There was an unusual reaction at full time last night. Some attempted to boo, but the applause from the majority in the crowd soon drowned them out. Not all defeats are the same, this one came after one of our best performances of the season, against an undoubtedly better team.
It was important to qualify for the knockout stages of the Europa League. Bereft of domestic competition, Celtic need to test their abilities against top teams, they need to be stretched, forced to defend for long periods, parts of the game which simply never happen in Scotland.
It’s also important to see tangible signs of improvement. Those four weeks of summer, which saw defeats twice to Legia, to Maribor and Inverness, were signs of a team in crisis. They cost us Champions League football, and revenue, but finishing our Europa League group in second place behind Salzburg is the top end of where we expected to be three months ago.
I’m not happy with this morning’s line that we qualified thanks to the result in Romania; we qualified because we collected eight points from our opening four games, including a highly respectable draw in Salzburg. Win, lose or draw last night, the qualification work had been done. We can now start planning for the second half of the season.
Those three months since the summer crisis passed with only one defeat, an ultimately costless, if embarrassing, reversal at home to Hamilton. We can afford a similar episode on the next three months, but not this Sunday. The visit to Tynecastle is our most important game in the next two months, considerably more so than last night’s.
Commons and Forrest return to full fitness will be closer, while it would be good to see Denayer and Lustig available again.
It was kind of Rangers International to publish their accounts as a pick-me-up for us when we got home last night. More tomorrow, if we have time.
Shocked and stunned at the news Roy Keane has chucked it at Aston Villa. No way did I ever see his appointment as assistant to Paul Lambert looking like a pointless distraction so quickly. Next time we appoint a manager, cut the lines to Barbados and keep Martin’s mobile engaged!
Pre-orders are being accepted for the 2015 CQN Annual, which will be posted week commencing 8 December. Get your orders in now…
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I thought your name was Davi Dopoulos.
Ah well.
Football is a 90 minute plus injury time game you cant say Oh well we didnt play well for 30 mins but then we played well for 60 minutes.Fact is we lost 1-3 so over the 90 minutes pure and simply we were the poorer side and at home for Celtic that is not good enough. H.H.
BMCUW,
Awe grumpy, so you simply don’t like Stoksey and refuse to acknowledge anything he does as any good and anyone disagreeing on this needs to take your opinion as fact.
His corners were excellent except the near post one, they were the most dangerous dead ball plays all night, and had we a player who could attack a corner they would have made a big difference to the productivity. If you couldn’t see that then maybe you need to change your Stokesy glasses.
Philbhoy
14:37 on 28 November, 2014
I thought your name was Davi Dopoulos.
Ah well.
————————————————
It’s Dopidoulovas. Davidopoulos is just the hysterical misspelling of that…
Incidentally, re the crowds, from what I have quickly read elsewhere, we had the 2nd biggest crowd of the round with only a full house or close to at the old De Kuip for Feyenoord beating us.
In fact (Ok it was from wiki) for the whole tournament group stages so far, I think there have only been 7 games with larger crowds than us last night – one of them being our game v Zagreb!
And of the other 6, 4 were within a few thousand of our crowd.
Even Everton and Spurs have yet to beat our crowd last night at Goodison or WHL. and its not as if either of those 2 clubs are CL regulars.
I guess once more its all about your expectation. A lot of Celtic supporters seem to think that 32000 for a game is poor, yet im sure the great majority of teams playing in the EL just now would grab at that!
I, like weeminger and the Club it would seem, feel that is a reasonable and probably average attendance for us in the EL at this stage anyway. That attendance will grow with each round we progress.
Watch this space.
HAIL! HAIL!
Token
DavidO…
“Does he think O’Polous is my timmy surname? :)”
Bingo :)
CANAMALAR
Awe grumpy, so you simply like Stoksey and refuse to acknowledge anything he does as NOT any good and anyone disagreeing on this needs to take your opinion as fact.
You have your view on his performance last night,I have mine.
I do like AS,btw. But he is better in the box at corners than taking them.
Neil canamalar Lennon hunskelper extrordinaire
14:43 on 28 November, 2014
DavidO…
“Does he think O’Polous is my timmy surname? :)”
Bingo :)
——————————————————-
As someone kindly pointed out at the CSC I go to, there is nothing timmy about my real name :)
That someone is of this parish as well!!
