Tag: Celtic FC

The Seven Month European Journey ends with mixed feelings.

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Celtic exited Europe last night with a 1-0 defeat to Valencia in the Mestalla.

There was little surprise. Few if any held out any genuine hope of our progression last night after a pretty disastrous 2-0 home defeat at Celtic park eight days ago.

But in fairness, we did gain a fair amount of redemption for our disappointing performance in the home leg. Last night we approached the game with some belief, quite a lot of it actually and a plan. Unlike the first tie, we showed we are a capable passing team with decent game management and for most of the first half controlled the ball and looked the more likely to score. On 37 mins though Jeremy Toljan got his second yellow card and any flickering hopes of an unlikely comeback were more or less extinguished. We came under the cosh for the rest of the half and it took some fine saves from Scott Bain, who is now really starting to look the real deal, to prevent our hosts from scoring and the floodgates from opening.

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Bain looks the part.

In the second half, Bain again was called into action though we began to grow into it again and Kristofer Ajer miscued a header from a freekick into the box that could have put us right back in it and the cat really amongst the pigeons.  Alas, it went high, wide and handsome.

Substitute Kevin Gaimero tapped in the only goal on 70 minutes and that was that but we kept battling to the end determined to make sure we didn’t fall to an undeserved heavy defeat and when the whistle went we departed the continental stage at the Last 32 round with our heads held high.

In truth, we didn’t create much in the way of clear cut chances. Oliver Burke was deployed up front by himself in the first half and though his pace hurt the Spaniards his lack of a first touch certainly didn’t. Jonny Hayes had a good far post chance but scooped his effort over the bar. In the second half, James Forrest was inexplicably moved into the middle as the lone striker whilst Odsonne Edouard and Timothy Weah looked on from the bench most likely perplexed. Why French Eddy wasn’t deployed from the start with Burke out wide in his natural position only Brendan knows but a combination of lacking faith in his own convictions as well as just overrating Burke’s abilities as a finisher are the leading candidates.

Personally, I thought it was a missed opportunity last night. Valencia looked a little bereft and the home fans were on their back pretty quickly. Our passing game was much sharper with Mcgregor and Brown in particular far better than they had been at Celtic Park. With an actual striker on who knows but I guess that’s neither here nor there because Toljan getting his marching orders pretty much torpedoed our hopes anyway. The German full-back was naive but at the same time, it was the sort of sending off you get against bigger name opposition on the continent that you just know the ref wouldn’t give against them. He wasn’t shy to flash yellow cards at us all night whilst giving out warnings to the men in white shirts for identical fouls. But it’s always been that way in Europe and will never change.

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No chance he’s doing that to the number 5 in white.

Looking back we’ve played a mammoth 16 games in European competition this season. That’s far more than the nine we played to win the European Cup in 1967 or even the 15 we played in the 2002/2003 season when we reached the UEFA Cup final after a Champions League play-off defeat. So the most in one season in our history. Of those 16 ties, we won seven, drew three and lost six. A mixed bag.

The highlight was undoubtedly the 2-1 home win against RB Leipzig at Celtic Park on a night where we defeated a team who have been sitting in fourth spot in the Bundesliga all season.

The lows were…….well take your pick basically. The Champions League elimination to Athens, drawing away in Suduva, being bowled over so easily away to Salzburg and in Leipzig or the anticlimactic displays at home to Salzburg and Valencia.

Scottish football as a whole has also seen its stock risen with the Scottish league’s coefficient rising from 25 to 20 due to this season displays. A draw last night would have actually nudged Scotland slightly ahead of Serbia in 19th spot so, on the whole, it’s been a beneficial season for everyone with not just Celtic actually delivering some points for once.

Brendan’s European record still isn’t great. 16 wins from 40 games with six draws and 18 losses isn’t horrific but could and should be better. With only 12 wins from 32 European ties Neil Lennon’s record was actually worse but his win column included the victory over Barcelona and also saw us progress to the Champions League Last 16 with a Scottish record for a club from these shores in the Champions League of 10 points, something which is unlikely to be repeated any time soon if at all.

