Tag: Ryan Christie

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 5 – 0 Nõmme Kalju: Celtic rout Estonian champions in Champs League 2nd round qualifier.

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I said in my build-up piece to this game that Celtic should be turning this team over and effectively putting the tie to bed in the first leg and that’s pretty much what happened last night.

Celtic went with the unusual formation of 3-5-2 so for the first time in a long time we started with two men upfront something that Brendan Rodgers quite simply refused to entertain whilst in charge of the club.

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Celtic mean business.

This meant a first competitive start for Leigh Griffiths since November playing beside Odsonne Edouard which was refreshing to see though at the back £7 million summer signing Christopher Jullien continues to linger on the bench with Nir Bitton being preferred in beside Jozo Simunovic and Kristoffer Ajer.

I was actually quite surprised by our visitors in the first ten minutes or so. They seemed pretty energetic and combative and certainly gave the indication they weren’t there to lie down. But as the half progressed we got on the ball a lot more and proceeded to create chances as Nõmme increasingly began to pack their box in an attempt to keep us at bay.

Their keeper Pavel Londak made some impressive saves throughout the night beginning with pushing over the bar a stinging long-range drive from Ryan Christie. That set the tone for Chrisite who dominated proceedings as he continuously bore down on the opposition goal time after time.

Indeed it was one of his free-kick deliveries into the box that saw big Ajer head home the opener after 36 mins. And with the dam breached the floodgates well and truly opened as Celtic scored twice more before the break.

The first was a converted penalty by that man Christie after a needless handball in the box by Aleksandr Kulinits and the second was delivered by the returning Griiifths who pretty much made it a dream evening for himself with a trademark freekick that went up and over the Estonians wall giving the impressive Londak no chance.

The second half became a bit of a turkey shoot with Mikey Johnstone – who had come on for the unwell Bolingoli-Mbombo near the end of the first half – continuously cutting in from the left and another substitute Lewis Morgan – who replaced Leigh Griffiths on the hour mark – causing chaos down the right flank.

After several missed chances Ryan Christie finally put the tie to bed as he curled in a stunning finish on 65 minutes and Callum McGregor added the cherry on top with a fine low drive on the 77 mins mark.

So 5-0 and job done.

Olivier Ntcham also made his comeback to starting action replacing Christie on 71 mins – he actually got a pretty decent reception all things considered – and Leigh Griffiths received the man of the match award which was a nice touch though pretty dubious to say the least as Christie was the standout player all evening by some distance.

It could have been a lot more though in fairness Nõmme curved out a few decent opportunities themselves so no need to be greedy but if it wasn’t for Londak and some underwhelming finishing it really could have been double figures.

We’ll go over to Tallinn in five days for the second leg and let’s be honest it’s a bit of a formality now with the far sterner test of either Israeli champions Maccabi Tel Aviv or Romanian title holders CFR Cluj lying in wait in the 3rd round. Cluj currently hold a 1-0 lead going over to Israel for the second leg making Tel Aviv the slight favourites to progress. But as Montgomery said, “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

For now, we can bask in an impressive European performance on what was a fittingly balmy evening in the east end of Glasgow albeit against pretty underwhelming opposition though at this stage in the season it can be easy to get caught out by weaker teams who are already halfway through their domestic campaign.

Hopefully next week the stage will be set for Christopher Jullien to make his competitive debut and for Griffiths to get another runout and hopefully more goals. Ryan Christie really looks in the mood pretty much picking up from where he left off before injury curbed his season last April.

We also got to meet new signing Hatem Abd Elhamed at half time last night as he was introduced to the fans after completing his reported £1.7 million move from Celtic’s former Champions league qualifier opponents Hapoel Be’er Sheva.

A 28-year-old unknown utility man doesn’t exactly set the pulses racing but hopefully he proves the doubters, and there are plenty y of them, wrong and come good when he finally gets his opportunity.

That aside all reports seem to indicate that despite the Scottish press packs best efforts that Kieran Tierney will be going nowhere this summer as Arsenal and Napoli have failed to come up with requisite readies to actually buy him.

So more good news.

Let’s hope it stays that way.