Still wondering how RD gets the blame for the players not passing the ball well,not making themselves available for teamates to pass the ball to them,not doing defensive duties as they should.Apart from Mc Gregor,with the players we had out,just who would have been picked differently?.Forrest?.RD told us the reason.Perfectly acceptable to me.Trying to nurse the boy back to full fitness.If Tonev had shown anything like the form he showed when he came on as sub,he would have played from the start in place of Mc Gregor.Commons came on and done nothing.RD has far too many players who blow hot and cold from week to week.
I will continue to stick by the manager.The board must do the same.
The constant RD haters on here,I will ignore.When we are still in all competitions,with a team in total transition,a better place than when Lenny managed the team for 4 years,their whingeing is that of spoilt weans.
Pintaguiness
Thanks for the info!!!
Pearl..ffs…I’ve told u before to keep that night I gave u the special necklace off the blog, what happens in the back streets of Glasgow,stay in the back streets of Glasgow :-)
Canamalar et al
It’s a waste of time debating team performance until the plc/ shareholder absent landlord and failed strategy is improved/ fixed/ sorted.
Free the Celts :>)
Cheers to Chorleybhoy n Vogue Punter for their donations to my Movember (over £400 so far)
Also ta to VP for the comment lol (cheeky git ;-) )
And a HUGE thanks to EVERYONE whos donated so far HH
https://www.justgiving.com/Tommy-Melly/
£50m in the Euromillions tonight. Everyone play and if a CQNer wins make an offer to DD for half his shares.
It’s a plan so ingenious it could have originated on Follow Follow…
According to the online local rag, there’s an Irish bar in Blackpool advertising a band playing called…….
The people, no joking CSC
V
The Token Tim,
You are bang on about the crowds.Even Salzburgs game with us in Austria was half empty.Sure there was a Europa game in the San Siro a couple of years ago with 8,000 or something there.
Pedro……io67
Madrid celtic games
Triskles in Calle San Vicente Ferrer, just off calle Fuencarral, 10
Also irish pub near Salamanca District (google it when you are there)
Best of luck as sometimes english games come first in these places !
adi_dasler
Cheers pal
Rangers accounts: 10 key facts
Rangers released their annual accounts for the year ending June 30, 2014, on Thursday evening. Here, we list 10 things we learned from the report.
Friday 28/11/2014
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1. Rangers made an operating loss of £8.3million last season – an improvement of £6million on the previous campaign.
2. Recently-departed chief executive Graham Wallace earned £378,000 in less than eight months and also secured a £100,000 pay-off.
3. Wallace’s predecessor, Craig Mather, received a £350,000 severance package.
4. Rangers need up to £8million of debt or equity finance in the next 12 months – starting from January.
5. Retail revenue almost quadrupled to £7.6million but retail costs were the main cause of a £3million rise in operating charges.
6. Former finance director Brian Stockbridge received a £216,000 severance package and made £189,000 on a share option but handed back £98,000 bonus money.
7. Staff costs fell from £17.9million to £14.7million – staff numbers dropped from 196 to 175.
8. Total revenue rose almost a third to £25.2million.
9. The club’s first-team wage bill was 26 per cent of turnover – down from 43 per cent the previous season.
10. Former director Philip Nash made £131,412 in consultancy fees in six months.
Reading this from the Times,you have to wonder.You would think everything was rosy.It was those big bad men that left the hun skint.Nothing about the amount paid to the 3 stooges in the dugout.Everything else is up.From where exactly?.Some trying to paint the decrease in losses as something good.
Well they do only need £8 million for this season.It could have been 50 million,so thats good,eh.
BMCUW,
I’ve called out stokesys bad games many a time on here, I say it like I see it, and last night stokesy corners were excellent, I also recently made the point why he would be playing last night, his link up play with Izzy, his defensive cover and his corners and from what I watched last night I was correct on all four points.
what I can’t believe is that he was substituted for Commons, if there’s one player Commons links well with in that team was Stokesy, to remove him was IMO to isolate Commons and that proved to be the case as Commons came on and disappeared.
