If Celtic overcome Nomme Kalju in the Champions League second qualifying round, they will face either Cluj or Maccabi Tel-Aviv in the third qualifier.
Cluj are one of those clubs who will never be taken lightly, after a remarkable win away to Roma in the Champions League nine years ago, but recent times have not been as prosperous. They lost out in last year’s Europa League qualifiers to Luxembourg’s Dudelange. In the first qualifying round this season, Cluj recorded an unexpected win against Astana, who are seeded only slightly lower than Celtic.
Maccabi Tel-Aviv went out of the Europa League playoff round last season to Norwegians, Sarpsborg. This was a poor showing by Maccabi, but there are caveats – the Norwegians were midseason and subsequently put on a decent showing in their Europa group.
Apart from Saturday’s Super Cup, this will be Maccabi Tel-Aviv’s first competitive outing of the season, so you would not bet against Cluj taking down their second seed of the campaign.
There is work to do, but it we cannot reach the payoff round from this draw, we do not deserve to be there.
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BGFC
Been there, worked and holidayed there and the rest of Germany
and your correct, a Beautiful part of the world.
Enjoy the rest of your holiday.
H.H Mick
MACJAY1
Never tried that speed thingy, but my aul boady
could be daein wi it. 8-))
H H Mick
My own wee thing on here and in fact anywhere for that matter..
I will not type the word of their name.
I will type Newco or Oldco as appropriate.
I will type R*****s or I will type “that other team”.
I have a feeling that I am developing an obsession.
“When I wake up – then I know ahm gonnae be, ahm gonnae be the man who’s laffin at the Bears.”
“Ah wid walk 500 miles, say ah wid walk 500 more ”
“just to be the man who’d walked 1000 miles to laff but paid nae fares”
Night all
HH
MELBOURNE MICK on 23RD JULY 2019 12:18 AM
I was lying , mate.
TBH
I have respect for other Christian denominations.
Without a word of a lie .
:-)
MACJAY1
Good on you.
FOOL TIME WHISTLE
You’re obviously a great lyric writer with that effort.
Now lets see a Boli Bolingoli Mbombo song as mine
failed miserably.
H.H Mick
FOOL TIME WHISTLE
And, meant to add, quite a few with the same obsession on here
will not say that name.
Me? i always describe them as ragers, because thats how i’ve seen
them all my life.
H.H Mick
Dictionary – fallow
Undeveloped.. Empty.. Bare.
Yes that just about covers it 8-))))))
Toodleoothenoo
H.H Mick
Has the full back no signed yet . Do our suits not See the challenge that’s facing us this season .we still need more than a right back , to meet this challenge .
Jimtim
Geeza hymn :-)
HH
Melbourne Mick
My effort for Boli is already documented on here somewhere..
To the tune of
Rupert, Rupert the Bear evryoneknows his name..
Boli, Bolingoli – Bolingoli Mbombo…
Anyway it sounds good in my head.
HH
Just had a look at the ticket sales of Maccabi
Approx 1.2m pounds taken in for ticket sales , included season book sales
Taking that into account, a turn over it no more than 10m( being generous )
Now ours is approx 80 million turnover and we can’t even find a right back
As one blogger said , we could prob afford to buy approx 80% of full backs in Europe
However it’s bargain bucket for us
I note Paul 67 comment if we don’t get to the play off we should not deserve to be there
Can I rephrase that. If we don’t get there our CEO should not be our CEO anymore as his gambling and lack of investment ( even when we have the money ). Costs us in loss of income
He should of been sacked on numerous occasions. Eg Maribor last time
Warm Summers Morn In The Chilterns… Soaring Up To 30°… Glad Of The Breeze Yeaterday
ROBERTTRESSELL @ 11:06 PM,
More importantly- where are our new right backs?
And midfielder? And striker?
Seriously! It has to happen!
Great to see you posting again. This for me, comes down to recruitment approach.
Let’s just say our Board are not the Sun Tzu of Footballing strategy.
As I said yesterday morning it’s my opinion that we will not buy until we sell.
What I didn’t say was that, that is a planning and fiscal decision rather than a requirement, necessitated through lack of resources..
I don’t want to hark back to last years summer transfer window but it’s worth taking a high level view.
When we had won the double treble, we were in a cash rich situation. If you add to that we had our VvD windfall, then we were sitting pretty at the beginning of the 2018 window some serious eight figure numbers in our warchest.
We had some activity in the June selling Erik, Stretch and buying Odsonne.