Gordan Strachan’s also wasn’t great either with only eight wins from 26 but those were, of course, the days when we hardly played any qualifiers and, as a result, minnows, and were generally straight in with the big boys. He also took us to glory nights against Manchester Utd (1-0), AC Milan (2-1), Benfica (3-0), Donetsk (2-1) and back to back Champions League Last 16 qualifications which once again will unlikely happen in the foreseeable future.

He is of course way off Martin ONeill’s ledger which includes an incredible 26 wins in European competition from 53 European ties and had far too many glory nights to mention with the greatest of his achievements being leading us to our first major European final in  33 years.

Anyway, this seasons is done and playing in Europe after Christmas is no mean feat. That’s only the eight-time we’ve done it in the past 39 years which should put our European expectations into some kind of perspective.  That and the fact that Kevin Gaimero who came on as a sub to score against us last night has won the competition we were playing in an incredible four times which shows you what we are up against.

Onwards and upwards domestically starting with a revitalised Motherwell on Sunday.

 

Celtic: a 5-day review, from despair against Valencia to late joy at Killie.

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It’s not ideal to be writing two post-match reviews several days late but alas I’ve been floored by a virus so have been bed bound up until today.

I didn’t fancy writing anything in the wake of the Valencia defeat anyway. Negatively abounded online and in Celtic cyberspace in particular. Ultimately it’s the sort of performance on big European nights that we’ve become accustomed to not just under Brendan but over the past six years full stop. I plan to write a preview tomorrow of the second leg anyway so will touch more on that there.

On the night itself, our passing was poor, our movement lacked conviction and after a good opening ten minutes spell we lost our way and allowed our opponents to grow into the game and ultimately take over. As a result, they scored in each half via strikes from Cheryshev and Sobrino with both goals totally preventable and born out of unnecessary mistakes on our part. That aside Scott Brown struggled badly but in fairness so did the whole team. Even the ever dependable Callum McGregor had an off night something you can rarely say about the 25-year-old. We were well beaten by a team who had extra quality but who also did the basics right.

All that being said at European level we just can’t afford to not have players the calibre of Tierney, Rogic, Benkovic as well as Ntcham and Griffiths available to us. The first three would be automatic starters and the other two would be at the very least be in contention to start and even if they didn’t would be quality options to bring on from the bench.

Anyway, it’s done and Thursday gives us a chance, however unlikely, to redeem ourselves. Like I’ve said I’ll talk more about that tomorrow.

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Valencia makes it two.

As for Sunday well it wasn’t the best performance but we got the job done and in doing so go eight points clear at the top.

Killie haven’t lost to us at Rugby Park since Steve Clarke’s arrival – indeed they’ve beaten us on each of our last two visits – and up until recently were even considered title challengers so strong has their season-long form been. They are hard working, determined and well organised. They are also capable of some decent passing movements in tight situations which they really don’t get credit for. In players like Jordan Jones and Eamonn Brophy, they have genuine attacking threats who come at you with pace.

In the early exchanges, we dominated though created little in the way of clear cut chances and then as the match progressed Killie did what they do and began to ease into the game and created opportunities of their own.

In the second half Kirk Broadfoot went in rashly on Brown with the type of challenge refs just don’t stand for these days – well most refs anyway – and got himself a straight red. It didn’t really change the momentum of the game though as Kilmarnock were already pretty adept at sitting in and frustrating. We struggled to create much as we often do when faced up with defensively minded teams down in numbers. It was kind of playing out just like it did against AEK Athens in the home tie of our Champions League 3rd qualifying round match against them at Celtic Park back in August where despite our numerical advantage when they had a man sent off we basically refused to adapt, kept recycling the ball and passing it around in front of them and refused to improvise. Then veteran defender Alex Bruce came on, we won a corner, it fell to Boyata who headed it down to Scott Brown who was just inside the box and launched one – which may have been row Z bound – and Bruce threw himself at it, with the result being it deflected off of his outstretched arm and into the net.

Broonie went delirious and after pondering it for a second decided to run into the fans who invaded the pitch and the Scottish press prepared to mount their moral collective high horse. Nobody got hurt though, it all appeared to be pretty good-natured and Brown paid the price with a second yellow and red card which actually saw us having to hold out for the last few mins.

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All’s well that ends well.

But hold out we did and what with Rangers being held to a surprising 0-0 draw against St.Johnstone – who we had decided to let out of our pockets for the afternoon – at Ibrox we stretched our lead at the top to eight points with all teams in the league having played 26 games.

