Celtic got what they deserved at Rugby Park yesterday. An inspired early goal by Ryan Christie limited the damage to two dropped points but that aside, Kilmarnock coped easily with everything Celtic could muster. After being caught out by Christie, Danny Rogers in the Killie goal did not have a save to make for the rest of the game. Who would have thought?
Post-match, Neil Lennon referred to Christopher Jullien’s slow start to last season. After a poor performance at Fir Park he was dropped for the infamous defeat to Cluj at Celtic Park. Chris got better then and he will do so again, but he lost Nicke Kabamba in dangerous positions three times in the first half.
He does not have problems with big stirkers, as was alleged on TV commentary; the significance of that goal by Lyndon Dykes at Livingston could not be more overstated. But he is a big lad who clearly needs a better preseason.
Crossing was poor, control cumbersome and the physical battle was often too much. The lack of physicality is a concern; we are small and light in several areas. One of the hottest strikers in Europe spent much of the game a spectator, despite our most valued creatives playing. It really was a team dropping points together.
The manager changed the shape of the team on 65 minutes but to no effect. Olivier Ntcham had the last 10 minutes but by then Killie were settled and Celtic, increasingly desperate. You know me and Olivier, I would have introduced him earlier. Or, had him on from the start.
Neil has dropped points at Rugby Park before and he knows how to build a response. No one was “thrown under the bus”, as he said later. Until then, we have to live like others, not at the top of the table, for a change.
We are going to face a lot of packed defences this season and play on a few plastic pitches. There can be no complaints, let’s just get better at overcoming both.
Given a choice of winning yesterday, or facing two away draws in Champions League qualification, I would take the draw with Killie and home times against Reykjavik, then either Ferencvaros or Djurdargens, the prospect we face after different types of draws yesterday and today.
Home ties until we are well into our season is a huge bonus. There is still work to do, but the prospect of a Lincoln Red Imps rerun is receding. Wish we could attend these games.
Sweden is Europe’s Covid herd immunity test case and the test has not gone well. It remains to be seen what travel restrictions visitors from Sweden are in place when the second round takes place on 15 and 26 August.
412 Comments- Pages:
- «
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- »
That’s a pile of poo if true about Boli.
That boy Falk for Copenhagen has been fantastic tonight. Would love a player like that wearing the hoops
Ps Jobo.
I think I got my vote in with mins to spare.
Extra time Copenhagen.Terrific performance.
Copenhagen are a very well coached team.
There will be more than Bolingoli and Griff and not just at Celtic…..I can see fitba being stopped pretty soon if there is much more of this nonsense.
*** CQN PLAYER OF THE YEAR 2020-21 ***
RESULTS FROM GAME #2 – KILMARNOCK 1 CELTIC 1 (CHRISTIE)
Yesterday at 4.41pm Ryan Christie scores his free kick and we are top of the league (again!) on goal difference. Not playing great but well in control of the game. At 4.54pm we concede a stone wall penalty, Kilmarnock equalise and we fall to 4th in the table. We spent the next hour and a bit huffing and puffing and failing to produce any real ingenuity or sparkle and so left with what we deserved, a share of the points.
There were days like these last season but we still had players who played well. It was a challenge to most of us on here to find 3 players worthy of our votes yesterday. Indeed I received 5 emails to that effect (“naebdy’s getting’ any votes…”), 2 who only voted for 1 player and 1 who thought that only 2 players were worth voting for. But still thank you to everyone for taking the time to vote or to vent!
And quite a few of you who did include 3 names were almost apologetic in your email, trying to justify what made you select them. Gave me a wee smile whilst adding up the votes this evening. But just remember, it’s a secret ballot and if YOU thought any particular player did well then your opinion is just as valid as anyone else’s. And I don’t think I’ve ever revealed who votes for who so I’m not going to start now.
