Enthralling and successful league phase

189

Our Champions League, league phase, concluded with only our second defeat of the campaign.  Like the first, it was away from home against a club from a top five league, unlike the first, it was not a humbling experience.  Although five minutes in it promised to be even worse.

Celtic steadied and grew into the game.  Our major positive is the redemption of Adam Idah, who looked like he was in the wrong movie all this term, but flourished at Villa Park, scoring twice in the first half to bring us level at the break.

There are no complaints about the result; Villa deserved to win and in selling Kyogo on Monday, we accepted this probability.  The players and manager deserve credit for competing as they did.  However, the manager’s decision to throw on Dane Murray was demonstrably unfair on the 21-year-old.

Dane has not played a single minute of top flight football in his career and made his only Celtic start (against Midtjylland) in July 2021.  Brendan has shown no inclination of developing the player, but threw him into a cauldron last night.  Managers do like to play games; you and I are not supposed to notice.

12 points and a 21st place finish feels like a huge achievement.  The draw was favourable, but as we saw against Young Boys, it does not matter who you face at this level, you still need to go out and get the job done.

It could have been better.  Brugge figured us out and it took too long to adjust, two points were there for us.  We were far better than Dinamo Zagreb but didn’t find the opening.  Those four points would have taken us level on points with eighth place Villa, but out of the automatic qualification on goal difference.

Only three of the 20 clubs above us play outside the big five leagues: PSV Eindhoven, Benfica and Feyenoord, while Sporting and Brugge mean six teams outside the wealthy leagues made it to the playoffs.

There is so much to unpick from the new league format.  Celtic and Dinamo Zagreb are examples of how to recover from a catastrophic defeat.  Dinamo were draw against Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund, Arsenal, Milan and Monaco.  They started with a 9-2 loss in Munich but finished with 11 points.  Denied progress only on goal difference from a draw which was expected to crush them.

It has been an enthralling, exhausting and successful league phase.  We have earned money, coefficient points and enhanced our reputation as a place to play and scout for players.  The platform has been raised.

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  1. Where are the players we need just to stand still this window, plenty want to bum up how much we have made through the Champions league with record turnover likely again, are we going to leave the squad weaker and pay a huge Corporation Tax bill instead or even sign players the manager yes him knows nothing about?

     

     

    I don’t see an agile club here ready to pounce when given the chance but a slow conservative mean outfit which eventually costs more money than it should, I say again where are the players we need for the squad to even stand still?

  2. Hoping for a wee trip to Germany.

     

     

    Plenty friends in Munich who will be happy to host.

     

     

    It will be frustrating if the idiots spoil it for the majority of our support though.

  3. Burnley78,

     

     

    We asked our fans to go high when the huns went low.

     

     

    The vast majority made us proud, including the ones i know who travelled down.

     

    However certain footage on Tik tok is cringe.

     

     

    HH.

  4. As a result of the use of pyrotechnics during our match against Borussia Dortmund last year, Celtic Football Club was sanctioned by the UEFA Control, Ethics and Disciplinary Body.

     

     

    The decision meant that, not only did the Club receive a fine of €20,000, but also that, if such behaviour was repeated at a match in the next two years, the Club would be prevented from selling tickets to supporters for one away match in UEFA club competitions.

     

     

    Unfortunately, the club has received a further disciplinary notice from UEFA following the match against Aston Villa FC on Wednesday evening.

     

     

    The Club will obviously make robust representations to UEFA and will make every effort to ensure that our fans can attend our next UEFA Champions League match. However, clearly there is a risk that supporters may not be able to attend.

     

     

    In light of this situation, it is incumbent on the club to make supporters aware of this risk, when considering making arrangements for travel, until further information is provided by UEFA.

  5. Job done then by the idiot/idiots, club should find out who they are how they got tickets and ban them from all games.

  6. Bayern, but is it worth booking a flight ?

     

    The boys of the pyro brigade have had their say.

     

    Celtic fans me arse.

  7. We need a 2 goal victory at home against BM , looking forward to it. No reason it can’t happen

     

     

    HH

  8. lets all do the huddle on

    not sure why celtic are moaning about this.

     

     

    if you always give all the tickets to all the same people then you are always going to get the same behaviour.

     

     

    simples.

  9. Back to Basics - Glass Half Full on

    Good draw.

     

     

    We were underdogs regardless of who.

     

     

    But Real Madrid are a better team than Bayern

  10. GP- would take a lot of money to get Christie out of Bournemouth, a top player for them,and I would have taken Armstrong for free in the summer,the don’t go back stuff is a falicy to me

  11. lets all do the huddle on

    celtic have 2 ways out of this – dont take any tickets, or be more ‘selective’ about who gets the tickets.

     

     

    that could apply to all away games, not just bayern.

     

     

    they wont do either obviously and will just carry on the status quo and take whatever punishments authorities dish out

  12. Real Madrid performed better than Bayern Munich in the groups based on their performance and the opposition faced, by two points

     

     

    Based the performance of their opposition across all 8 fixtures Real Madrid had the 5th most difficult fixtures, Bayern Munich the 20th. With the weight of the opposition included Real Madrid were the 6th best performing team, Bayern Munich the 9th

     

     

    Celtic had the 3rd easiest fixtures based on the performance of their opponents, and if you include a weighting of our opposition we were the 25th best performing team in the competition

  13. If Ronnie Hawthorn, Celtic’s Head of Security is at the draw is this so he can plead Celtic’s case against a possible supporters ban away to Bayern? Or does the Head of Security routinely go to these events?

  14. Back to Basics - Glass Half Full on

    Hmm.

     

     

    An individual wearing Celtic colours throws a pyro in contravention of clearly communicated rules.

     

     

    “It’s Celtic’s fault”

  15. lets all do the huddle on

    not sure it matters how blame is attributed.

     

     

    if the pyro comes from within the celtic end, then celtic had responsibility for dishing out those tickets, so uefa will hold celtic responsible, they dont care about the ‘what could celtic have done about it’ arguement, valid though it may be.

     

     

    uefa arent going to ever buy that arguement so the ball will be in celtics court to do something about it

  16. CELTIC40ME @ 11:43 AM,

     

     

    If our draw was harder that OPTA predicted due to our opposition performances, how could we possibly be the 25th best performer…

     

     

    We discussed this the other day – firstly an apology to BURNLEY78 re the 57%

     

     

    Looking at the OPTA analysis again, it seems they revised our chances of qualifying after the draw.

     

     

    Our 28th placing was before the draw, revised to a 57.2% chance of a top 24 finish after the draw, this was based on us getting a predicted 9.7 points total.

     

     

    Yet, after this clarification, it still means we got 25% more points than OPTA predicted.

     

     

    Hail Hail

  17. How long is our club going allow some of the Green Brigade to cause more problems ie Pyros etc ,also come on Celtic make at least 3 Signings before Mondays deadline line ,another winger and 2 centre backs is a priority,

  18. CHAIRBHOY on 31ST JANUARY 2025 11:55 AM

     

     

    Because the opta figures are predicted outcomes.

     

     

    The numbers I used are the actual results for all the competition

  19. lets all do the huddle on

    if lennon miller signs, he would be one of the very few celtic players ever to have a surname for a first name.

     

     

    FACT.

  20. Our opposition averaged 8.875 points which was the third lowest of any team, below Stuttgart and Atléti

     

     

    The average number of points the opposition won for each team was 11.5.

     

     

    Work from there and you’ll get your actual performance compared to the other teams in the competition based on the opposition

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