Kris Boyd got pinged with a coin whilst warming up for which there is no excuse and he was decent enough not to make a big deal of it during the match at least. He’s been pretty vocal about it since and there’s no point in trying to deflect here. We are quick to point the finger when other clubs fans do it and our players or staff are affected so have to hold ourselves to the same standard. Late afternoon or early evening games always have that extra potential for stupidity from the stands due to the increased likelihood of prematch drinking and continued actions such as these bury any arguments to allow alcohol sales into Scottish football stadiums for the first time.

Anyway, we now have a healthy lead up at the top. That plus we’be now gone eight domestic games without conceding a goal, scoring 22 and winning every one. We also got to see Bayo for the first time and first impressions are he looks pretty composed but we will, of course, need to see a helluva lot more.

On Sunday after our Europa League campaign is likely finished we will face a very much inform Motherwell team at Celtic Park. Like us, they have won their last six consecutive league matches and have young players like Jake Hastie, Allan Campbell and David Turnbull on fire. Whilst we are looking to tie up our eight consecutive league title they are rampaging towards an unlikely top six league finish with the gap on sixth-placed St.Johnstone now down to only two points – it was 13 points only four weeks ago -and their free-flowing style should make for an entertaining match.  After that, we’re at Tynecastle to play Hearts midweek which is always a pretty raucous and competitive affair. Get through these two and the schedule gets a little kinder for us and less so for our closest rivals. So basically what I’m saying is win these next two league matches and we can only really throw it away.

Anyway, it’s been a mixed bag these last five days. Hopefully, the next eight are full of positives and my cold goes away.

Weekend review: Celtic keep rattling them in, managerial heads tumble and them from Govan invade the pitch.

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Another weekend and another victory as Celtic made it three on the spin since returning from the winter break.

As predicted in my last article it really was like shooting fish in a barrel as Hamilton offered only slight resistance en route to being beaten 3-0 going on six.

Young Ryan Fulton in the away teams goal had both a great game and a calamity at the same time as he produced some fine stops to keep the men in green and white out for 40 mins before letting a Callum McGregor shot straight at him squirm under his body and into the net.

His indifferent form continued in the second half as he made more good saves only to spill the ball at the feet of Ryan Christie on 77 mins with the Celtic man duly obliging to increase the lead before Scott Sinclair headed home his seventh in five games ten minutes later to give a more realistic final scoreline to proceedings.

Easy peasy and Celtic maintained their lead at the top whilst for the Accies this was their 11th defeat in 15 games of which they have only won two. It’s the kind of form that would usually see you cut adrift at the bottom but luckily for them both St.Mirren and Dundee have been equally awful this term and they actually still sit 10th and above the relegation zone.

Still, it was no great surprise to see their manager Martin Canning sacked this morning. In fairness, he’s operating with the financial equivalent of a pea shooter in the transfer market and Hamilton are a club who have punched well above their weight to stay in the Premier league since coming up via the playoffs in May 2014. This season reality seems to be really biting though and Canning has paid the price.

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Times up for Martin.

For Celtic, that’s 10 goals with none conceded in the past three games and the break certainly seems to have re-energised them with an opportunity to extend their lead at the top of the table when they play St.Johnstone at Celtic Park tomorrow night as we finally play our game in hand.

Elsewhere Rangers avenged an earlier season loss to Livingston at the Tony Macaroni Arena putting them back up to second spot, a victory of such significance to the hordes in blue that they invaded the pitch in exuberant celebration. Pitch invasions for beating 8th placed Livi eh? They’ve come a long way alright.

In a clash between two of the chasing pack at Pittodrie both Aberdeen and Kilmarnock played out a disappointing 0-0 draw with the only highlight being Krois Boyd receiving a straight red. For Aberdeen, that means they’ve only lost once in eight games and remain in fourth spot one place behind Killie who have only lost once their last eleven league games.

Hearts inconsistent form also continued as they bounced back from a surprise 2-1 midweek home defeat to basement dwellers Dundee by defeating in form St.Johnstone comfortably 2-0 at Tynecastle which sees them leapfrog Tommy Wright’s team and go back into fifth place.

