Well, I think it’s pretty safe to say that we’re back to being in fine fettle now.
Domestically at least.
A rampant Celtic tore hapless Dundee apart on Halloween with four goals in the first half all started by a beautiful strike from star man Tom Rogic on the 20 minute mark followed by a penalty conversion from Scott Sinclair just after the half hour, James Forrest finishing off a sublime passing move with a neat finish on 38mins and then Odsonne Edouard tapping in the fourth just before the half-time whistle blew after some fine wing play and a cut back from Forrest.
The second half saw Celtic predictably drop down a few gears whilst Dundee put on their best guiser masks and started hammer throwing as they committed to keeping the score down.
That didn’t stop Ryan Christie bursting through on goal to finish expertly on 48 mins and Kieran Tierney should have made it six when he placed it past the post when it seemed easier to score after a fine low cross to the back post by substitute Daniel Arzani.
Arzani wishes the Celtic support a hello and a goodbye.Â
Incidentally, we finally got a glimpse of the highly touted Man City loanee Arzani who looked a little off the pace but still pretty tasty all before he went down in a heap on 78 mins before being taken off on a stretcher. Sadly early reports indicate ligament damage and that he’ll be out for nine months so safe to say we won’t be seeing him again. Thanks for the memories, Daniel. We’ll always have Dens.
The performance was a continuation from what we’ve been seeing from the Hoops since the mauling of St.Johnstone at McDiarmid Park nearly four weeks ago and saw us rack up our 18th goal in four domestic games.
Yes, Dundee are pretty much on their arse at the moment with their shellshocked new manager Jim McIntyre probably wondering what the hell he’s has got himself into and gave nothing going forward all night incredibly registering no shots on goal. But Celtic still put them to the sword in impressive fashion none the less.
Who’d be Jim?
Let’s hope we can continue this on to our top of the table clash with Hearts on Saturday with victory seeing us close the gap to 1 point with a game in hand over the jam tarts.
Over at Tynecastle last night they played out an eventful 0-0 draw with city rivals Hibs that saw their keeper smacked in the chops from a Hibs fan – no way it was a punch but still was uncalled for – and Neil Lennon got coined by one of Hearts more impassioned supporters who our ex-manager would now like to meet for a friendly one to one over a cup of tea or words to that effect.
Elsewhere crisis continued to envelop Rangers as they dropped points to Kilmarnock – who in fairness are no mugs these days as we found out to our own detriment earlier in the season – just as their financial figures were released revealing trading losses of over ÂŁ14 million to the year ending June 30th. Interesting that they decided to release the figures just before a home game kicked off. It’s almost as if they are trying to divert attention. Still, Dave King is very confident things are moving in the right direction and he looks pretty trustworthy.
I’m told that Europea League qualification will sort all things financial out. Strange how it’s been painted as financial salvation over in Govan yet our elimination from the Champions League and subsequent qualification for the very same Europa League has been painted as a near financial disaster. Funny that.
Anyway, it’s all going well on the good ship Celtic for the moment and there can be no doubt that the team has their swagger back.
Let’s hope the re-established domestic dominance can be translated into a positive European result in one weeks times as we desperately need to beat Red Bull Leipzig at Celtic Park next Thursday.
Anything but victory effectively eliminates us and defeat combined with Salzburg winning in Norway would confirm it.
I was disappointed we prioritised the weekend’s cup semi-final against Hearts over last Thursday nights away game against the Germans.
Europe for me is always where good Celtic teams and managers really prove their worth and by and large in the past three seasons we’ve been found wanting.
I guess I can delve a bit deeper into that quandary next week so for now, let’s just enjoy our continued return to form whilst all of our rivals faltered on Halloween night.
A depleted Celtic side were easily dismissed by a more or less second string Red Bull Leipzig.
For 30 mins Celtic looked okay and Odsonne Edouard nearly even scored but thereafter it was the usual as we were battered senseless in the last 15 mins of the half conceding two goals and it could have been more.
In the second half, Celtic played to keep the score down looking passive and content with it staying at two-zip. Leipzig accommodated us by and large barring a Konrad Laimer run where he skinned half of our team whilst running from midfield before shooting just past the post and a moment when Augustin cracked a long-range shot off of the same stick.