St. Mirren 0-2 Celtic: The title moves a step closer and could be wrapped up this weekend.

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Celtic were far from at their best but still had far too much for lowly St.Mirren as we grabbed a comfortable win in Paisley last night.

There was a raft of changes from Sunday with Oli Burke and Timothy Weah starting up front and on 16 mins young Timo headed in off the underside of the bar. It was marginally over the line but over the line it was and the landsman called it right.

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Timo keeps it real.

It should have been two when James Kellermann needlessly handled later on in the half and we were awarded a penalty but Olivier Ntcham did that ludicrous two-second delay thing halfway through the run-up and ultimately flopped it as his poor effort was easily saved by Buddies keeper Vaclav Hladky.

In the second half, Scott Bain produced a great save from a curling long-range effort from Cody Cooke and the wonderfully named Duckens Nazon was also through on goal but fluffed his lines and the ball was eventually scooped up by Bain.

Substitutes Odsone Edouard and Ryan Christie entered the fray from the midway point of the half onwards and both impressed with one rampaging run from French Eddy leaving several opposition players in his wake and Christie crowning his return with a fine finish from the edge of the box on 85 mins.

Just after some banger in the away end behind the goal threw an actual banger on. This led to Hladky indicating he’d been hurt in some way as my mind was cast back to images of Rapid Vienna keeper Herbert Feurer feigning injury in that infamous Cup Winners Cup tie against us in 1985 when he claimed to have been struck by a bottle that hand landed 20 metres away in an effort to get the game abandoned. In this case, the banger landed about 10-15 feet away but I’m sure Hladky got a genuine fright. Indeed in replays of the goal celebrations, it appeared that scorer Ryan Christie did too.

It goes without saying that we just don’t need things like this. It adds nothing to the atmosphere and is done out of mischief and nothing else most likely by a ‘fan’ probably not even legally allowed to drink. Manager Neil Lennon looked thoroughly pissed off with it and so was just about every other Celtic fan I know. There is a ned element to our support. Of course, there always has been but they are becoming more brazen and visible. It’s something we must tackle. How you may ask? God knows. It certainly won’t be an easy or quick fix that is for sure. We aren’t the only one with this issue. All clubs have it. But I don’t really do whataboutery.

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Hladky in agony. He recovered though.

Opposition manager Oran Kearney has since claimed he considered withdrawing his players from the pitch after the incident. I’ll bet the home fans want him to do that most weeks. Oh and incidentally the BT microphones picked up the Buddies fans hymn sheet all night too most of which featured songs about paedophilia. A great wee ‘family club’ apparently.

Anyway, we now sit on 76 points, 13 ahead of Rangers with six games and 18 points to play for so the league could be won this weekend if we defeat Livingston at home on Saturday and they lose at Motherwell on Sunday. Personally, I’d prefer to win it on the pitch but I’ll still be cheering on Steelmen.

I was encouraged by the return to action of Ryan Christie and the enthusiasm of young Timo Weah who clearly hasn’t spat the dummy despite not featuring much since Neil Lennon’s arrival. On the other hand, though the continued decision to deploy Oli Burke up front is mystifying. His strength is running down the flanks at pace and not in tight situations surrounded by opposition players with impeccable close control required. The boy has a first touch like an old Artex ceiling and just isn’t a finisher.

As for results elsewhere last night the ‘Well lost out on a chance of top six football via a 3-1 loss at Pittodrie to Aberdeen who go equal on 55 points with third-placed Kilmarnock. Killie drew 0-0 with Hibs at Easter Road in a stinker whilst Hearts went down meekly to 3-0 at Ibrox to Rangers.

Dundee and Hamilton Accies both continued their awful season long form as both lost away to St.Johnstone and Livingston respectively. With their 1-0 home win, Livi officially secured their place in the top flight of the SPFL next season. So well done to them.

Shame only one thousand hardy souls turned out to see them.

Celtic 2-0 St.Johnstone: Six points clear one month into the new year plus transfer deadline day talk.

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In the last update on the blog, I wrote that it was three wins on the spin since the return from the winter break. Well, I guess we can make that four now as Celtic coasted home to a 2-0 win over St.Johnstone which makes it 12 goals scored and four clean sheets too.

