The elimination of Aston Villa and Borussia Dortmund from the Champions League last night assures that the winner of this season’s tournament will already have qualified from their domestic league. As a result, Greek champions Olympiacos will automatically qualify for the league stage of next season’s tournament. This leaves one more seeded space open for Celtic.
Five teams will be seeded in the playoff round. Bodo/Glimt and Red Star have a higher coefficients than Celtic and will both be seeded. Ferencvaros have clawed back a deficit and are a point ahead in Hungary with six to play; I expect them to take the title. That leaves us chasing two seeded places.
The challenges from Salzburg (5 adrift, 7 to play) and Shakhtar Donetsk (10 adrift, 7 to play with a game in hand) and Dinamo Zagreb (7 down and 7 to play) do not look like they will materialise.
The most interesting European league this season could arguably be in Switzerland. You will remember Young Boys were 10th in their domestic table and bottom of the Champions League when we needed a late own goal to beat them in January.
That we struggle to much against a ‘poor’ side was a concern. It transpired that Young Boys had just got their act together and were about to embark on what looked like a run to the Swiss title. Two weeks ago they had closed the gap on leaders Basel to three points with eight to play.
A draw at home to 11th placed Yverdon popped the bubble, however. That was followed by a 5-0 battering at Luzern. The eight point gap now looks beyond them.
As it stands, we will be fourth of five seeds in the Champions League playoff round. The preparatory work should be well underway.
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Am I the only one with a wee worry about/for someone who writes that amount of pash? The length of time it must take out of your life to actually come up with that amount of detailed nonsense and then to actually get it down into a form for posting? And then it takes me a couple of seconds to realise the author and scroll on to the next post.
Help ma boab!
Ave Ave
GARYGILLESPIES
✅
Emerald Bee
With apologies to Dionne Warwick and Bacharach and David,
🎶 if you see me post a lot of pash🎶
🎶 Scroll on by🎶
GARY, you do know that I was not referring to you!?
Avd Ave
Emerald Bee
No worries.
I had assumed your comment was referring to Citizen Kev’s post.
Just spotted an opporchancity for a daft joke and decided to go for it. Just for a change.😀
Burnley78
Realistically no option could have been negotiated at the last minute for this one.
——
I think Adam was indeed announced on the last day of the window but I was reading about him joining Celtic at least a week before that.
How many days do we need to negotiate an option to buy ?
I want to know , what happened to the Stephane Mahe money
kinglubo
Celtic shouldn’t ground share with Rangers and Glasgow City,girls team,Celtic should add a couple of stands in Barrowfield ,is there plenty of land there for them to build these stands ,I hope I have explained myself, if not I apologise.
Back to Basics
Great question
Europa 10%. As there are literally no form horses running in it. Possibly Frankfurt or Lazio but not many.
League 0.000000001
Timbhoy163 on 16th April 2025 6:55 pm
Celtic shouldn’t ground share with Rangers and Glasgow City,girls team,Celtic should add a couple of stands in Barrowfield ,is there plenty of land there for them to build these stands ,I hope I have explained myself, if not I apologise.
—————
there is no land wide enough to build any decent sized stand(s).
There was a comment in construction circles here that Celtic did not apply for planning consent because it would have been turned down, citing, traffic junction for the entrance/exit onto london road/
I wonder if this shared stadium for all the ladies teams was discussed previously and seen as a solution coming for the world cup hosting, just joining the dots.
I do have to ponder those who said they would go see a b team, or the ladies, or the youths if they could attend Barrowfield but dont actually follow these teams today.
Burnley 78
Am I mistaken in thinking you said we are competing with the following teams, when it comes to CL play off seedings:
Hungary – Ferencvaros
Croatia – Zagreb
Austria – Salzburg
Ukraine – Shaktar
Denmark – Copenhagen
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Whereas Paul67 iseems to be advising that we are competing with:
Hungary – Ferencvaros
Croatia – Zagreb
Austria – Salzburg
Ukraine – Shaktar
Switzerland – I’m assuming he’s saying we do not want YB winning their league?
————————————————-
Are we behind both Copenhagen and YB when it comes to Co-efficient…(as well as the 4 teams you both name)?
I’m confused?
HH
B78 – cheers.