Ntcham broke through on goal late and if he’d passed to his right to McGregor it was a certain goal but he went for glory and cannoned it off the keeper’s legs. Even if it had gone in there is little to no chance that we’d have equalised as the Germans would have just switched on again.
Right from the off all looked lost as we were without the suspended James Forrest, injured Scott Brown and in the days leading up to the match, Tom Rogic and Filipe Benkovic were also ruled out. Added to that Leigh Griffiths still isn’t available and Mikel Lustig was deemed not fit enough to start.
This meant starts for forgotten men Cristian Gamboa and Eboue Kouassi as well as the rarely seen Lewis Morgan and serial bench warmer Ryan Christie.
All that combined with our long-standing, pretty atrocious away record on the content meant that our chances were pretty much slim and none and slim had just left town.
Leipzig themselves were without their injured midfield playmaker Emil Forsberg as well as star striking duo Timo Werner and Yussuf Poulsen who were rested on the bench but still had far more firepower on the pitch.
Of course, we helped them with an awful attempt at a clearance from Kouassi resulting in a fresh air miss so bad it also confused Boyata whose own attempt also missed and it fell to Matheus Cunha who couldn’t believe how much time he had to control it and lash it home.
The second saw Marcelo Saracchi dart down the wing after a wild suicide sliding tackle from Gamboa was skipped over with ease and his resulting cross saw another woeful attempt by Kouassi to clear once again befuddle Boyata and resulted in Bruma lashing it home.
A familiar sight on the continent as our players trudge back to the centre circle after conceding another goal.Â
It really was comical stuff. Kouassi had a blinder in just how bad he was though incredibly John Hartson labelled him as one of our better players at halftime. I actually kept an eye on him and he was passive throughout with his shoulders dipped and looked lost. Basically a carbon copy of his display earlier in the season against Hearts.
Boyata was also awful in the centre of defence. In the second half, he needlessly gave the ball away on numerous occasions, something he’s well known for, and was left in the wake of the rampaging Laimer when he nearly scored which saw a pretty pathetic attempt by Boyata to stop him.
That aside just about everyone in a Celtic jersey struggled with McGregor, in particular, going missing for much of the game.
It’s really all we’ve come to expect away in Europe under Brendan. Nothing changes tactically and his record now reads 4 wins from 19 away games with 10 defeats and an incredible 38 goals conceded.
We can’t keep a clean sheet away from home against anything resembling quality from the continent and outside of Edouard don’t to appear to have much of a goal threat on the road either.
The loss of some of our best players was definitely a factor and was felt sorely but it somewhat negated by Leipzig resting so many of their top performers yet still looking streets ahead.
The mistakes at the back happen time and again and the players brought in are clearly not good enough. Not only that but most are also Brendan’s signings.
Tactically we are way too open and the moment we concede panic sets in and our shape collapses.
Leipzig visit Glasgow in a fortnight and it literally is a must-win game. If we lose and Salzburg win in Norway as expected then we are out. That’s right we’ll be out with two games still to go from Europe’s second-tier competition. That’s the same competition where Rangers have gone unbeaten in 11 straight games so there really are no excuses.
Inevitably in the fallout, more rumours have surfaced about Brendan’s relationship with the board which seems to be par for the course after we record a negative result.
One of the main fuels to the fire was this tweet by BBC correspondent and self-confessed Rangers fanatic Richard Wilson:
If there’s any truth in this then next week should be interesting. I mean what else could ‘serious upheaval’ mean other than heads rolling and whose heads would they be?
Thes semi-final of the League Cup on Sunday against Hearts now takes on even more importance as a negative result will likely lead to further rumours of things coming to a head.
There seems to be an attitude prevalent amongst Celtic fans that Sunday was the priority which I found a bit incredible considering Europe is where we want to be but maybe shows the mentality that has crept in in recent years. That being that Europe is perceived as a pipe dream where making any significant progress is fanciable and we are almost willing fodder for the big clubs.
Anyway onto Hampden we go and on and off the pitch I think we can expect some fireworks in the coming days. Should be interesting at least.
So on Thursday night, we travel to Germany and Leipzig to be precise.
There we will be playing literally the most unpopular team in the country.
Why you may ask when Bayern Munich have been sweeping all before them for years now without any significant resistance?