I didn’t think there was anyone left to boo or clap at the end most of the support started leaving after the 3rd goal
As for best performance of the season don’t make me laugh
On the upside we’re through to next round but I think its papering over the cracks
Turkeybhoy
They mention the £8m, but do they mention this wee para:
“These conditions around the refinancing of the existing short term loan facilities and the need to secure further financing result in the existence of a
material uncertainty which may cast significant doubt over the Group’s ability to continue as a going concern and therefore the Group may be unable
to realise its assets and discharge its liabilities in the normal course of business.”
Last year we watched some of the most turgid football I have ever witnessed from Celtic (a couple of games excepted)
The manager refused to accept that bringing youngsters through to the 1st team was his responsibility – it was apparently better for his CV to get to 100 points and or go unbeaten for the season. (from a good source)
We qualified for CL group last season and were embarrassed by every team in it.
We needed a manager who understood the facts of life – great players will generally not be interested in coming to the football backwater that is Scotland to play football so it is essential that we develop our own.
I believe RD has bought into that and I suspect that any of the other names mentioned at the time of his appointment wouldn’t have.
Change is never easy – but in my opinion it had to happen.
I’m sure RD can see that AS can’t take a corner anyone can and KC has a poor 1st touch and has fitness issues and I’m sure that as he gets his feet under the desk he will work on those things – his job depends on it.
The football at the moment is not great but it is edge of the seat, heart in the mouth stuff – it’s a change at least with the possibility of an improvement on what we were watching. Last year didn’t encourage too many to renew their season tickets either I bet.
Would be a great laugh for our hero, Greedy Gonzales, to decide to sing his song of freedom today.
turkeybhoy,
yep the EL is poorly attended esp in comparison with the CL.
A lot of Spanish and Italian teams (and english teams for that matter) seem to place far more empahsis on their league games than the EL.
Overall, our attendances are strong for the EL.
HAIL! HAIL!
Token
On a completely separate note is there a quiz on tonight??
HAIL! HAIL!
Token
marky68
12:48 on 28 November, 2014
RD has brought in wholesale changes to our team, change is better done gradually .
Making the team fitter is a good thing but ultimately it doesn’t make them better thinkers therefore better footballers .
Looking forward to the new year with potential new players and European football HH
———————————
Last nights team was Neil’s team. With the exception of the goalkeeper . Every single outfield starter was signed by Neil.
Thanks to illness, injury , eligibility and form, none of the new signings started. This years signings have been a mixture of success and non appearances. Gordon and Guidetti have been good. I suspect Tonev & Wakaso will do well if they get a run of games, Berget & Scepovic have shown little.
Making more signings in January would be helpful, however we can’t forget Pukki & Balde will be back next year and unless we can sell them or loan them out , we will be carrying their wages . Whilst we need a defensive midfielder in the Wanyama mould and at least one more striker who’s as efficient as Guidetti, we also need to move on quite a number of the peripheral players. Paying players £500 K a year and upwards for only an occasional contribution is restricting our ability to increase the maximum we can pay to very good players.
Today is getting better and better. :-)
HH
awe-naw,
you on the bevy AND onto a promise???
;-)
HAIL! HAIL!
Token
Gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooood afternoon
Had the pleasure of being seated next to a blootered (10:30 am) sevconion
on the bus to Glasgow this morning.
Thought of Billy Connelly joke about the nutter always sitting next to you on the bus :))))
On leaving him he agreed Sleekit was a s**** manager :))))))))
Awe_Naw..,
How did they take being sacked :)
Attendance .
Inter v Dnipro ————24,378.
Number of season ticket holders at Inter—————30,722
Barca…,
Would you consider the scattergun approach to finding the next big sellable asset as the biggest factor in our downward expectation management strategy ?
TTT
Do you disagree that we have deliberately downsized and the football is often turgid?
Yes and No. I don’t think the downsizing was deliberate; it was inevitable. The football is often poor and it always has been. We have never had a golden period apart from the Lisbon Lions and they played badly at times too.
It wasnt the critics who “expectation-managed” me, it was my own eyes and ears, with the help ofCeltic plc of course.
Funnily, though, it seems legitimate to accuse others who are more positive or more tolerant of the direction taken of having their expectations managed, of basically being Board fodder and sheep. We all think we have arrived at the position we have because of clear eyed rational deductions but we are all as influenced by the atmosphere and general thinking around Celtic as the next man. When you are surrounded by fans who have elevated moaning to an art form, who have a nostalgia for periods of time, such as the 80s when our winning ratios were 64%, 52%, and 55% under Billy, Davie and Billy again, then it is harder to find the objective evidence that things were so much better back then.