Over in Leith all hell kicked off on Friday night as Neil Lennon was suspended for an apparent bust-up with his squad and in particular striker, Florian Kamberi who he ironically brought to the side in the summer after a successful loan spell last season.

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Lennon and Flo Kamberi in happier times. 

For some reason, Hibs haven’t actually sacked him yet though it’s 90% certain it’ll be made official sometime this week. The exact details of what happened are of course sketchy but Lenny is prone to outbursts and combined with poor results this season which have seen his team win only seven from 22 games then I guess it was the perfect storm.

Still, it’s disappointing to see. Lennon has been good for Hibs winning the Championship to get them back up in his first season and then guiding them back into Europe via a fourth-placed finish last season where they were also in contention for the second spot right up to the last few weeks. Considering his squad was decimated in the summer due to the departures of his entire central midfield in McGinn, Allen and McGeouch it’s not really a surprise they have floundered so badly this term. The incredible job being done by Stevie Clarke over at Kilmarnock with no money has undoubtedly put extra pressure on him also.

Into his place stepped youth coach Eddie May on Sunday and despite the chaos around Hibs they still inflicted more anguish on poor Oran Kearney with a 3-1 win at New St.Mirren Park.

Kearney really must be wondering what the hell he’s got himself into having come over from Northern Ireland with lofty ambitions only to have tasted the cold hard reality of trying to compete in the SPFL Premiership on a shoestring and a with squad decimated from last season by the ill-advised summer transfer antics of his short-lived predecessor Alan Stubbs.

This latest defeat keeps the Buddies bottom only a point behind Dundee who lost 1-0 at home to Motherwell. The bottom three are now trapped in a little min-relegation league of their own with ‘Well now 13 points clear of them in 9th spot and looking up the table after two back to back league wins.

Never a dull moment in the good old SPFL.

 

Scottish Cup weekend review: Celtic 3-0 Airdrie, Auchinleck shock Ayr and the curse of Jimmy Bell.

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As Celtic continued their charge for the mythical treble-treble and a record third consecutive Scottish Cup we welcomed the team once named Airdrie Utd before being re-Christened Airdrieonians – in tribute to the team that were liquidated back in 2002 – to Celtic Park for the unusual kick-off time of 5.15pm on Saturday night as Premier Sports finally began their new coverage of the Scottish Cup.

It was, of course, all meant to start at the luxurious surroundings of Cowdenbeath’s Central Park the night before but Rangers kitman, the infamous Jimmy Bell put paid to that as the game was called off due to a frozen pitch allegedly at wee Jimmy’s instance. Well, that’s what Donald Findlay QC claims anyway.

Getting back to Celtic and it was as expected pretty easy-peasy as we coasted home to a 3-0 victory. Having missed a penalty and an open goal in the first half Scott Sinclair tapped in on 37 minutes to give us the lead. At the other end just before halftime keeper, Scott Bain made an incredible five saves in a row and all within the space of about seven seconds too.

In the second half, Celtic laid siege to the Airdrie goal with Sinclair tapping in a second, then was denied his hat-trick after being adjudged as offside despite two opposition defenders clearly playing him on.

Substitute Timothy Weah came on for his debut and after being fed through from Dedryk Boyata finished beautifully to make it 3-0. Another debutant Olly Burke missed a header late on that he really should have buried but that aside I thought he looked pretty good showing some nice touches. Both players injected energy and enthusiasm into the side and look like positive additions.

Over the piece, it was three going on seven and the visitors did well to keep the score down.

Considering the kick off time and lowly opposition getting a crowd of just under 30,000 inside Celtic Park for the tie was pretty impressive and the pubs were definitely rammed to boot. What is all that about January being a dead month when everyone is skint and off the booze? Not around these parts anyway.

Off the pitch, Airdrie’s lovely Section B fans showed up and after nearly being overrun by the Green Brigade outside the ground before the police arrived to save them, they were escorted into the stadium where they serenaded the home support with some classic sectarian anthems and catcalls for 90 minutes.  Apparently, the Section B-boys were all ramped up by the rumoured attendance at the game of their man crush Tommy Robinson though in the end he never made it. Wise call Tommy.