At the top of the table we remain and now we’re six points clear with a superior goal difference as well. Not a bad eleven days if you ask me. Incredible to think we’ve already played four games in that time.

Celtic dominated the first half with Saints keeper Zander Clark making a wonderful save from a point-blank Scott Sinclair header. Later on, in the half,  Olly Burke produced a curling effort from the left-hand side of the box which zipped just past the far post. But that aside the visiting side kept it tight and remained encamped around their box for the whole 45 mins with only Rangers legend Michael O’Halloran looking any kind of a threat on the break.

At halftime, you started to wonder if it just might not be our night but five minutes after the restart any such fears were allayed when Callum McGregor had acres of space to advance towards the opposition box after being fed in from the right by Mikel Lustig and he unleashed a storming drive that gave Clark no chance and ended up in the bottom right corner to give the men in Hoops the lead.

A mere two mins later it got even better and the points were pretty much signed, sealed and delivered when the advancing Lustig again fed a ball in from the right, this time to the edge of the box where Ryan Christie left Saints captain Joe Shaughnessy for dead and proceeded to curl the ball spectacularly past Clark high into the far corner to make it 2-0 and more or less game over.

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It’s a beauty from Christie. 

Odsonne Edouard made his long-awaited comeback from the bench and almost scored before Clark made a wonderful save from McGregor minutes later. Then right at the end, Ricky Foster produced a blatant handball whilst sliding in the box to prevent a cross from James Forrest after the Celtic winger had played a cute one-two with Lustig but the referee and the linesman had already decided Celtic had scored enough for the evening so chose to pretend they didn’t see it.

So that was that. As comfortable as you like with the Celt’s keeper Scott Bain a virtual spectator.

That’s our 13th win in our last 17 league games now, 16th win in 20 domestic games and our 12th win in 12 home league games this season.

We now visit McDiarmid Park on Sunday to face the same opposition again and let’s hope for more of the same or better still a repeat of the 6-0 hammering we dished out to them back in early October. Hard to believe that’s four months ago already. I remember it well. It was pretty much the performance that kick-started our season after a, to say the least, tepid start.

Tomorrow is, of course, the final day of the transfer window. By Celtic’s standards, it’s been a pretty active January with most of our business done uncharacteristically early via the signing of striker Vakoun Issouf Bayo and the loan deals for attackers Timothy Weah and Olly Burke. There were of course hopes of a right back arriving though rumoured interest in Atalanta’s Belgium internationalist Timothy Castagne was kiboshed by a price tag of somewhere in the region of £10 million.

Scott McKenna was also linked with some social media sources even going as far as to proclaim that a £6.5 million fee with Aberdeen had been agreed and that the big centre back was en route via a taxi all the way from Dubai. It was of course baseless. Aberdeen have got the player tied up until 2023 and have already said they think they can get an eight-figure fee from a club down south this summer. Being that they are in rude financial health these days they are under no pressure to sell and can name their price. That price is likely to be too rich for our blood especially when you consider that McKenna is far from the finished article.

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Perhaps the closest Scott McKenna will ever get to wearing a Celtic jersey.

The latest name to be linked is Borussia Dortmund’s Jeremy Toljan, a right back who made 27 appearances for the current Bundesliga league leaders last season but so far none this term. Brendan was quick to dampen any hopes though prematch saying that there’s nothing in it.

Who knows what will materialise over the next 24 hrs.  But with Filipe Benkovic out until at least March suddenly central defence is a concern again.

That aside defender Jack Hendry and midfielder Lewis Morgan continue to be linked with loan moves away for the rest of the season. Considering the improvement we’ve seen in Ryan Christie since his return from a loan stint at Aberdeen I’d say such moves would be good for both young players. It would also trim a very bloated squad that at his way too much dead wood with Gamboa, Hayes, Eboue and Mulumbu other worthy candidates for the dispatch box. As for Marvin Compper, well, they’ll need to carry him out.

All of this and more will be answered in the coming hours. Of course, it could be that nothing happens at all.

As is always the case with a Celtic transfer deadline day………….expect the worst…..hope for the best.

 

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.