A lot to get through here.
First up was Saturday evenings game and it wasn’t much of a spectacle.
We persisted with one up top and Odsonne Edouard struggled to make much of an impact playing against four Dundee Utd defenders.
As expected Utd were robust and psychical with Connolly and Reynolds at the back pretty much being given license to do as they pleased all afternoon by referee Andrew Dallas.
Both escaped the 90 mins without even a yellow card which is absolutely ridiculous especially in the case of Connolly and especially when you consider that Callum McGregor got one for pretty much his first challenge of the game.
Celtic dominated proceedings with Utd dead set on playing for a draw and they rarely ventured up the park.
We had twenty attempts at goal and nine on target with ten corners compared to only one shot on target all day from the home side.
It was frustrating all evening with Utd’s hammer throwers packing out their box and goalkeeper Benjamin Siegrist had an excellent game producing some fine saves with a few especially notable ones from Ryan Christie’s long range efforts.
One such save from a Christie pile-driver though eventually led to the solitary goal as new signing Albian Ajeti eventually hit the rebound into the roof of the net off of a plethora of diving tangerine defenders.
His first goal for the club on 83 mins was hardly picture perfect but it will do and was enough to secure the three points.
On days like that maximum points is all you can ask for but going forward Celtic really must rethink their game plan when they are playing overly defensive sides away from home on tight pitches.
Off the field as of today rumours are now at fever pitch over the potential imminent signings of Shane Duffy from Brighton and David Turnbull from Motherwell.
Duffy’s brother has placed a Celtic crest on his twitter account and the man himself tweeted a picture of him boarding a domestic flight earlier this morning so if that isn’t enough to get you excited then nothing will.
Whether it’s for a season long loan or is to be permanent is anyone’s guess but this one seems almost certain to happen now despite strong interest from West Ham Utd.
As for Motherwell youngster David Tunrbull he was of course on the verge of clinching a £3 million plus move to Parkhead last summer and even had the jersey on in the stadium at one point before a medical scan revealed a serious knee injury and kiboshed the deal.
It was clear though that the club would monitor his progress and despite spending all of last season on the sidelines he’s now back to full fitness after a long and patient recovery process and looks as good as ever based on early season performances.
So it could be a Carlsberg Monday if both of those come off though I’ll be happy if both are completed at any point this week.
And now of course we move onto tomorrow night and our esteemed Champions League 2nd qualifying round opponents Ferencvárosi TC or just Ferencvaros to us.
The Green Eagles are based in the Hungarian capital of Budapest and are by some distance the most successful team in the country with 31 league championships and 23 national cups to go with six super cups two league cups with the latter competition now dissolved .
Their heyday in Europe was at a similar time to ours as they won the precursor to the UEFA Cup then called the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup in 1965 after defeating Italian giants Juventus 1-0 in the final which came not long after winning both legs of their semi-final versus Manchester Utd.
They finished runners-up in the same competition three years later after losing out 1-0 to Leeds Utd over two legs in 1968 and were also runners-up in the 1975 Cup Winners Cup final going down 3-0 to Dynamo Kyiv.
Alas Hungarian football isn’t what it once was and whilst you can say the exact same thing about Scottish football their fall from grace has been far greater.
Currently under the management of Ukrainian football legend Sergey Rebrov he’s led them to back to back league championships and they eased to last seasons title with only three losses in 33 games that included 23 wins and seven draws seeing them finish thirteen points ahead of second placed Fehérvár FC.
The emphasis of Rebrov’s tactics would appear to be to keep it tight as they conceded only 24 goals all season but also only scored 58 as they hit the net more than twice in only seven league games all season and were involved in eleven 1-0 games.
Top goalscorers Franck Boli and Tokmac Nguen scored 12 goals each in all competitions whilst Ukrainian midfielder Oleksandr Zubkov weighed in with ten from midfield.
Veteran striker Roland Varga scored eight times last season and has 59 goals in 181 games for his hometown club.
Rebrov has been able to keep last season’s squad intact thus far with no additions and is apparently on a £2.5 million bonus if he can get them to the promised land of the Champions League group stages which is something they haven’t done since the one and only time they made it back in 1995/96.
As well as securing a second consecutive league title last term he also guided them to the group stages of the Europa League for the first time since the 2004/05 season.
After eliminating Bulgarian champions Ludogorets Razgrad (5-3 on agg) and Maltese title holders Valletta (4-2 on agg) in the first two rounds of the Champions League qualifiers they were crushed 5-1 on aggregate by Dinamo Zagreb.
That saw them drop into the Europa League play-off where they overwhelmed FK Sūduva of Lithuania 4-2 at home after a 0-0 draw away.
In the group stages they gave a fine account of themselves losing only once and drawing four times with a solitary win in a section that included CSKA Moscow, eventual group winners Espanyol and former Champions League qualification round opponents Razgrad who pipped them by one point to second spot and a place in the last 32.
As was the case in the league they found goals hard to come by scoring only five times though their sole win did come on the road in Moscow via 1-0 so that might be of some concern
This season they have played only one league game which saw them draw 1-1 at MTK Budapest a week ago last Friday and last Tuesday they saw off Sweden’s Djurgårdens IF rather comfortably at home 2-0 in the first qualifying round of the Champions League.
All of their goals this term have been scored by 26-year-old Kenyan Tokmac Nguen so safe to say he’s the one to watch.
Anyway that’s the full lowdown on them.
They’ll be tidy in possession and will likely look to capitalise on any mistakes from us.
A early goal would be ideal as it will force them out but otherwise we just need to keep our concentration and find a way as it’s pretty safe to say this won’t be an open game looking at the Hungarian champions recent tactics and form.
Let’s hope for the right result.
Meanwhile here’s the highlights from Saturday
....Always A Tim! 