In other matches, BBC 1 decided to give live television coverage of the all Ayrshire battle between Ayr Utd and Junior side Auchinleck Talbot. I get the romance of the cup and all that but this was some pretty desperate early Saturday afternoon viewing with Ian McCall’s men – who are somehow in the chase for promotion to the Premiership – looking simply woeful without the services of goal machine Lawrence Shankland up front.

The game was dire on a grey and cold day with the only highlight being one of the Talbot players rattling the upstairs window of a house behind the Ayr goal in the second half. Though in fairness the headed goal by former Ayr defender Craig McCracken on 78 minutes was well executed leaving the Ayr fans behind the aforementioned goal with their big union jack flag absolutely gutted.

Aberdeen somehow contrived to draw at home with Stenhousemuir, who currently sit bottom of League 1 and will now replay in 10 days as will Dundee who continued their season-long woeful form with a 1-1 draw at home to Championship side Queen of the South.

St. Mirren were written off by Chick Young with 22 minutes to go probably due to being 2-0 and a man down at home to Alloa Athletic but that only served to galvanise them as they charged back to win 3-2 and Motherwell continued their bleak season as last year’s runners up exited to the cup 2-1 at home to Championship high flyers Ross County.

The rest of the 4th round results pretty much went as expected save League 1’s Raith Rovers flattening Dunfermline Athletic 3-0 in the Fife derby as Stevie Crawford’s reign as the new Pars manager got off to a ‘flyer’.

On Sunday Hearts went some way to avenging their 5-0 embarrassment away to Livingston five weeks ago as they beat the men from the Tony Macaroni arena 1-0 via a solitary Sean Clare strike at Tynecastle in another BBC televised live game and another forgettable affair.

As for the draw for the 5th round – or last 16 as they say in Europe –  we got St.Johnstone at home which you’d imagine should be pretty routine. Elsewhere there is a Highland derby, Auchinleck got Hearts at Tynecastle which will likely be live on the BBC and will also likely be awful,  St. Mirren will host Dundee Utd in a ‘Pick’Em’ encounter and barring the worst result in their history a week on Wednesday when they finally meet Cowdenbeath, Rangers should be playing Kilmarnock at Rugby Park in what will be the tie of the round between two teams currently only separated by one point in the league though of course, Killie could be miles ahead of them by the time the tie comes around on the weekend of the 9th/10th of February.

Europa League Preview: Celtic vs Red Bull Salzburg. Win, draw or bust!

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Tomorrow night Red Bull Salzburg visit Glasgow and we find ourselves in a tricky predicament.

The results fell for us just the way we wanted them two weeks ago on matchday five. We did what we needed to do in Trondheim and despite surprisingly starting as underdogs Salzburg maintained their perfect record in the group by seeing off Leipzig 1-0.

So going into matchday six we sit second top on 9 points whilst Leipzig are on 6. Salzburg are of course already far away and over the hills having qualified with their win at home against their Red Bull counterparts and sit on 15 points.

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More of this will be required.

In theory, it’s all worked out beautifully for us. We need just a draw and a solitary point to progress to the last 32. Of course, if Rosenborg can do the unthinkable and hold out for a draw somehow over in Germany then we won’t even need that and the 9 points will do us but let’s face it….that’s not going to happen. The Norwegians have been pretty hopeless thus far having lost all five group matches as well as conceding 13 goals and only scoring three. In their home fixture against Leipzig, they were spanked 3-1 and now literally having nothing to play for as they were eliminated by us a fortnight ago.

Added to that their season ended a week ago on Sunday when they sealed a historic treble by winning the Norwegian Cup final so safe to say their players have been on both party and holiday mode ever since. There’s even a chance Niklas Bendtner might already be back home in his native Denmark serving his 50 days house arrest already after he was convicted of clouting a taxi driver.

Leipzig are struggling of late having lost two of their last three league games including a surprise 3-0 hammering away to lowly Freiburg at the weekend when they played a full strength team. They’ve actually lost four out of their last six if you include their last two Europa League games and all of this comes after they had only lost only one of their previous 14 matches in all competitions and had gone 11 straight unbeaten against domestic opposition. But even with all that being said I still fully expect them to hammer an unmotivated and potentially unfit Rosenborg side and if there’s an early goal it could be an avalanche.

