Ten years ago this morning we were celebrating what appeared to be the importance of a Momo Sylla goal two minutes from time to give Celtic a 3-1 first leg lead against FC Basel in the Champions League play-off round.
The previous season Celtic defeated a formidable sounding Ajax team at the same stage so when they were drawn against the Swiss team confidence was high. Two weeks later our record of poor results away from home in Europe’s top competition was further cemented as Basel gained an away goal advantage.
That failure worked out well for Martin O’Neill’s team who dropped to the Uefa Cup and progressed all the way to the Seville final but Neil Lennon will be aware that Helsingborgs carry no less a reputational threat to Celtic than Basel did a decade ago. Basel were not a better team than Celtic but a slow start to both games, and a missed penalty, cost us entry to the Champions League. We will need to be better prepared next week.
Paul Larkin’s latest book, Albert, Dougie and Win, is available to purchase from Lulu. The three-in-one book covers the days and events surrounding Celtic’s 1986 league win in From Albert, with Love, the SFA’s 2010 challenges in Dougie, Dougie, and the men who stopped 10 in Wim’s Tims. Fascinating stories written by one of the very best Celtic authors.
Remember to give me a shout if you would like to write an article for CQN Magazine, articles@cqnmagazine.co.uk.
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Any injury news?
Have we sold anyone yet?
Have we signed anyone yet?
Any fitba’ news?!
HH!!
Philbhoy-The blog’s a bit bruised, but will make a full recovery on any relevant Celtic news.
Me, I think Rhodes and a centre back regardless of CL qualification is the least we should demand, Rhodes will have a sell on value so its not a gamble.
macjay1 for Neil Lennon
I have to disagree.
Anti-Jewish pogroms were part of the furniture in much of Eastern Europe well before `40 and `41.
They didn`t need Hitler to motivate them.
I have heard of no,absolutely no,assistance being provided to the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto.
Now, that`s the middle of the capital city of Poland.
Now you are far from the truth, Sir.
You probably need to read more about the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto.
Have you ever heard about Irena Sendler? She saved 2 500 Jewish children during war, some from the ghetto. She is not as famous as Oscar Schindler but strong Catholic who was human being during awful times.
Thank you for the link. Was it really for me? Or you are going to prove your point?
I know the history.
celtic *o* lennon @ 10.23
Joe Strummer Tribute Night 22 Dec @ King Tuts….
See ye there!
first of all, i agree entirely re speculating to accumulate coefficient points. i also think had a good centre half been signed, not so much a centre forward, helsinki would have been a formality, and helsingborgs would be approached with confidence. however…
just browsing through some of today’s transfer tittle tattle…
with wolves turning down £9.5M from west ham for matt jarvis, and £12M from sunderland for stephen fletcher, the world has gone bonkers.
they are both decent players. in fact, probably they are about our “standard” of players. but they are not players who would assure me, if we had them, of champions league qualification. hell, they didn’t get wolves premiership survival. they may now go to clubs for £25M combined and come may see themselves relegated again (again again in fletcher’s case.)
we need to face the fact that any player good enough to be a shoe in for the champions league is probably too good for our budget, preferring a well paid premiership relegation battle or the hope of a championship play off berth.
sorry to be a doom-monger, but unless we miraculously unearth the second comings of the lisbon lions, we will always be biting fingernails in scandinavia or such like. even with a terrific scouting network, the financial realities just make it so. because what we see as a huge outlay, championship sides don’t even regard as a gamble.
that said, the one thing we can offer is a likely chance at entry to the competition everyone wants to play in, which wolves, sunderland and west ham never will. that may make a difference to some players. i suspect most though would prefer to shed a little tear at their team’s relegation whilst driving through the security gates of their cheshire mansion in their new ferrari 458.
sorry for being downbeat guys, but martin o’neill was quite right about the slow-lane. so it’s fingers crossed for sweden, which i suspect it will be again every year for a long time to come, at best.
which is all to say, talk about flogging our prized assets, ki, izzy, hooper etc… we must as much as possible hang on to these guys because they’re good, they’re young, they’re developing, they’re improving, but most importantly, we can’t afford to replace them with similar quality.
to do that, being IN the champions league may just be a clincher. so get us a centre half worthy of their talents before tuesday neil, peter and make it happen.
ps, when is the registration deadline for players for this round of the champions league? monday?
SmashingMilkBottles
12:08 on 16 August, 2012
celtic *o* lennon @ 10.23
Joe Strummer Tribute Night 22 Dec @ King Tuts….
See ye there!