Great answer and rationale.
Respect.
Thrice in the last six hours I’ve heard three different campaigners use the identical phrase
“Reverses 20 years of understanding”
Hmm.
a random, a drive across north west end this afternoon, i came across the junstion at anniesland cross, and down the crow road.
I have admired the miners corrages there many many times but never clocked the name before.
https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/6897913
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@55.8861218,-4.3255914,3a,75y,83.8h,87.71t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sVfoGuLo7PKI_Hl6_SLcPuw!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fcb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26pitch%3D2.2905320807273455%26panoid%3DVfoGuLo7PKI_Hl6_SLcPuw%26yaw%3D83.80182940606016!7i13312!8i6656?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MDQxMy4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D
In other words we have no clue who we might be facing in the play-off.
DeniaBhoy on 16th April 2025 3:34 pm
Saint Stivs – we can agree to differ. I do not believe Adam Idah is good enough to be our no.1 striker. Maeda has shown much more goal prowess in his time as CF than Adam ever has.
in the 20 seasons since larsson left.
the 25 goal benchmark has only been acheived 9 times. including daizen this season.
the average over that time is indeed 25 goals for the main striker in all competitions.
so we have that this season for daizen
in no seasons did 2 strikers score 25 goals each.
McCoist😩
WTF, Saka?
🤦♂️
as a wee aside,
i am expecting the bold kuhn to return to goalscoring form with competition from jamsie, and rumoured interest from epl teams.
he is on 18 goals.
Watched the Dortmund penalty last night and thought anything you can do I can do better.
Oooops……
Jeez, VAR having to ref this game because the actual ref is crap.
i know it will be an unpopular opinion on here, but i think that mccoist cheeky chappy talks shite. absolutely. let me tell you.
Goalkeeper given a yellow card after 35 minutes for time wasting, it’ll never catch on in Scotland
Had Saka for the first goal…
Misses a penalty
Stivs 8.40
Ooh you are awful…..🤣
Crystal Palace had a penalty when it was 1 – 0 Newcastle. Worst penalty I’ve seen in a long time.
4-0 at halftime
No wonder I take strong drink.
In play stats:
(xG) Newcastle 1.28 v 1.48 C Palace
(Actual score) 5 v 0
Stats, eh? 🤷♂️
😂😂
Are Newcastle going for a record score?😳
Inter equalise
All over.
Looking at Arsenal here , they could go the full road , meaning we have signed a champions league medal winner …😉
Bognorbhoy
Ye won’t see that in the scum media. 😁
One of the best headed goals I’ve seen😮
An Dun
It’s a great question you ask.
I wish it was as easy as many folk think … these transfer dealings.
My understanding is this was at the end of a transfer window when BR had been presented with a range of striking options by the recruitment team. He didn’t rate any of them and the rest was history re the recruitment team.
Idah was being touted by an agent at the 11th hour. He was put in the frame and BR took a pretty smart punt on him. It proved to be a very smart one as he delivered some really key goals which affected the outcome of both the league and the cup.
Given the chaos at Norwich and the lack of alignment of our management and recruitment at the time plus the lack of real belief of the manager in a player he had not seen too much of plus the time (11th hour) it is not a surprise we didn’t conclude an option to buy. These are not as common in January window deals and more common in year long strategic deals.
You are right and I do agree it would have been good because as we all saw in the past 2 windows now it really is not easy. Not even when we have what seems like plenty of cash. Getting quality players to come to Scotland (early in windows) when there is still a chance of a better deal for selling clubs or agents is not easy.
Brendan has seen this in the 2 windows he has had to himself. Despite spending a fair bit none of the signings made last summer or in January would be in the top 3 players for me this season.
Maeda Johnston Kuhn (based on form up to February) or Taylor (up until Schlupp arrived) would be mine
although Engels and Schmeichal maybe close.
It’s not easy buying players even with our money and even with BR in charge of the process and with money. That is just a simple fact.
Like everyone I really hope we strengthen and really nail that lot for the next few years.
Long answer to a short question.
i was reminded of something we used to do as a support.
remember when if we kept the ball, having either gone ahead in a big game, or skelping someone, the crowd would go
ole, ole, ole, ole, ole.
nowadyts our support would leave early and call it boring.
KT on