So, the votes have been counted and I am pleased to announce that the total votes cast for each player are as follows (with my own choices asterisked) –
Barkas: 21
Frimpong: 6
Jullien: 0
Ajer*: 9
Taylor: 20
Forrest: 2
Brown: 1
McGregor*: 20
Christie*: 34
Elyounoussi: 0
Edouard: 2
Elhamed: 2
Klimala: 0
Ntcham: 4
Bolingoli: 3
So the players receiving points for the game against Kilmarnock are –
Christie – 5 points
Barkas – 4 points
McGregor – 3 points
Taylor – 3 points
Ajer – 1 point
And the overall points table is now as follows –
1st – Christie and Taylor – 6 points
3rd – Edouard and McGregor – 5 points
5th – Barkas and Frimpong – 4 points
7th – Ajer – 1 point
8th – Bain, Bolingoli, Brown, Dembele, Elhamed, Elyounoussi, Forrest, Jullien, Klimala, Ntcham,
Our next game is on Wednesday evening at 6PM when we travel to play St Mirren. At least it’s on grass 😉
Hail Hail!
RON67 on 10TH AUGUST 2020 9:48 PM
lone striker = target man
Not exclusively, certainly not these days
Don’t think that was a penalty for Manu
Official statement from Celtic,regards Boli.Big trouble for him.He tested negative,but can you imagine the repercussions if he had tested positive.No excuses.Has to go.Transfer listed.
Typical Man U penalty,typically,soft.
Game surely cancelled on wednesday now?
CELTIC40ME
ok you win , you’re at the wind up now.
Arrogant little prick contract shud b ripped up and shown the door
https://celtsarehere.com/major-error-of-judgement-club-fuming-at-celtic-defender-over-rule-break/
Bolingoli should be fined exactly what we paid for him then he can GTF.
Unbelievable utterly unbelievable
D ::)
Boli says: ‘I have made a huge mistake. I want to apologise to my manager, my teammates, the supporters, everyone at Celtic and so many others for letting them down so badly.’
TBH any more of this nonsense from any more SPL players and the government will shut football down.
so when is a lone striker not a target man
That Copenhagen goalie has been Foster-esque tonight – magnificent saves
When did Bolingoli go and when did he come back and why was he not at training or on the treatment table?
EMBRAMIKE on 10TH AUGUST 2020 10:19 PM
That Copenhagen goalie has been Foster-esque tonight – magnificent saves
————————————————-
My Bhoy suggested we should have gone for him when we were searching for a goalie.
Pog,
My initial thought too, does he not train with the first team and can bugger off unnoticed for a jolly😵
Pog- they probably didn’t notice that he was missing….
Rolling_Stone @ 12:49 pm
Its a complete false equivalence to compare the current league season with this Sevco team to our title when the nearest competitor was Motherwell. There was hardly any level of concern or indeed, if there was, it was not sustained as it’s totally ridiculous to believe that anyone aside from Celtic could have won titles 2-5 on our march to 9IAR.
Of course it’s a false equivalence- which is why I did not make it. I made a comparison not an equivalence. As for – “hardly any concern” and “short-lived”- go back and read the blog. Not only were there fears that we could lose the league- they were baldly stated in balck & white on here. If you were here, you would have read them. You may prefer to forget but, like Rangers Continuity Myth, forgetting the truth does not make a lie true.
So please cut the nonsense that worrying about winning the league this year is in anyway comparable to any worrying (if it was sustained) during the initial NL/RD titles.
It is comparable. It may not be equivalent but it is comparable. You have, without acknowledging it, moved your position from “it’s absolute nonsense and never happened” to stating “it’s absolute nonsense- there were only a few, they did not really mean it and they quickly stopped it”. Hardly an absolute then, hardly a nonsense. But it is difficult to debate with such shifting sands.
The desire to pretend that what happened 9 years ago or even 4 is of any relevance now is, frankly, crazy.
I think that is rather a loose definition of crazy that would win few endorsements from the psychiatric community. I have no pretence that there is an equivalence but I have no compunction in stating that the same things were said then and were shown to be wrong. This time they may be right but they also may still be wrong.
Notwithstanding where we are as a team now compared to where we were then, the main issue is where Sevco are compared to then.
Sevco beat us on pens when they were stll a Championship club. They can beat us when they are a much poorer side than we are and when they are getting closer to our level and vice versa. Despite beating us in that one off match, they had to wait a long time till they came close to us again. We enjoyed those hefty beatings we gave to them but we knew it would not always be 5:1’s and 6:2’s. When they were much better than us, they beat us more often than not and gave occasional heavy doings but we won and drew a few and it was never a foregone conclusion. Same when we are better than them.