Now that was cash neutral, the money in equal to the money out, let’s say, for whatever reason, things went somewhat errant after that.
I now think of that summer’s warchest, as the Boards buffer, a vast sum lovingly counted in miserly fashion, in their ivory tower, ne’er to be spent.
Now after that we sold our top striker for 20M at the end of that window.
Then after a January window where there was little recruitment spend. In February our Manager and Coaching staff up and left.
We got 9M in compensation for this.
Now, compensation is money to cover the costs and impact of a disruption.
We of course never used the money for that, Lenny was umemployed at the time and became our Manager, we promoted from within to partially fill other gaps left by departing coaches and it was, what it was. The money went up to the top of the ivory tower.
With all these funds, we are looking at well in access of 40M.
Do far in this window, we have spent 10M.
The another factor to consider is wages, we were led to believe we had a football club wage bill of 60M plus per annum. An unsustainable figure.
Of course, when you look at the facts, our average first team player earns under 17K per week. Multiply that by the number of first squad player, multiply that by 52 weeks and you will get a figure of half that headline amount. More than sustainable if the Club is successful.
Add to that more than 10 first team players have left since then including high earners like Boyata and Dembele and you can see, as Lenny stated himself recently, paying wages for recruits is not an issue.
So we have vast sums in the bank, a hugely slashed wage bill, that was, despite hype to the contrary, completely managable.
So the decision to sell, before we recruit further, if that is indeed the strategy, is a business decision, not a football budgetry requirement.
Having said that, to get to this stage of proceedings without a right back is contemptible and I’m sure that will be rectified in due course.
I’m going to be patient and see how the window pans out. My opinion still is, there will be a “high value” player sale and we will buy further. The chests in the Ivory tower, war or otherwise, will be inflated further also.
Hail Hail
Great couple of days in terms of the draw and Sports Direct set to take “many millions” of Skinto FC.
Now Arsenal are reported to have moved on to other left back options after Celtic failed to accept their magic beans offer.
Great news. Good luck to the next team that has to try and do business with Arsenal.
Good morning CQN from an overcast Garngad, I’m told we are to get some sun for the rest of the week. 😎
Back from Rhodes early Sunday morning and I have never been as fecked coming back from a holiday as that, oh and had a few mosquito bites, now there seems to be about 12 the size of golf balls… Basssa…. Back to work this morning and I am still fecked.
Never got the chance to look in on the blog whilst away.
Anyway, have we not signed a right back yet?
Is Danny Simpson in on trial?
Hail Hail
D. :)
Chairbhoy excellent post, you can say we bough Eduard with VVD money so we were actually cash positive
I think your figure of about 40M available could be about right
problem is our amateurish recruitment process set up by peter lawell has one fundamental target
find players who we can sell onto EPl club within 2 years . John park told us that before he was err shown the door as he disagreed with this policy
Now we find ourselves being cash rich and a CEO who every second thought is to save money, not suited
it is now clear that Pl has no intention of digging deep into our cash reserves . instead shopping again at the bargain basement . it was of course peter who made that statement that our squad does not need dramatic surgery, while most fans saw that it does indeed need big changes
Peter thinks himself bullet proof, how do the fans force him out if he once gain fails our manger in providing funds to strengthen ,
The time spent chasing this Hatem Elhamad bemuses me, we need a right back and we sign a defensive utility player who’s reviews are not great
how do we change our process, a new CEO is the only answer
DAVID66
Someone posted yesterday that we had dropped our interest, if in fact any existed.
Heading to Crete later today. armed with mozzy repellant and those wee electronic thing for our rooms!
Fingers crossed!
Good morning, friends, from a warm but grey and cloud covered East Kilbride.
Just 1 more sleep till. what, 50,000 of us (having parted with £23 a head) get the privilege and responsibility of cheering on the Bhoys to a commanding 1st leg lead.
Philbhoy- have a good holiday.
We were over for a wedding and there was about 50odd of us and everyone had mossy bites apart from kids.
Mines were just wee nips (took all the sprays and plug ins as well) but now I am back they are the size of golf balls.
1 tip would be to take an ointment in case you do get bit, you can rub it on the bite, my sisnlaw had to attend a pharmacy for ointment as hers flared up right away.
All that said Rhodes old town and Lindos is beautiful, and the company we had was excellent, a great wee holiday.
D. :)
Has the top class specialist right full back been signed yet?
DAVID66
Thanks!
We have the lotions and potions packed so fingers crossed!
Cheers!
