic and was fine with returning to fight for his place should the proposed move to Torino his agent was trying to barter fall through.

In the end, it did and he spent the next four years with the men in hoops.

Often blighted by injuries and with first-team appearances at a premium due to the likes of Boyata, Ajer and laterally recent signing Christopher Jullien being preferred ahead of him he, unfortunately, committed a few defensive howlers when he did get opportunities such as in big European games against Anderlecht and Copenhagen at Celtic Park – the second of which effectively eliminated us from the Europea League knockout phase back in February – and he was sent off at Ibrox against Rangers though we recovered to beat the light blues 3-2 in any case.

Still only 25 it’s safe to say he’ll get plenty of opportunities on the continent and though he failed to live up to his large transfer fee he leaves with two great individual memories the first being scoring the goal to beat Kilmarnock in April of last year that paid tribute perfectly to the recently departed club legend Billy McNeill and then that unforgettable crunching tackle on Kenny Miller that sent the Rangers captain into orbit during Celtic’s resounding 5-1 thumping of the light blues on their own patch back on the 29th of April 2017.

Kenny Miller says referee John Beaton was too lenient | Daily Mail ...
Jozo leaves Kenny Miller in no doubt whose ball it is.

He leaves the club having made 129 appearances and scored five times.

Incredibly he also departs with eleven winners medals to go with the five he’d previously claimed at first club Zagreb. Not a bad haul for a guy still two months away from his 26th birthday.

As for Calvin Miller alas there isn’t much to tell and the 22-year-old probably now regrets not taking up an offer to move to Kilmarnock permanently last summer.

Instead, he decided to see out the final year of his contract at Celtic where he spent most of his time on the sidelines injured.

In total, he made five first-team appearances for Celtic.

Now onto when the game will return and it looks like it’ll be early August and barring some incredible turnaround in the coming two months, it’s pretty certain to be behind closed doors until possibly the end of the year.

Season tickets are on sale and the proposal is you can use them to watch all home games on Sky Sports with the specific details still to be ironed out.

I presumed the club would simply give all season ticket holders the right to have exclusive access to view all home games via Celtic TV like they do for foreign subscribers but it appears the deal has been done with Sky to provide coverage instead.

Rather than vainly attempt to describe how this would be possible, I’ll wait for more info to be forthcoming in greater detail from both the club and broadcaster.

With two months left before the season is proposed to begin, they have plenty of time to iron out the kinks.

Of course, English football is scheduled to return behind closed doors in two weeks time so rather like with the somewhat disastrous introduction of VAR to the top flight game down south last season, Scottish football can use the EPL and lower leagues as a Guinea Pig for what works and what doesn’t.

Things such as carboard cutouts of fans and piping in artificial fan reactions to the stadium have been proposed and could be farcical or may actually elevate it above the glorified training ground games it otherwise will inevitably be.

As Jock Stein said: “Football without fans is nothing.”

I have a feeling big Jock will be proven to be very right on that count in the coming months.

 

 

 

After a shambolic exit in Europe to Copenhagen, the Celts prepare for St.Johnstone in the cup.

wayofthecass

Well, Thursday night was a bit of an unmitigated disaster.

Image result for celtic 1-3 copenhagen
Yep…..this just about sums it up.

On a night eerily similar to our capitulation against Cluj in the Champions League qualifiers way back in August Celtic showed once again that in European competition we still completely lack game management when ahead in a knockout tie.

Just like against Cluj we were ahead due to an away goal yet couldn’t see out the tie.

And also just like gainst Cluj we shot ourselves in the foot more than once.

After a pretty dominant first half where a patient Copenhagen refused to show their hand and where we passed up several good opportunities, you could only see one team progressing.

Six minutes into the second half though Jozo Simunovic had a ‘Jozo moment’ as he dithered on the ball and allowed Michael Santos to mug him before big Chris Jullien then panicked and ultimately Santos put the ball in the net.

A total gift.

Though how we ever allowed ourselves to be in a two on two situation in the first place at home in a tie where we were ahead is beyond me.