As the facts showed last year, Stevie Gerrard got a great improvement out of his team. If we had continued to play at the 3rd season (half-season) BR level, they might have even overtaken us but Neil improved our level too and we finished well clear of them. You are stating that our angst over titles 4, 5 or 8 years ago has no relevance but you are citing the relevance of Sevco’s perforance under Stevie Gee, these last 2 seasons as relevant, but you leave out the domestic improvement that Neil brought to us last year.
They had an average manager, no players of any real quality and were getting dumped out of Europe by the 4th best team in Luxembourg; nevermind that everytime we played them we wonder how many we would score, not if we would win.
This was the false war period. All promoted clubs, even a strangely-funded one like Sevco, struggles to adapt to regular games against Premiership outfits. Apart from Morelos, who have they got or bought that is sought after by other teams? Their recruitment has always been asset stripping Ibrox-minded players from Hearts, Killie, Aberdeen and wherever- even when they were in League Two. That is good enough to get them ahead of the rest of the pack because those are the temas they are weakening. Gerrard’s biggest achievement was getting them to 2nd place in his first season, only 9 points off the champions. It is arguable that they regressed last year since they finished 13 points behind in a curtailed league which would have likely seen the gap go to nearer 20 points if the league had been able to play out. But we both know that Celtic and Sevco both improved and we stayed well ahead of their improvements. If there is any relevance to the angst of the last two seasons, the bottom line refutation of that threat is that we saw them off twice and by a healthy margin. And there is no guarantee that they will improve for a 3rd year running. There are three possibilites- they can get better, get worse or stay the same.
Well, now Sevco have gone further in Europe than we have since MON and have turned things around in the Glasgow Derbies quite comfortably.
Fraid not, we have been last 16 CL on 3 occasions, under WGS (2x) and NFL, that is a superior achievement to a last 16 Europa where they lost home and away. How could you forget those matches vs AC, Barca and Juve?
Yep, they beat us and it was always gonna happen. Yes they outperformed us too in a couple and that too was gonna happen. But, troublesome bottom line again- they have won nothing and we have been winning everything. That can’t be dismissed as irrelevant, or as a spurious or outdated comparison.
What it isn’t and can never be, is a guarantee that we will win the next one. Title one was not guaranteed, nor were 2,3,4,5,6,7,8 or 9. We worked and earned every one of them and no Hun narrative of “it doesn’t count cos we were poor or not there!” will wash with me.
Rather than addressing or considering risks we seem to be trying to swaddle ourselves in past achievements as a means to distract ourselves from the closing gap. This is not to say that if things remained as they were we would not win the league, but there are clearly bigger risks at play and we have the means to effect change.
The gap did not close; it went from 9 to 13 (going on 20), precisely because we considered the risks, planned better and outperformed them. We had the means and used them well enough domestically.
“All the time omitting to mention that we are at a much higher level in the 21st century in Europe than we were in the last 20 years of the 20th century.”
I’m sorry but what has that got to do with anything? We were very badly run then,so what?
Don’t pull the ‘well run club’ line but them simultaneously compare us to a desperate period in our history. Its about the here and now and we pay a CEO £3m a year for the privilege. It’s parochial to look back and compare us to that period.
The anything it has to do with, is to show that these are good times and should be enjoyed uncomplacently, rather than fretted about unenjoyably. The CEO is overpaid- on that we agree- but you have misused the word “parochial”. Most of our matches are domestic. We have rejoiced over every past domestic triumph and will continue to do so. That pride is no more parochial then Bayern’s pride in winning the Bundesliga and DFB-Pokal Cup or Barca’s in winning La Liga or Copa del Ray.
I think we can all agree that financially, we are a well run club with honest income. We can argue that we could be a better run club financially but you’ld have a hard road convincing anyone we are badly run financially.
Now badly run over Res 12, the Continuity Myth, LNS Commision and the OBaF Act- there we do have issues. But that is not the point you are pursuing.
That penalty pisses me off so much. Earlier on a Copenhagen player beats two united players in the box and they are all over him. He stays on his feet and crosses it. Martial would have dived.