Well Bayern, unlike our hosts have a real history unlike Leipzig, a club literally manufactured by the Austrian based soft drinks company Red Bull in 2009 after they purchased fifth tier German side SSV Markranstädt – or their licenses at least, it’s all a little confusing as a team called SSV Markranstädt continued to operate as an affiliate of the new entity – and from there the team we now know as RasenBallsport Leipzig e.V., was born and play in, you guessed it, the Red Bull Arena.
Most clubs in Germany are of course still primarily fan owned with the sale of significant never mind controlling share interests to large corporations or wealthy individuals generally discouraged as not being in sync with the culture of fan representation on club boards. It’s known as the 50+1 ownership rule and has led to Borussia Dortmund having 15,000 members. RB Leipzig, on the other hand, has just 17 and their ability to circumnavigate the rules has unsurprisingly led to other clubs, Bayern being chief amongst them, to call for the rule to be scrapped so that significant investment can be brought in.
The 50+ 1 rule states that: “No single person or entity may possess more than 49% of the voting rights in a German club’s professional football division, preventing the sale of a majority stake to outside investors, protecting clubs from irresponsible owners and maintaining the democratic nature of fan-owned German clubs.”
Despite this a quarter of Bundesliga clubs currently don’t follow the 50+1 rule to the letter, while some clubs have been granted certain exemptions. However, Leipzig really is the black sheep as they have pretty much discarded the rule altogether.
For more info on all of this, I’ve embedded a video at the bottom of the page featuring a short documentary on RasenBallsport Leipzig’s controversial origins from Copa90.
In the nine seasons since Red Bull created their own footballing Frankenstein, they have won the fifth tier German league – aka NOFV-Oberliga SĂĽd- in their maiden season and then spent two seasons in the fourth tier Regionalliga Nord failing to gain promotion in each one with fourth and third place finishes respectively.
It then moved to another regional fourth-tier league the Regionalliga Nordost – God only knows why – which it won with an undefeated campaign in 2012-2013, hence promotion to 3. Liga which you won’t be surprised to hear is the third tier of German football.
It finished runners-up in its first season there leading to promotion to 2. Bundesliga and the top flight was now in sight.
The 2014-15 season saw them finish only fifth but they bounced back the following term to finish runners-up and with that, they had finally gained promotion to the hallowed Bundesliga within seven seasons, one less than Red Bull had originally targeted when they launched the new club back in 2009.
Much to every other German supporter’s chagrin outside of their own, they made quite the impact in their first top-flight season spectacularly finishing runners-up to runaway leaders Bayern whom they had now replaced as the nations most loathed footballing entity due to their somewhat artificial beginnings.
Last season was a bit of a reality check for them though as they dropped to sixth in the division however this was of course still enough to deliver them a Europa League place.
And now to this season which is of course what concerns us the most.
They are managed by veteran Ralf Rangnick who’s been in the coaching game for over 30 years, all of which has been spent in his native Germany.
He actually managed them before back in 2015/16 when they gained promotion to the Bundesliga but was replaced by Ralph HasenhĂĽttl despite this success but got his own back in May of this year when HasenhĂĽttl left and now Ralf with an ‘f’ is back in the big chair.
That’s Ralf.Â
They were hammered 4-1 at the Westfalen by Borussia Dortmund on Matchday One of the new season but have bounced back strongly with an undefeated run of seven games featuring four wins and three draws scoring fifteen – through six of them came in a 6-0 rout of FC NĂĽrnberg – and conceding just four in the process and sit fifth in the division on 15 points.
In the Europa League, they have navigated through three rounds defeating Swedes BK Häcken 4-1 on aggregate, Romania’s CS Universitatea Craiova 4-2 over the two legs and in the playoff round they overcame Ukraine’s FC Zorya Luhansk 3-2 on aggregate.
Interestingly though they were undefeated in the qualifiers they never won a game on the road with three wins at home and three draws away. That gives us some hope for the home match but not much for Thursday night.
They were turned over 3-2 at home in the group match opener by their namesake Red Bull Salzburg.
2-0 down at one point they did come back to equal things up but fell to a late Fredrik Gulbrandsen strike for the visitors.
But Salzburg, as we know, are a team in incredible form this season having claimed 16 wins from 19 matches so far with no defeats in all competitions and 48 goals scored in the process so no shame in a tight 89th-minute loss to them.