From then on we struggled and you just knew it wasn’t going to be our night but then out of nowhere we got a penalty thanks to VAR after Ragnar Sigurdsson had needlessly handled in the box.

Image result for celtic 1-3 copenhagen
The celebrations were short-lived. 

That man Odsonne Edouard stepped up and executed the spot-kick with aplomb and suddenly we were back in this.

But in almost identical fashion to the game against the Romanian champions over six months ago, we then handed the advantage back to the visitors who scored through Pep Biel only two minutes later with Celtic’s defending completely shambolic.

Dame N’Doye then farcically sauntered through our meek backline minutes after that to make it 3-1 and complete the embarrassment.

So that’s that then.

A campaign that showed so much promise with a superb display in the group stages ultimately went the same way as the last three times we’ve gone into the Last 32 stage that being with us going out with a whimper.

To make matters worse the tournament has totally opened up too with big names like Benfica, Porto, Ajax, Arsenal, Sporting Lisbon and Red Bull Salzburg all exiting as well.

Indeed Copenhagen have been drawn against İstanbul Başakşehir in the Last 16 which looks at a totally winnable tie and could have been us but alas………..

Oh and of course Rangers quite comfortably navigated their way through earlier in the week against far tougher opposition. On the bright side, it means we have a week of rest leading up to the next Old Firm game whilst they don’t but that’s scant consolation.

So it’s back to domestic action and the pursuit of the ‘Quadruple-Treble’ as Celtic visit McDiarmid Park tomorrow afternoon.

Image result for tommoy wright st.johnstone
Big Tommy is waiting.

We should be pretty confident considering we’ve won our last seven ties against St.Johnstone with an aggregate score of 26-0 which has included a 7-0 and 3-0 in our last two games against them.

They are actually in pretty good form at the moment with no losses in their last six games and only two losses in their last 15 domestic matches with seven wins and six draws.

Sixteen goals in their last eight games also shows their recent attacking prowess and Stevie May has refound his shooting boots during that period netting five times over that spell.

Their last game saw them battle to a 2-2 draw at home to Rangers too so they’ll go into this tie confident based on recent form and also hoping to take advantage of our European hangover.

I foresee us returning to a  3-5-2 with Griffiths starting upfront with Edouard and on reflection, we should maybe have gone with that on Thursday night from the start but everyone has a degree in hindsight of course.

Alas, a chance for our longest European cup run in sixteen years is gone.

More domestic trophies will have to suffice.

 

Celtic smash seven past saints, the other results plus Cluj Champs League preview.

wayofthecass

Celtic got their title defence off to a flyer with a seven nil massacre of St.Johnstone at Celtic Park yesterday afternoon – Saturday afternoon at the time of publication.

In my last article, I had predicted a romp for Celtic based on the Perth sides woeful League Cup group section campaign throughout July which had seen them lost to newly-promoted Ross County though more pertinently to League One sides Forfar Athletic and Montrose.

Before the game, I listened to their manager Tommy Wright passionately defend his record at the club on BBC Sportsound which is telling as no one had actually called it into question and is more of a reflection of the pressure Wright must himself feel under and his frustrations at the fact they have lost nine first-team squad players over the summer with only a couple coming in and a striker badly needed.

Celtic-7-St-Johnstone-0-Ryan-Christie-nets-hat-trick-as-780x405
Joy for Christie and Johnstone but not so much for Tommy.

As much as I expected an inform Celtic, fresh from a 7-0 aggregate dismissal of Nomme Kalju in the Champions League qualifiers,  to put them to the sword I could never have predicted a 7-0 skelping which is the men from Perth’s worst result in 21 years and even eclipses the 6-0 scudding we gave them at McDiarmid Park last term.

Ryan Christie kept up his sparkling recent form with a hattrick. His first a beauty from the edge of the box and his third an even more spectacular finish with the one in the middle being a tad fortunate with Saints keeper Zander Clark not exactly covering himself in glory.

Mikey Johnstone had opened the scoring with a nice finish of his own after only nine mins and Ntcham, Edouard and Griffiths also delivered the goods with each executing fine finishes in the second half.

