Tag: Astana

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

 

International review: Scotland cap off disastrous campaign opener with a pitiful display.

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When I’ve done international reviews in the past I’ve done it on a game by game basis. Not this time. I literally couldn’t bring myself to write anything in the wake of the Kazakhstan opener.

On the one hand, I try to look at it objectively.

Both Celtic and Aberdeen have both been over there in the past six years – three times in Celtic’s case, one in Aberdeen’s – and both failed to win. From four visits in total, there has been three defeats and one draw.  Temper that with the artificial surface which the team clearly looked uncomfortable on and add it to the raft of players unavailable then there are some good reasons for it.

Scotland selection wise were effectively decimated with the loss of Andy Robertson, Ryan Fraser, Kieran Tierney, Charlie Mulgrew and Calum Paterson leading up to the game and the likes of Robert Snodgrass, Leigh Griffiths, Steven Naismith, Tom Cairney, Matt Ritchie, Matt Phillips and Steven Fletcher all unavailable too for a variety of reasons. Then there has been the retirements in the past year of the likes of Scott Brown, James McArthur and Allan McGregor. So effectively a full teams worth plus subs were absent.

The replacements were just not up to it.

For some banal reason people have been calling for Graeme Shinnie’s involvement in the national team for some time and he got his start at left back only to look hopelessly out of his depth. The young centre back pairing of McKenna and Bates also looked lost without some experience at the back to guide them – okay that would have been Mulgrew’s role but surely common sense should have seen McLeish give Christophe Berra a call – and then there was the borderline insane decision to pitch in the little known Liam Palmer for his debut at left-back. Palmer looked like a rabbit caught in the headlights all night and this was particularly frustrating considering Kilmarnock’s Stephen O’Donnell was sitting on the bench a player who has not only been capped before and has been playing well all season but who also plays regularly on an artificial surface. You would have thought that one would have been a no brainer but then again when your coaching staff have no brain……….

From midfield to upfront the team looked capable enough on paper – I’m no fan of Oli McBurnie but in fairness, he does have 18 goals in 35 games for Cardiff this season – however, everyone was bang out of form with Celtic players Oli Burke and James Forrest particularly ineffective and disappointing.

Based on what we’ve seen so far there is little evidence to support a case to even attempt to make Burke’s transfer permanent, not that there would be much point in even trying considering the ludicrous transfer fee his parent club are likely to want. It is an indictment on the modern transfer market that Burke has so far collectively cost clubs £28 million in fees considering that, to say the least, he’s a work in progress. Yes, he has pace to burn and has moments of real dynamism but his final product is generally non-existent with a poor first touch and little to no finishing ability. I hope he proves me wrong in the coming weeks but as it stands he can return to Albion with my warmest regards this summer.

To that first game itself and the Kazakhs were 2-0 up after only 10 mins which was truly incredible considering their 117th world ranking. Even more incredible was that after the match national coach Alex McLeish insisted that he thought his team had got off to a ‘bright start’.

Both goals were fine finishes – Yuriy Pertsukh’s opener, in particular, was pretty spectacular – but both were also born out of poor defending as the back line was posted MIA.

Shinnie was all at sea for the second and Scotland looked completely hobbled thereafter.

In the second half, Zainutdinov scored a magnificent header and that was that pretty much except for the fact that both Armstrong and Forrest both should have scored with the ex-Celtic midfielder failing to hit the target and the current Celtic winger’s effort a feeble attempt at close range.

I’m a huge fan of Callum McGregor but personally, I don’t think he’s captain material and so it proved to be. McGregor is a playmaker and talented midfielder but not a leader of men, not helped by his rather diminutive schoolboy-esque stature, and for me, the armband would have maybe been better with the likes of McGinn or Armstrong.

Though it didn’t really matter who had it when your team can’t string three passes together and their play is completely devoid of any conviction or fire.

Three days later Scotland rolled into Serravalle to face the lowest ranked nation in world football. Having watched Ireland’s rather woeful effort in eking past minnows Gibraltar 1-0 the day before I didn’t think international football could get much worse. Scotland did their best to prove me wrong.

A 5 or 6-0 thrashing was just what the doctor ordered in the wake of the Kazhak embarrassment but instead, Scotland laboured to a wholly disappointing 2-0 win over the minnows via goals from Kenny McLean and Johnny Russell. Up front, Marc McNulty made his first start for the national team and if he’s the answer then I’m not sure what the question is.

The old mantra of ‘a wins a win’ and ‘it’s three points’ etc will be rolled out in the coming days by the team but it was another crap performance and gives little evidence of any real cohesion and passion within this squad.

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Old ‘Gammon face’ isn’t having the best time of it.

Elsewhere in the group Russia visited Kazhakstan and proved that it’s not so much a case of the Kazhaks actually being pretty good but instead of Scotland just being really bad as they plundered their hosts 4-0 to get their first points on the board. In their first game, they were pretty easily dispatched 3-1 by group favourites Belgium who just look a class apart. Belgium have since won 2-0 in Cyprus and look like they are going to romp this group at a canter.

Next up Scotland face Cyprus at Hampden in early June in a must-win match – though to be honest after that start they are all must win now – and then they head over the water to visit Belgium and their galaxy of stars which right now seems a somewhat terrifying prospect.

Anyway, let’s forget all that uninspiring and quite frankly depressing international nonsense as it’s back to club duty and the build-up to next Sunday’s Old Firm clash where Celtic could go 13 points clear and effectively seal the league.

Preview of that to come as we get on with the really important business at hand.