We, of course, showed up pretty well against them in the opening 45 mins before being bulldozed in the second half.
Last time out in Europe Leipzig romped to a 3-1 win in Trondheim against Rosenborg, a team who as we experienced ourselves in the Champions League qualifiers are no slouches at home.
Anyway, aside from Leipzig’s form they also made some notable moves in the transfer market this summer. And it’ll be of no surprise to hear that like so many clubs that we come up against in Europe now they are on a totally different level from us financially.
This summer alone they spent €43 million on three players, defenders Marcelo Saracchi and Nordi Mukiele as well as striker Matheus Cunha. All are under 21 so they are definitely targetting youth with resale value, a similar policy to our own.
Uruguyuan Saracchi arrived from River Plate, Mukiele from Montpellier – where he’d made 50 league appearances in two seasons – and Brazilian Cunha from Swiss side FC Sion where he scored 10 league goals in 29 games last season.
They did, however, rake in €72.8 million primarily from the sale of star man Naby Keita to Liverpool (€60 million) along with Brazilian full-back Bernardo to Brighton for €10 million.
Another player they released was Israeli forward Omer Damari. He was a goal machine at club level in his native Israel but couldn’t hit a barn door in Germany failing to score once in his three-year stay there.
Their main men in the wake of the departure of Keita are Austrian internationalist Marcel Sabitzer who has weighed in with 23 goals from 106 games in midfield and the striking partnership of Danish internationalist Yussuf Poulsen and the star of the team, German internationalist striker Timo Werner.
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Poulsen and Werner have 91 goals between them in the Red Bull colours as well as 50 international caps with Poulsen hitting the net six times already this season and Werner bagging four.
The 22-year-old Werner though is bound for bigger things and has struck 21 goals in each of the last two seasons. It’s actually a testament to Leipzig’s financial backing that they have been able to hold onto him for so long in the face of fierce competition for his signature.
One bit of bright news is that Swedish internationalist Emil Forsberg, who generally pulls the strings from the midfield, has been ruled out with a groin strain but one player does not a team make and despite his absence they still have pretty intimidating five-pronged threat of the aforementioned Augustin, Cunha, Poulsen, Werner and 23-year-old Portuguese winger Bruma who is also a bit tasty on his day.
I mean this would be a tough ask even on home turf but away it looks really difficult. Like, really, really difficult. Just our luck we have two teams in our group that just happen to be two of the form teams on the content right now.
We are of course inform ourselves hitting 10 in two matches but this is a huge jump in opposition and despite the likes of Forrest, Rogic, McGregor and Edouard currently being on fire I don’t think it would be smart to go toe to toe with them especially in their own stadium. Something similar to what we produced in the first 45 mins away to Salzburg but this time maintained for the full 90 mins will be required which seems more feasible with Filipe Benkovic back in for the hapless Jack Hendry.
Our away form in Europe is, of course, feeble to the point of being shockingly bad and I guess there’s no point in going over all of that again.
I felt similarly pessimistic for our away tie against another German side Borussia Mönchengladbach almost exactly two years ago and that turned out okay with an unexpected 1-1 draw which could have been even better if Callum McGregor had held his nerve with a gilt-edged chance in the dying embers.
Maybe Thursday evening will be the start of a bright new beginning for us on the road in the continent. I mean stranger things have happened. Right?
As predicted Celtic were pretty emphatically swept aside by Red Bull Salzburg in the Red Bull Arena last night.
Like most, I had approached the game with little to no belief that we could get something due to a combination of our opponent’s red-hot form and our own indifferent performances thus far this season. That plus the fact our record away in Europe is generally God awful.
So I was pretty shocked when after about 90 seconds Odsonne Edouard got the better of Andre Romalho and then finished expertly after a hopeful ball over the top from McGregor.
French Eddy wheels away.
Thereafter we actually played the game pretty well with a good defensive shape and looked pretty tasty at times on the break.
We reduced Salzburg to some speculative shots from distance and right before half-time we looked to have increased our lead after another stampeding run at their goal from Edouard ended up with the same player scoring again after Salzburg keeper Alexander Walke saved well from a James Forrest effort but alas French Eddy had strayed offside.
Then came the second half and well…………….as the title alluded to we completely capitulated.