Manchester United are cheats
If we are allowing players to disappear for 4 days I’m beginning to worry also about our professionalism.
TIMALOY29 on 10TH AUGUST 2020 10:31 PM
‘Manchester United are cheats’….
I will never forget all the fawning over the great Ryan Giggs career when all that stays with me one night at old trafford is when he decided to cheat celtic out of a champions league win or draw.
Never forgiven him….and that was against the club that funded his testimonial.
BIG WAVY on 10TH AUGUST 2020 10:37 PM
My major concern is that clearly as of yesterday teatime Neil Lennon still knew nothing of this or surely he would never have risked playing him in a million years let alone on the bench.
Very very concerning that this could unfold.
Could this possibly impact on our European tie?
Griffiths and Boli, just get rid of both. Unprofessional liabilities. Rogic should be on a shaky peg as well, knocked his pan in when his deal was running down, signed a 5 stretch and then goes missing for 2 years. Not good enough.
Surely we are in the clear because he was tested negative?
I am pretty sure the only trouble is what ‘could’ have been.
Boli is clearly fully aware of what he has done or risked and has decided he want to angle his departure from scotland sooner than later.
Lazydynamite
That’s what gets me too. Is our regime so lax that you can disappear to spain for 4 days so early in the season? That’s 4 days we didn’t train, no ongoing connection with the player, etc.
This is worse than the Dons heading to the pub 1 afternoon.
As I’m now on a roll, I thought Neil’s response to Griff’s investigation was all wrong too – “I didn’t see much wrong with it”. Football is on probation, people’s lives have been ruined, ordinary folk have made massive sacrifices. Really, really poor.
Lazydynamite
He has to hit 8 days since I think. Despite the tests, he might still have it and it hasn’t surfaced.
Dreadful.
In fact, they should bag Boli.
BIG WAVY on 10TH AUGUST 2020 10:47 PM
I love Neil Lennon and defend him every time on here.
But you are correct.
This makes him look like a fool and a bad manager of players.
And after clearly not knowing that Boli had been away in a now restricted country[spain] for 4 days he actually was so unaware he even gave him a rare appearance!!!!!!…most weeks it would never have been an issue at all.
oh dear
GREENPINATA on 10TH AUGUST 2020 8:35 PM
FRANKTERRY on 10TH AUGUST 2020 8:12 PM
The the millionth gazilionith time , i did not vote for Brexit. Proudly or not.
But who cares,more deflection.
___
You didn’t read my post properly. Look at it again.
Correct me if I’m wrong but your story is that you didn’t vote in the most important political decision in decades because you didn’t think you were clever enough to understand it? That’s what you posted, isn’t it?
However, even though you were too lazy and ignorant to vote you have still posted in the past defending the people who did vote for Brexit. Which does seem kinda weird doesn’t it? I mean, if you cared so little about democracy to not even vote why would you take time to defend Brexiters? I’m sure you’re being entirely honest but at the same time when you actually think about it, it does sound like a crock of shit, doesn’t it?
And then there were the Ayn Rand quotes you’ve put up (fav author of Dominic Cummings, but of course you’ll deny any knowledge of that) which instead of discussing you tried to claim you had no opinion of. Why would someone put up quotes that they supposedly had no view on? That is actually a particular type of trolling but again, I’m sure you’re not aware of that.
And then there were your posts against the diary of Bobby Sands appearing on here, anti BLM, and the rousing posts at the start of the pandemic to beg us not to apportion any blame to the gov.
You (and people like you who either didn’t vote or voted for Brexit) are going to cause real genuine hardship to millions of people – and especially the young.
So forgive me for calling bullshit on your crocodile tears about the kids who’ve lost out in the exams fiasco.
You’ve done worse to them.
Forgiveness is the Ultimate Key.
I’ve added the Old Testament to my Blind Drunkenesd playlist.
I still have my Treasured New Testament and my playlist Mixed in there Scooby Scooby Doo.
Let Callum run amok frae deep midfield Scott.
Frankterry,
Are you stalking me.? Lol.
Deflection again. Playing the man, not the ball.
Then again: .No deprived postcodes in your suburbia.
GREENPINATA on 10TH AUGUST 2020 11:14 PM
Is that really the best you can do?