AN DUN on 23RD JULY 2019 6:51 AM
—————————————
Yes indeed.
The Record rag now conceding that the zombie club are most probably liable, and will have to pay Sports Direct £millions in damages.
It then proceeds to launch a vicious tirade against Ashley.
Nothing is ever the zombie club’s fault, same as dead club was never in the wrong.
GIRFUT.
HH. 🍀
CHAIRBHOY on 23RD JULY 2019 6:37 AM
You typed
The another factor to consider is wages, we were led to believe we had a football club wage bill of 60M plus per annum. An unsustainable figure.
Hi Chairbhoy I would dissent your paragraph above
http://priceoffootball.com/celtic-rattlesnakes/
Check out our wage ratio,totally comfortable
and sustainable imo but as always with our club to be watched and worked on .
From rekkkord online 29/5/19 no c&p from me
Premiership champions Celtic spent 58.4 per cent of their £101.6million revenue in 2018 on salaries – for a £59.3m wage bill.
Hope yous well.
HH
That was a quare move the fat scumbag pulled on the zombie club.
Astonishing brain for business, or for ripping peepil off.
HH. 🍀
SYDNEYTIM @ 7:09 AM,
Thank you, good to see your back on doing your thang:)
Yes, we hear posters defend our recruitment failures and being determined by certain factors around us playing our Football in Scotland.
Although I have long argued that playing in Scotland allows Celtic a great posibility of Champions League football and the winning of Trophies and Championships. Which are very attractive to the right type of player.
Having said that I do take the point, finding the right quality of player for us seems to be fraught.
So why would you narrow your potential candidates down even further by looking at age and potential to deliver a good profit margin as key to your recruitment. Isn’t this making a difficult process a darn sight worse? It’s interesting you comments on John Park – I didn’t know that.
Of course as the VvD sale from Southampton to Liverpool happened in the last window it wouldn’t have been part of sums available for recruitment last year. But the figures here show, my 40M extrapolation this Season should be on the cautious side…
http://www.celticfc.net/news/14977
That cash in the bank +VvD +Dembele +BR&Co +Profits etc
We are rated as a top 30 European Club, yet in performance we are not in the top 50. That’s a huge disconnect.
The ironic situation, that we should be confidently looking to best Isreal’s top side for UCL qualification but are prepared to take one their of league’s Right Backs (not a stand out that I can see) has not been lost on me.
AN TEARMANN @ 7:57 AM,
All’s good here, hope you and yours are fine…
Well I understand your dissent, that was partly my point.
It is one of those anomalous things with Celtic. Our football wage figures aren’t broken down.
It’s like when you look at other Clubs stories that are linked to us and you find how secret squirrel our operations are.
When we were linked with Rafa, another Club had announced that he was on their short list of six managers.
Also our dealings with Arsenal, probably not the greatest of examples but, you hear their transfer budget is… say 50M
Why can’t we have short lists and budgets and openess and transparency.
Last summers window we expected to have nett spend on recruitment, we had a huge profit. What was the budget!?
Before this Seasons Cup final we thought there was a recruitment process for our Manager, as we now know there wasn’t.
We have headline wage figures that cannot be reconciled with player wage costs. What makes up the missing 25M!?
We asked the SFA to be open and accountable, yet the way our PLC operates is the exact opposite.
Hail Hail
Jobo
If the barometer that is The Arbroath Emerald CSC bus is a reflection, we will attract around 40,000 ( and we don`t all pay 23 pounds !).
JJ
Sydney Tim
“As one blogger said , we could prob afford to buy approx 80% of full backs in Europe
However it’s bargain bucket for us”
I am not really sure about the internal consistency of this view.
First of all, we have a RB. At the end of last season we had 4 of them. It was not a failure to recruit; it was a failure to recruit well. If we had bought Toljan at £5m or £6m, there are those who would have lauded the recruitment because it was a BIG buy. I’d rather wait till I see a player can play for us and decide if he was a GOOD buy (and, even loanees are bought; they don’t come free with cornflakes). And the reviews (from whom?) of the Israeli guy are as valuable as yours or mine were about Pukki.
So, I am confident that we will have, at least 2, right backs for the meat of the season as I was always confident that we could beat Sarajevo and the Estonians or Macedonians, either with Ralston (or Hendry) at RB, or with 3 at the back or, as it turned out, with a non RB at RB. We actually have a history of converting midfielders into RBs, and vice versa (Peter Grant, Davie Hay, Jackie MacNamara) and, even a winger/Centre forward in Didier Agathe’s case.