Salzburg went through the gears and we got deeper and deeper with Craig Gordon saving well from Dabbur and you hoped we had weathered the storm but then bang on 55 mins the same man was left standing alone in the box and with Jack Hendry marking thin air five yeards away he received a cutback from Hannes Wolf and swept it home for the equaliser.
From then on out there was only one team in it and wave after wave of attack resulted in a second Salzburg goal as Japanese internationalist Minamino almost waked in with Boyata missing wildly with a sliding challenge and Hendry again taken to the cleaners.
An inevitable third came when Dabbur swept home a penalty after Forrest was adjudged to have taken down Andreas Ulmer with 18 mins to go. It looked harsh, to be honest, but what the hell Forrest was doing in that position in the first place is anyone’s guess and it very much was a winger’s tackle.
Forrest sees red.
Substitute Junuzovicat smacked one off the post late on and Celtic provided little to nothing going forward in the whole of the second half so it was a relief to hear the final whistle.Â
Performance wise Leigh Griffiths was an empty jersey all night, Ntcham was absolutely wretched, Lustig continues to add weight o the belief that he is a spent force and Hendry as previously stated is lost in a Celtic jersey.
We desperately need Benkovic back in defence and sorely missed both Rogic and Brown, the latter especially in the second half as the team looked absolutely rudderless.
Yes, we didn’t expect a win or even a draw and yes Salzburg now remain undefeated at home since November 2016 in all competitions – which included rattling Lazio 4-1 in the quarter-finals of this very competition last season – so on the face of it, there is no disgrace.
But they were nowhere near the level of the Champions League teams we’ve faced in recent years ie: Barca, PSG, Bayern Munich etc yet in the second half we folded against them in almost identical fashion.
Brendan’s record in European football at the club is pretty poor, to say the least.
It currently stands at 14 wins from 36 matches for a 39% win percentage with 14 losses and 8 draws. In those 36 matches we’ve conceded 55 goals and scored 54 but it’s away from home where it really comes eye-watering.
You see on the road that was our 18th away tie under Brendan last night of which we’ve won four with five draws and nine defeats scoring 18 and conceding a pretty remarkable 36 so an average of two a game.
Too often we looked disjointed, confused and hopeless at the back and it’s been going on for three seasons now with no end in sight.
Our next two Europa League games are a doubleheader against RB Leipzig with the first game two weeks next Thursday so three weeks to try and get the likes of Benkovic, Rogic and Brown back and try and find some form as well as an actually feasible gameplan for playing away in Europe.
And what awaits us is not just the best team in the country by some distance but also arguably the form team of all of European football.
Yes, that is how daunting the task that awaits us is.
Their form so far this season has been incredible having claimed 13 wins from 15 matches with no defeats in all competitions and 42 goals scored in the process so yeah…………..a tough one.
Firstly some history on the club and though they have actually existed since 1933 they were taken over by Austrian soft drinks manufacturer Red Bull as far back as 2005 and subsequently renamed as Red Bull Salzburg.
A name change was no stranger to them as they had been rebranded several times before in their history due to various sponsorship deals with their traditional name being SV Austria Salzburg.
They had also been pretty successful pre-Red Bull having won the league three times in the 90’s when known as Casino Salzburg but things have really taken off since being snapped up by everyone’s second or third favourite energy drink.
Indeed since then, they have captured nine Austrian Bundesliga titles and five Austrian Cups. The current Austrian league champions they have won the last five championships in a row and look odds-on for a sixth straight title.
Of course, we played them in this very competition only four short years ago and actually did quite well against them nicking a 2-2 draw – anyone remember the sensational Mubarak WakasoSmail Prevljak??? No? – on their patch and then going down 3-1 at home though we were unlucky to not get something that night.
Officially after company restructuring Red Bull are just the sponsor now so that both they and RasenBallsport Leipzig, also owned by Red Bull, could both play in continental competition at the same time – last years Champions League and this seasons Europa – so as to satisfy UEFA’s competition laws but there is no doubt who is still financing them as the chocolate fireguard that is UEFA sits idly by.
To go along with their imperious domestic form in Europe, they have been no slouch either and made last season’s UEFA Europa League semi-final where they lost out 3-2 on aggregate to eventual runners-up Olympic Marseille. Along the way, they eliminated Real Sociedad, Borussia Dortmund and Lazio.