As auldheid rightly pointed out, the downsizing was a symptom of the cause, which is/wasthe economic realities Celtic have to live within.
I have accepted that (reluctantly) and that is why I am far from critical of players who imo simply do not have the ability to compete at a higher standard than they currently do.
If you know that it was inevitable then why accuse the Board of doing it deliberately? Do you not think they would prefer to have us still having sell out crowds? Being able to afford better players? Having a competitive environment with strong opposition that tests us and prepares us better for the standard we face in Europe? Instead they have had to manage a downsized environment. They have had to keep Celtic alive through these downtimes in order to have us better placed for a recovery, if we ever get back to having a competitive Scottish league or a move to a better standard league. 15 years ago, spending £5m on a top English player bought you Chris Sutton, Neil Lennon and John Hartson; now it buys you Brett Assommbalonga. You can pay £26m and get a misfiring Soldado. There are lots of ways to go wrong and very few ways to go right from the position we are currently in.
I hate to say this – and had you had the affront to say this to my 22 year old self Id have been very tempted to punch you in the mouth for the cheek – but I am close to becoming apathetic about Celtic in our current state.
Well, I wouldn’t have the foggiest why I was being punched as I don’t know what statement upset you. If it was about having your expectations managed too, then I hope I have explained what I said in the original post. Namely that it is a two way street. If it is legitimate to say that those who are on one side of the argument are just being “expectation-managed” then it is just as legitimate to say that your expectations are subject to influence too. I know mine are or there would not be such a thing as the advertising industry.
If the real reason why the crowds were down is due to poor football, an unambitious Board, a cheapskate management team, then why would there be 10k or more fans returning at the prospect of a team calling itself Rangers being there. After all, we will still be crap, unambitious and whatever, but people who have been citing those arguments and, in my view, influencing our support, will return in droves to watch this crap unambitious outfit but will have their fix of the OF drug habit to persuade them otherwise.
Now that may not be your position but, if so, I think you took offence at an argument not specifically directed at you.
I agree with you re the extra 10k STs if and when the reincarnated huns appear. I could well be one of them (for a variety of reasons i wont bore you with today, I didnt not renew mine or my sons ST’s this season – first time since The Jungle’s Last Stand i have not been a ST holder) as to be honest whilst I do not want them back, i will welcome the compettion that they will no doubt eventaully bring back to us.
I can’t work out from the detail you give whether the accusation fits your position or not and it is none of my business either. All I will say is that your “eventually” will take a long time to come true. Fans will be returning saying that we will have competition but it won’t be there for their first two or three seasons. I suspect many will be excusing themselves and giving cover reasons for coming back to enjoy a few easier victories than we used to obtain over them. That is why I say we have let ourselves down during this period. What if we had shown loyalty even to a crap team and despite an unambitious board? Would we have been able to afford slightly better players at least? Would we have slightly better European results? I think , Yes but they would probably never have been good enough anyway to keep a lot of the support that we have lost.
Will Celtic then begin to upsize or rather be forced to do so? I dont know, but I suspect we will somehow find that extra million or two for players of better ability than we currently buy.
I think we will buy players if we expect more competition. I don’t think we will need to do it in order to secure the league on the return of an Ibrox team. But I think it will be done anyway for marketing purposes.
And the show will go on.
TTT
I return home today after two years in Munich and Duesseldorf. Start a better paid job locally on Monday and seeing the PARITY in unwarrented old firm bonuses warms the cockles of my heart as we can afford it.
As you know very well it is the other way around. I give promises :-)
Did I catch you on TV last night after Stefan scored ?
HH
“Every single outfield starter was signed by Neil.”
Barcabhoy,
Close….but no cigar ;)
afternoon bhoys have just finished catching up(bit slow today) I thought Celtic played well in second half and maybe deserved a wee draw, also agree we are where we are because the points had been secured earlier, I am a glass half full kinda person and on way home on ferry last night I was a happy clapper that we had progressed in EL . very important game on Sunday hope everyone attending stays safe
COYBIG
HH
Davidopolous 15:01
all chat bout their ‘accounts’ should be prefaced with that wee paragraph.
:-)
hh