Our destiny is in our own hands and we really need to just focus on what we need to do. It’s a daunting task as Red Bull Salzburg are the form team of Europe. Managed by the impressive Marco Rose they sit top of the Austrian Bundesliga with a 14 point gap over second-placed LASK Linz and are unbeaten in an incredible 29 games in all competitions this term. That does include being eliminated on away goals over two legs against Red Star Belgrade in the Champions League qualifiers but either way, it’s pretty impressive. Slightly terrifying actually.

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Less of this is also required. 

I’m looking for crumbs of comfort here but having won their first 10 straight league matches they’ve actually drawn three of their last seven and were held to a 2-2 draw away at bottom side FC Admira Wacker Mödling on Saturday.

So there’s always that.

But then I remember they’ve also scored 75 goals in those 29 games. I mean we’ve been pretty free-scoring this season but even having played five games more – 21 domestic games plus 13 in Europe – more than them we’ve only scored 64 goals by comparison. They really are an awesome attacking team.

We are of course in pretty good form ourselves having only lost one of our last seventeen domestic games and haven’t lost any of our last twelve with ten wins. More than half of our goals have come in that time too so in actual fact our recent scoring exploits have matched the Austrians, domestically at least.

In the Europa League, they’ve scored three times the number of goals we have – 15 to 5 – which is telling but despite playing five games more than them we’ve actually only conceded 20 goals all season to their 22 in all competitions.

That last one begs the question should we defend and try and hold out for a point?

My swift reply would be ‘no’. Of course, we shouldn’t bomb forward and attack them relentlessly either. They are deadly on the counter attack as we found out over there and have pace throughout the team. Israeli international Moanes Dabour was scoring goals for fun this season but only has one in his last eight however his Japanese internationalist striking partner Takumi Minaminois has stepped into the void in that time scoring six and Fredrik Gulbrandsen, Xaver Schlager and 19-year-old Hannes Wolf have also all been in pretty hot form in front of goal of late too.

Even taking how good they are going forward and our impressive number of clean sheets this season into consideration the fact is we are just not built for all-out defence. And against elite European opposition, and make no mistake Salzburg are just that, we never keep a clean sheet so any notions of a backs to the wall job are fanciable at best.

This situation reminds me of when Maribor came calling in a Champions League play-off against Ronny Deila’s Celtic back in late August of 2014. We had, of course, gained a credible 1-1 away draw in the first leg and Callum McGregor’s goal would have been enough to take us through if we’d held them to a goalless draw at home. But a home crowd on a big European night at Celtic Park demands more than just holding out for scoreless draws and Deila’s side looked like they literally didn’t know whether to stick or twist all evening. In the end, we conceded late on and there was no way back for us.

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To quote the legendary Arthur Montford: “The faces tell it all.”

I’m stating the obvious here but our game plan on Thursday needs to try and get the balance right between defending when we need to and attacking when we can. It’s easier said than done and we may need to carry a bit of luck. In fact, the chances are we definitely will.

I’d definitely like to see the in-form James Forrest get at their veteran 33-year-old left back Andreas Ulmer as much as possible with both Odsonne Edouard and Scott Sinclair also needing to effectively exploit the space given up by the attack-minded right-back Stefan Lainer. At the same time, Kieran Tierney needs to replicate his awesome display against Leipzig and Christie, Benkovic, McGregor and Rogic all need to translate their incredible domestic form into a continental affair.

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How we’d all love to see this again. 

Salzburg, in theory, could write the game off. They’re already through and have a home tie on Sunday against third-placed SKN St. Pölten which is their final league game before a two months winter break. But with only two games before such a mammoth domestic break the chances are they are unlikely to rest anyone or to drop down through the gears as they have a chance to complete the first half of the season undefeated.

As much as we may be up against it maybe we should have faith in our own form and let’s not forget the Celtic Park factor. Far bigger and well-resourced sides than Salzburg have visited Celtic Park in the not too distant past and come away with only a draw or worse. We are also on an unbeaten home run of seven games in Europe with six wins which includes the notable scalps of Leipzig and Zenit St.Petersburg.

Fingers crossed for the right result and a memorable night that will exceed anything we’ve achieved since defeating Barcelona on that famous night back in 2012.

Ryan Christie & co….it’s over to you.

Oh and don’t forget the disco lights. They’re guaranteed not to disappoint.