Their home ground is the imaginatively titled Red Bull Arena in the picturesque setting of Wals-Siezenheim just outside Salzburg. Built in 2003 and renovated two years later by the new owners it holds just under 32,000.
Their manager is the 42-year-old German Marco Rose who gained the hot seat in the summer of 2017 – the tenth manager since Red Bull took over – and has suffered only six defeats in 74 competitive games. His previous experience was mainly with the Salzburg youth teams where he enjoyed incredible success including winning the Europa Youth League title in 2017 after beating Manchester City, Atletico Madrid and Barcelona en route to the final.
The men to watch out for are numerous but I’ll stick to the strikers for now.
Israeli internationalist Moanes Dabour scored 29 goals in 52 games last season whilst his Japanese internationalist strike partner Takumi Minamino has 46 goals in 145 games in total for them.
Dabour already has 13 goals so far this season so safe to say he’s pretty tasty and Norwegian internationalist striker Fredrik Gulbrandsen popped up with a late winner against Leipzig last time out in the Europa League. There’s also Bosnian internationalist marksman Smail Prevljak who has six goals in nine games this term.
No doubting they have firepower then but the midfield and defence are packed with talent too and that’s even considering they lost two of their best players in the summer, defender Duje Ćaleta-Car to Marseille for €19 million and influential midfielder Valon Berisha for €7.5 million to Lazio.
Other players to be mindful of are Mali internationals Amadou Haidara and Diadie Samassekou as well as Austrian internationalist Xaver Schlager. All are 22 or under, products of the youth academy and play in their pretty relentlessly attacking midfield.
They also added a bit of steel with veteran Austrian midfielder Zlatko Junuzović joining in the summer after he has spent six years with Werder Bremner where he played over 200 games to go with his international 55 caps.
Dabour aka ‘Goal Machine.’
An exciting and dynamic team they play a preferred 4-4-2 formation with a diamond midfield, a compact defence and a high and organised press leading to comparisons with Jurgen Klopp’s exciting style that has been deployed at both Borussia Dortmund and now Liverpool.
This season they have won nine straight league matches and are seven points clear at the top as well as winning two cup matches.
Their most recent outing saw them pummel Wolfsberger AC 4-1 in front of what looked like a car park at the back of an athletics track. Highlights if you’re interested are at the bottom. And we complain about Hamilton Accies stadium.
They have also gone unbeaten in Europe in five games beating KF Shkëndija, the Champions of Macedonia, 4-1 on aggregate in the Champions League qualifiers before going out on away goals to Red Star Belgrade of Serbia in the play-off round after a 2-2 home draw following on from a 0-0 away result. They actually threw that one away having been 2-0 up after 48 mins only to concede two goals in 60 second midway through the second half.
In their Europa League group opener, they defeated Leipzig 3-2 winning it in the 89th minute having thrown away another two-goal lead in the second half.
So what of our chances?
Realistically slim and none.
We’ve won twice in our last nine away games in Europe suffering five defeats and conceding 20 goals in the process. Though we have scored 12 goals ourselves it’s just that when we do we tend to concede far more goals up at the other end of the pitch.
If you go further back the grimmer it becomes and even domestically this season we are struggling on the road having not won a league game away in three attempts and only won one on the road out of four in the continent as well.
It will be interesting to see a team have a real go at us right enough as this season we have dominated possession whilst up against teams that have by and large played 11 men behind the ball and asked us to break them down. On their home patch, in particular, expect RB Salzburg to come out of the traps fast with a high tempo game. Our passing obsession could in theory totally derail that and frustrate them though it could equally collapse in the face of their likely furious pressing.
I really think it is a game for Rogic to make an impact with his running on the break from midfield and Brown will have to play out of his skin to contain them in the opposite direction. Though in saying that every one of our players will have to play out of their skins going by the form book.
In theory, we should at least be able to compete and lets no pretend that Salzburg are on the level of what we came up against last season in Bayern and in particular PSG but still, history tells you that we shrink more often than not in foreign climbs no matter what the opposition and this particular team are confident, winning and basically are on fire so like I said before it is going to be tough and expectation levels for what is undoubtedly going to be the toughest game of the group will be low but hey at least we are getting the one we dreaded most out of the way first.
....Always A Tim! 