Who’s playing sounds good!
neil canamalar lennon hunskelper extrordinaire
Was not aware off that, I retract my first statement and will stand by the second, if allowed lol hail hail
Neil Canamalar
If Rhodes signs for us he will be getting approximately the same service as Hooper and Stokes.
What makes you think he will be better than what we have?
My next client is waiting. He is a hun. He knows I am Tim.
I am wearing a big, boldly striped, red, white and blue tie.
JCGE
jock t..,
even if we found the second comings, Lawwell would have them sold in jig time, dividends need to be paid to the investors dont you know
Tom McLaughlin @ 11.24,
Thanks for confirming what I said: I did know that the strip mill was closed before the steel industry shut down.
You’ve responded to one of my asides, but my real point was about hatred: don’t know whether you got that
Awe_Naw_No_Annoni_Oan_Anaw_Noo (page 19)
I picked up on this on SFM as follows.
“The only reason there is no question about Rangers right to prize money from last season is that the SPL AND Rangers delayed the investigation into player registration.
Had that happened in a timely manner and the case proved and points deducted there would have been no entitlement at all to the prize money that the SPL should have divided amongst all clubs.
Rangers would have been owed nothing by the SPL and whilst the footballing creditors paid from the proceeds would not have received what they were due, all clubs would have received something. All clubs not owed anything by Rangers have a claim on the SPL for the difference in place prize money they should have received had the SFA and SPL acted timeously.
The debt to football that CG claims has been paid by him has in fact, as per norm, been paid using other people’s money.”
The propaganda of the msm that Rangers have been punished enough is all part of the cover up. Considering what they have been guilty of: mass deception (although the mass bit will upset them) mass robbery of the public purse, continued avoidance of paying their debts with their own money, using flawed insolvency laws for ongoing tax avoidance purposes, they should be grateful they still have a team in any Scottish league never mind SFL3.
If they wonder why Black was booed last night, perhaps anger at the footballing and governing establishments is a major reason.
The thing about this is it depends on the cover up being contained on all fronts. Now the whistle has been blown on “the Rangers have settled their footballing debts myth” and we see that in fact prize money that should have been shared amongst all clubs was used perhaps more cracks will start to appear.
You can see why there are delays on the FTT, the report on D&E that wossname asked for, BDO liquidators investigating and the player registration issue being dealt with. What will emerge from them is that the not only was there corruption at Rangers and the SFA pre CW but that it is continuing to this day and will do so until all the results come in – and I would not be surprised if those games are called off – “for the good of Scottish football.”
SonsOfErin
11:46 on
16 August, 2012
DBBIA/macjay1 – Just finished reading “English Passengers” by Matthew Kneale. A great book about the disappearance of the native Tasmanian aborigines, I would highly recommend it.
It suggests a number of reasons for their plight; western arrogance and sense of superiority, introduced diseases, the ‘calibre’ of immigrant to Van Diemens Land at the time, an inability and unwillingness to impose the law in a wild and frontier land, and private wars undertaken by settlers.
It’s a strange irony that the aborigine line still exists today due mostly to the sealers who kidnapped and raped aborigine women.
share on F’book or Twitter
Mate.
How many of the English passengers were Irish?
Just joking!:-)
Australia and Australians are very well aware of the skeletons in our closet.
phil..,
unlike a load of people in here, I think we create plenty of opportunities, our forwards need about ten chances for every goal they score, a bit more clinical is all thats needed.
Personally I think we should rid ourselves of all forms of electronic communications during periods of non Celtic related confabulation.
With regards non Celtic related confabulation I just saw my first vacuum escalation machine. Canny be working though as there was a mini digger there too. But that canny be working either as there were two blokes doon a trench with shovels.
Funny that!
MWD
Awe_Naw_No_Annoni_Oan_Anaw_Noo
Agreed not the record I would want us to have but we can’t keep harping on about the past it’s pointless, that was the Seville team that lost to Basel that and from where I was sitting we looked to have no heart!
You can’t build a team overnight and I think Neil has made a decent start, no more than that if we qualify this year for the CL I will be delighted as it’s one step better than last year.
The EPL is strangling the life of of the transfer market for us I mean 10 million for Stephen Fletcher, decent player but 10 mil!!
In my opinion the Celtic in the SPL becomes a harder sell every year, Celtic are who we are but I’m not sure that where we play is a destination that many would choose if they could go direct to England.
We’ve had to cut our cloth according to these changes and I think on the whole Neil has got a good bunch, I would dearly love to see us sign a striker soon as I think goals are much harder to come by in Europe..