Hatem Abd Elhamed also made his debut and looked pretty good – let’s be honest if you can’t look good when your team is winning 7-0 then you never will – but sadly limped off in the second half. Let’s hope it isn’t too serious.

Image result for celtic 7-0 st.johnstone elhamed
Hatem in action.

A perfect way to start the title defence on a day in which our eighth consecutive title flag was fittingly unveiled by Liz McNeill and Sadie Chalmers, the wives of the legendary Billy McNeill and Stevie Chalmers, two immortal club legends who we lost earlier in the year.

Elsewhere over the weekend Livingston and Motherwell burst my coupon with a meandering 0-0 draw whilst Hibs stuttered before scoring late to beat struggling St.Mirren at Easter Road thanks to a Scott Allen goal. It’s early doors but from what I’ve seen thus far I’m not too impressed with Paul Heckingbottom’s English League One level purchases.  Last seasons Championship winners Ross County re-entered the top flight in style as they easily dismissed perennial relegation candidates Hamilton Accies 3-0 up in Dingwall.

Earlier on today Aberdeen won a rabble-rousing encounter at home to Hearts 3-2 with the Edinburgh side literally grasping defeat from the jaws of victory after throwing away 2-1 lead and seeing young 17-year-old Aaron Hickey sent off before Clévid Dikamona needlessly gave away a penalty which was converted by goal machine Sam Cosgrove before new singing Ryan Hedges blasted home a late winner.

Rangers also continued to provide further evidence that we have little to worry about this term as they struggled to a 2-1 away win at a Kilmarnock team coming off the back of a shambolic Europea League exit. Killie look like a pale imitation of the well-oiled machine Stevie Clarke had moulded them into last season but still dominated large swaths of the game and were unlucky to concede late to a Connor Goldson header.

But now let’s get back to our next European opponents in the 3rd Qualifying round of the Champions League.

They are of course CFR Cluj of Romania who have won back to back national titles and are managed by former Chelsea star Dan Petrescu.

He’s had great success on these shores before both as a player with Chelsea and in a coaching capacity with the now-defunct Unirea Urziceni who he led to a 4-1 Champions league groups stage hammering of Walter Smith’s Rangers back in 2009 at Ibrox.

Image result for dan petrescu cluj
Cluj manager Dan Petrescu thinking about Celtic. 

Cluj themselves are currently enjoying the most successful period in their history having been formed way back in 1907 they only won their first top-flight title back in 2008 and very first national cup that same year.

They’ve won four more titles and three more cups since and have established themselves as the second biggest club in the country beyond the famous Steaua Bucharest.

So far this season they’ve won three and drawn one in the league and currently sit top of the division after hammering AFC Chindia Târgoviște 4-1 away yesterday. They’ve scored ten goals conceding only three in the process.

In Europe, the success story has continued as they bounced back from a 1-0 loss in Kazakhstan to Astana to win 3-1 at home to progress 3-2 on aggregate before then eliminating Maccabi Tel Aviv of Israel 3-2 on aggregate also after gaining a 2-2 draw away following on from a tight 1-0 home win.

Their squad isn’t full of stars and indeed Petrescu has boasted that both Astana and Tel Aviv had superior budgets so they haven’t achieved what they have by simply splashing the cash.

Experience is heavy in the team.

Attacking winger Ciprian Deac is 33 and has 20 caps for Romania. Defensive midfielder Ovidiu Hoban is 36 and has 30 caps for Romania. Their Portuguese captain Camora has no caps for his country but at 32 has played 240 games for Cluj. Recently signed striker Mario Rondón is 33, has over 100 career goals at eight previous clubs and 13 caps for Venezuela.

Veteran Argentine midfielder Emmanuel Culio is in his second spell at the club, is 36 and has played for 15 clubs in total and has been described by Petrescu as ‘the best player in Cluj’s history.’ Though apparently, he’s struggling to makes Wednesday nights encounter with fitness issues. So that’s good.

Image result for Emmanuel Culio cluj
Cluj’s ‘greatest ever player’ in action.

