Just to start off and it’s been confirmed that David Turnbull has joined the club today for a fee of around £3 million which is some good news as he’s a talented player who the club have been after for some time.
I’ll profile our new signing and preview our next league game which will ironically be against Turnbull’s former employers Motherwell on Sunday with a separate piece tomorrow.
For now all of the focus has to be about last night and calamity is the only word you can use to describe it.
Around about 5pm yesterday it emerged online that Odsonne Edouard was injured and Celtic would be going with no strikers for their Champions League 2nd qualifying round tie with Hungarian champions Ferencvaros.
It seemed like déjà vu considering that manager Neil Lennon throw the bizarre curveball selection decision to play Callum McGregor at left back in the 3rd round qualifying match against Cluj this time last year.
We lost that match 4-3 and were dumped of the Champions League for the second successive year at the third round qualifying stage.
This time around we’ve exited a round earlier as once again Neil Lennon perplexed everyone by playing Ryan Christie up front whilst three strikers sat on the bench.
It’s no surprise then that with no recognised forward we created a plethora of chances all night yet could only score one goal which was in itself a lucky deflection.
In total Celtic dominated 71% of the ball and had 28 shots at goal with nine on target compared to the visitors three shots on target which resulted in two goals.
The first of those goals came on seven mins when David Sigér was given the freedom of Celtic Park to line-up a 20 yard pile-driver which he buried in the bottom right hand corner of Vasilios Barkas’s net.
Scott Brown should have closed him down but the Celtic captain has looked like a shadow of his former self so far this season and by the time the penny had dropped to do it, it was already too late and the shot was goal bound.
As the half progressed the Hungarian title holders who looked like a tidy well organised side but not much else began to wilt under both the pressure and their lack of conditioning which is likely as a result of only having played two competitive games so far this season.
We created several chances as we dominated the ball in and around their box but couldn’t find the killer touch.
Mmmmmmmm. I wonder why that was.
Eight minutes into the second half the dam finally broke when a speculative Christie effort from the edge of the box defected off of Adnan Kovacevic’s head and gave keeper Denes Dibusz no chance.
It was a slice of luck but one Celtic undoubtedly deserved considering their domination.
From there on out Celtic were profligate in front of goal though Ntcham was desperately unlucky to see an effort touched onto the underside of the crossbar from Dibusz and Elyounoussi had the ball in the net with a lovely chipped finish though it was ruled offside.
Replays showed it wasn’t but there’s no VAR in place as UEFA don’t deem these early rounds important enough for it.
Then on 75 mins a speculative punt up the park found its way to Tokmac Nguen who ran about 40 yards tracked by Elhamed who forgot to actually challenge him and he finished neatly past Barkas to make it 2-1.
Tokmac was the dangerman I’d identified before kickoff due to the fact he’d scored all three goals for his club this season. Clearly I’d done more homework than the Celtic coaching staff though. You can make that four goals now.
Finally Lennon threw a striker on with Ajeti at the 77 mins mark but it was too late and Celtic are out of the Champions League again with the latest of what seems like a never ending series of home calamities in Europe.
His justification that Ajeti is not fully fit may be true but you can’t tell me he couldn’t have given us at least 45 mins which shouldn’t be an issue with the new six subs rule in place for this season.
He’s also pretty much confirmed that he doesn’t rate Polish striker Patryk Klimala who was benched for the whole game once again.
I mean if you’re preferring a midfielder to a striker for a lone striking position what sort of message does that send?
Why he even bothered to put a third striker in young Cameron Harper on the bench just adds insult to injury.
So that’s that for another season and onto the Europa League qualification we go.
The first round of that is played tonight and the second round is next week.
Celtic will enter at the third round stage with the draw being made next Tuesday.
Of course the Europa League is much more our level these days and just like with Cluj last season don’t be surprised to see Ferencvaros pitch up at Celtic Park once more if we do progress as I think it’s highly unlikely they’ll get to the Champions League group stages.
Depending on the draw I’d actually be pretty surprised if they go much further than the next round to be honest.
After the game the coverage from Celtic TV was in full on Pravda mode as host Gerry McCulloch tried to dress it up as just one of those nights.
Bollocks it is Gerry.
We’ve seen this movie twice before in the space of twelve months already versus Cluj and Copenhagen.
Under Neil Lennon Celtic don’t appear to learn their lessons in Europe and last night was a harsh reminder as we were dumped out by completely inferior opposition who just got the basics right something we often appear incapable of.
To make matters worse Lennon unceremoniously pretty much threw Elhamed and to an extent the entire first team under the bus in the post match interviews where he claimed that several players are not showing enough commitment and that indeed some don’t even want to be a the club.
That’s just excuses though as a blind man could see that last night the game was pretty much lost when the first team selection emerged a few hours before kick-off.
We desperately need a no nonsense defender in and hopefully the Shane Duffy deal still happens.
Aside from that rumour are also intensifying about the future of Odsonne Edouard.
Lose him and the whole season could turn into a calamity.
But what it comes down to is our manager needs to stop trying to be a smart arse and it would help him if he just put players in their natural positions.
....Always A Tim! 