So, where is the desperate need to get one in early? Yes, we will need one soon but we did not need them for Q1 and Q2, Just as we did not need Julien to get through nor did we “need” Bolingoli Mbombo, though we used him. Johny Hayes would have seen us through just as well. There was no big gamble.
Now back to your statement. It is really easy to get a RB. More than 80% of the R’s playing in Europe would be happy to come to CP and would be easily bought. Trouble is they would be poorer players than Tony Ralston.
It is because of the unfortunate, for your argument, fact that we are shopping within the top 5% of RBs , not even the top 20%, that it becomes difficult.
You may not rate Tommy Smith or George Baldock or James Justin (hi-jacked by Brendan) but they would easily make the top 5% of RBs in European Senior football; anyone playing in or signed by a club in a big 5 league would qualify as would 40% of RBs in a semi-decent league (Netherlands, Portugal, Swiss, Austrian, Greek, Ukraine, Russia). The best RB in Scotland, a toss up between Tavernier or O’Donnell, neither of them with much in the way of defensive qualities, would scrape into the top 5% too.
So we can buy early easily but run the risk of not improving, or we can get one of our planned targets (Baldock and Gumny have yet to say no) if we wait a bit. Who knows, a really good player might even be waiting to see what our chances are in Q.3 and the play-off before committing to us?
This has been our pattern every year. The only difference I note, at this stage in the cycle, is that we are prepared to sign mature targets with more limited sell-on value, such as Tommy Smith.
I am confident we will sign a RB soon, maybe 2, to add to our options.
I will still be a bit disappointed if we pay over the odds (i.e. more than £2m) for O’Donnell, just as I would be if we paid over £3m for McKenna. As the CQN-exiled Exiled Tim, often said, you can pick up a perfectly competent RB in Spain for not very much ( we have enough amateur Scouts who go there every summer- submit some recommendations to our club!)
Do you think Arsenal Quick News has a Sydney Gooner ?
“Most expensive tickets in the laaaannnnnd and can’t pony up for a sweaty sock, you having a giraffe Venkatesham, you muppet….”
Stephen O’Donnell remains available and can be purchased and on the pitch within 24 hours.
Offer limited to the West of Scotland.
Great news as far as Im concerned that Arsenal and Napoli appear to not fancy paying 25m upfront for KT.
This means our team will be even stronger next season than I had feared.
Infact all this bitching about Peter Lalwell is pretty uncalled for.
We have recruited pretty decently so far this summer and appear to have held firm over our top asset.
I am sure we will get a few more in before the end of the window too.
Chill out disgruntled Celtic fans and enjoy the ride to nine.
If true, then terrific news about Kieran.
I know early days but hope we can find a space up the park for Boli…or the excellent Mikey Johnston…
And if Schved kicks on, then James Forrest gets the kick up the backside Paddy Roberts usefully used a few years ago to keep him fresh.
No favourites, no shoo-ins but let the form player get the jersey.
*Peter Grant at right back……….shudders…..
Many selling clubs play games in transfer negotiations.
Indeed I am sure we have been guilty ourselves of this in the past.
Keep on rejecting offers in the hope you can get an inflated price for your player.
It is a risky game if you need the dosh however and would secretly like the transfer to go through and happen.
However on this occasion I believe Arsenal are finding out that Celtic are not playing games and would be perfectly happy if KT remained at Celtic Park.
We can certainly survive just fine without their 18m plus add ons…..!
Look forward to KT destroying an Arsenal title charge in 2022 after he joins Manchester city for 35 million.
From Castagne (allegedly) at €8 million, to one of Lawwell’s favourite agent’s clients…….fot €1.6…….a sign of our ambition?
St.Stivs 12.01
The @ Iain paisley account is a parody account.a very good one and funny as you point out
Keep it lit as you say.:-)
HH
SFTB
In the roll-call of Celtic midfielders converted to right back, you seem to have overlooked Mikey Galloway…
Gene
Hi there
Thanks for reply on close of epl window few days back.i hope there will be a some signings after that.(If not before)
HH
Five out of four Right Backs don’t understand statistics.
Just sittin’ here thinkin’……………
(Like my style guru hero Champagne Charlie)
;)
Can we as a Club afford to do everything right?
What level of gettin’ things right is acceptable?
How do we manage our own expectations of success and failure – reasonably?
I suppose the answer ( if there is one) determines how happy or otherwise you are going to be with the Club.
Me. I’m happy(ish)