Up front, the ones to watch out for are big striker George Țucudean who was the leading striker in the Romanian top flight last season with 18 goals from 24 games and his strike partner, Frenchman Billel Omrani whose also a six-footer.

They haven’t made any big-name additions this summer but held onto the majority of their squad with no significant departures. It’s certainly an ageing squad but also a successful one and very consistent.

Last season despite their domestic success Malmo eliminated them from the Champions League qualifiers and in a big shock, Luxembourg’s F91 Dudelange put them out of Europe all together at the Europea League play-offs stage 5-2 on aggregate.

Currently, in the UEFA association coefficients, Romania sits at 29, nine places behind Scotland which gives you an idea of the sort of impact or lack of that their clubs have been making in Europe recently.

But their recent form has been good and this will be a definite step-up from what we came up against in the first two qualifying rounds.

They lost only one home game in the league last season but did lose two of their three home European ties and at home in the semi-finals of the national cup to former Celtic European opponents Astra Giurgiu so there is hope for optimism.

I think it’ll be tight but as much as I’d like to go with the ultra optimism of a comfortable win I’m going to go for a score draw at the Dr. Constantin Rădulescu Stadium on Wednesday night with us bringing them back to Celtic Park for a classic European home tie the following Tuesday.

It’s definitely doable and we’ll find out in the morning who we could potentially get in the Play-off round.

It’ll be the winner of Rosenborg vs Maribor, APOEL Nicosia, Young Boys or Slavia Prague.

The only one that makes me wary there is Young Boys. They won the league last season over Basel who’ve already eliminated PSV from the Champions League this season so safe to say that the Swiss champs will be pretty tasty.

Exciting times.

 

 

Celtic cruise into the Champions League 3rd Qualifying round and Cluj profiled.

wayofthecass

Celtic swatted aside Estonian Champions Nõmme Kalju 2-0 in Tallinn’s wonderfully named A. Le Coq Arena last night to progress rather easily 7-0 on aggregate.

Of course, after last Wednesday night’s romp at Celtic Park progression was never in any doubt but an away win is  never a guarantee for Celtic on the continent no matter who the opposition is and it was also important to keep up the winning momentum which now sees us having won four on the spin since returning to competitive action in the 1st Qualifying round against FK Sarajevo last month.

Bizarrely the host’s manager Roman Kozhukhovskyi thought his side suffered ‘an injustice’ last night but hey managers will say the strangest things to either shield their side from criticism or keep up morale. But the reality is that’s just complete and utter nonsense.

Celtic dominated possession all night, restricted the home side to few chances and should have scored more themselves.

Our new £7 million centre back Christopher Jullien made his debut and was towering, composed and comfortable on the ball all evening. He’ll have far more testing games than this of course but it was a nice start and he could even have scored at one point.

Image result for celtic nomme kalju 2-0 christopher jullien
Big Christopher shows his power.

Both Callum McGregor and James Forrest were rested for the night with the likes of  Bain, Ajer, Edouard and Christie dropping to the bench and in came not only Jullien but keeper Craig Gordon, Lewis Morgan, Mikey Johnston, Olivier Ntcham and in a real surprise Tony Ralston at right-back for a rare appearance.

Celtic took the lead on 10 mins when a Ntcham advanced to the edge of the box before feeding Johnston on the left byline who’s drive across the face of the goal evaded the keeper and looked to be tapped in by Leigh Griffiths only for it to be diverted into the net by the sliding  Aleksandr Kulinits. As much as the Celtic TV commentary wanted it to be Leigh’s I’m afraid it has to go down as an own goal.

Thereafter the game pretty much had a malaise about it with Celtic happy to dominate possession and the Estonians happy to keep the score down.  That was until the second half with Craig Gordon required to make a few half-decent saves before Celtic went back through the gears in the closing stages.

As mentioned earlier Jullien missed a chance with a header from six yards and then on came sub Marian Shved who within seconds of stepping onto the pitch was through on goal only to be denied by keeper Pavel Londak who began replicating some of his outstanding shot-stopping form from last week.

Both Lewis Morgan and Scott Sinclair were also denied by two wonderful saves from Londak who has certainly been Nõmme’s outstanding player over the two legs and Jullien had the ball in the net but it was ruled out for a high boot.