SP
Invercelt – to repeat a point I made a few days ago. I unashamedly HATE Thatcher – she engaged in class warfare and I saw the casualties first hand.
Canamalar
I believe our strikers are clinical.
They are however not anticipative.
MWD
new article posted.
Neil canamalar Lennon hunskelper extrordinaire
jock t..,
even if we found the second comings, Lawwell would have them sold in jig time, dividends need to be paid to the investors dont you know
——————————————————————–
depressingly hard to disagree with a word of that.
ok here’s a thought. why are we so pants at signing loan players? camara, alliadiere etc. i don’t mean the keanes or bellamys, any idiot could tell you they were good players, but when we sign a promising young forward we put the death knell on their career.
i thought earlier about lukaku going on loan from chelsea to west brom. a young didier drogba by all accounts. did pistol pete even think to pick up the phone? we never seem to be able to take advantage of emerging talent. NB, aye, ok, i forgot about foster, but he was on loan longer than most players stickon permanent contracts.
Zbyszek
12:08 on
16 August, 2012
You know Polish history better than I do.
Accepted.
Do you know Australian history?
We who live in Australia are entitled to feel insulted by your accusation that we in a genocidal country.
Question: How many Aussies died in the cause of liberating Europe,including Poland, from the curse of Hitler?
Subsequently:How many Aussies died in combating the curse of communism?
Perhaps you owe them an apology.
macjay1 for Neil Lennon
12:32 on
16 August, 2012
Zbyszek
12:08 on
16 August, 2012
You know Polish history better than I do.
Accepted.
Do you know Australian history?
We ,who live in Australia ,are entitled to feel insulted by your accusation that we live in a genocidal country.
Question: How many Aussies died in the cause of liberating Europe,including Poland, from the curse of Hitler?
Subsequently:How many Aussies died in combating the curse of communism?
Perhaps you owe them an apology.
Macjay @11.47,
With what exactly do you disagree? I stated incontrovertible facts, not opinions. I did NOT say that the Poles had been perfect – nor did I accuse the Ozzies of anything: I suggest that you check to whom you’re replying before you put your foot in it.
It’s common knowledge that there were pogroms before the Nazis (many of them encouraged by Tsarist Russia), but there had never been an attempt to wipe out whole Jewish populations – indeed, such a thing probaly never even occurred to old-fashioned Jew-haters.
On assistance to the Jews in wartime Poland, I recommend Norman Davies (various works), Wladyslaw Szpylman (The Pianist – filmed by Roman Polanski, himself a Polish Jew) & Timothy Snyder (Bloodlands): I’m sure there’s much more if you look.
Zbyszek
Be careful, you’re up against the book reading CQN’rs, of course “you living it” doesn’t really matter to them.
Ive lived in Bulgaria when it was a communist country, but its not as good as reading a book about it all.
Basle brings back memories. A duff team we were told but went on to disprove that, if my memory serves, when they qualified for the last 16 that year.
Doubting wether they did got me to thinking of other opponents we that we got at the wrong time in european ties. Athletico Madrid went on to win the Europa league last season for instance, so were the best team in it. Porto in seville went on to win the CL the next year with a largely unchanged side, so you could argue were the best team in europe when we came up against them. Artmedia, another duff side we were told, went on to cause real shocks in the group stage of CL the year we played them. Shakter Donetsk (spelling?) won the europa league/uefa cup just after we played them also. ACMILAN when we played them in last 16 were reigning champions. Lyon were an unknown quantity when we first drew them and went on to dominate france and make a splash in europe.
Given our track record here’s hoping helsinborg aren’t a team on the up!!!
Can anyone else add teams that, after knocking us out of something, went on to great things?
I realise the manager has certain duties to fulfill and that one of them is his Friday press conference. Yesterday the LL hit NL with the Ian Black question. Why cant Neil just bat this one out of bounds straight away. He knows the LL have an agenda greater than ever against him and his club. He’s not daft and also knows its a loaded question and giving the slightest hint of backing the tartan army on the matter, these reptiles would knife him in a minute in order to sell copy to der hun, now their only market.
But no, Neil plays the nice guy, giving thoughtful and coherent answers about the Black controversy. They dont deserve it Neil and I have to say in my opinion you are being a little naive here. Never forget that these same journos stirred up the hate campaign against you in the first place, resulting in bombs etc. They still show your snarling face while portraying the real villain McCoist as the man of dignity. Take a leaf out of Martin or Gordon’s book and treat the LL with the same contempt they heap on you. And btw Lawwell should be advising you and not me.
hh