But just when it looked like we would have to settle for only the one up stepped Shved to score on his debut with a pearler into the keeper’s top left-hand corner of the net from the edge of the box in what turned out to be the last kick of the match on 93 minutes.

Image result for celtic nomme kalju 2-0 marian shved
Shved is off to a flyer. 

In the end, it was all rather easy peasy. If only all European ties were like that. Alas, they’re not and we’ll have a far sterner test in the 3rd Qualifying round in the form of Romanian Champions CFR Cluj.

Managed by Romanian football legend Dan Petrescu they have won their last two league championships back to back and five in total in their history.

Formed in 1907 they were really just a provincial club for their entire history until a major investment in the early 2000s by local businessman Árpád Pászkány helped push them back into the top flight where they have not only remained ever since but been frequent title challengers and trophy winners.

They nearly went to the wall back in 2014 due to financial insolvency but staved off liquidation and in early 2017 were taken over by wealthy business magnate Marian Băgăcean who subsequently appointed Petrescu that summer and they haven’t really looked back since.

Last season they pipped the far more well known Steaua Bucharest to the championship by two points to retain their title.

They lost only 3 out of 36 games, drawing 11, scoring only 54 but conceding a mere 20 so safe to say their tactics are to defend and keep it tight.

Though this approach seems conservative as a manager Petrescu certainly wasn’t as a player scoring 71 goals in club football alone as an attacking full-back and 12 for his country.

He played for the great Steaua team of the ’80s where we won four league championships and was a European Cup runner up playing alongside the legendary Gheorghe Hagi in 1989. He was also part of the team that eliminated Rangers from the 87/88 European Cup Quarterfinal a tie which featured Graeme Souness’s shocking challenge on Iosif Rotariu.

After a spell in Italy, he then spent eight years in England enjoying great success in an exciting Chelsea team alongside the likes of Ruud Gullit, Gianluca Vialli and Gianfranco Zola.

As a manager, he had success previously in his homeland with the now-defunct Unirea Urziceni who won the league under his stewardship as well as in Russia with Kuban Krasnodar who he led to the second tier title and promotion and in China with Jiangsu Suning whom he guided to the national cup in 2015.

He’s visited Glasgow before in a management capacity having led Unirea to a 4-1 pasting of Walter Smith’s Rangers at Ibrox in the Champions League back in the autumn of 2009.

Anyone else remember that?

 

Well, that was a nice stroll down memory lane but back to the present and we’ll be visiting Cluj’s compact and picturesque Dr. Constantin Rădulescu’s stadium next Tuesday for the first leg. It’s in the capital of Transylvania would you believe so expect the press to make a lot of vampire references in the lead up to the match as Celtic attempt to the put ‘a stake through the heart of Cluj’s Champions League hopes’ before ‘sinking their teeth into Cluj the following week at Celtic Park’ and so on and so forth.

So far this season Cluj have toppled Astana – who we know well and are no slouches – and Israeli Champions Maccabi Tel Aviv en route to the 3rd round so they’ve had a far harder route than we have.

But I’ll go into their European pedigree and players to watch out for next week in my preview to the first leg tie.

In the meantime, we prepare for our eighth consecutive flag day on Saturday against visiting St. Johnstone who have had a woeful build-up to the league kick-off so far which has seen them eliminated from the League Cup already after pretty shocking losses to League 1 sides Montrose and Forfar as well as to newly-promoted Ross County.

A slow summer has seen half a dozen first-team players depart – including the mercurial ex-Celtic Tony Watt – and only a few arrivals with the expected capture of former star striker Stevie May back to the club also recently collapsing.

So they don’t have their problems to seek and hopefully, we can capitalise on that and really turn them over.

Unfortunately, big Christopher Jullien won’t be able to make his domestic bow though as he’s carrying over a suspension from his time in the French top-flight last year which means we should see a partnership of big Simunovic and Ajer or Bitton returning to a back three. Either way, the emphasis should be on the attack and I’m pretty confident it will be a good send-off for Romania.