If you watch football long enough, you learn lessons, or at least, you should. A big lesson for me was the 2008 run-in. After Celtic lost at home to 10-man Motherwell on 5 April, Gordon Strachan’s team were on their knees, miles behind Rangers with seven games to play. Against expectations, Celtic would win all seven, including two against Rangers, and two revenge victories at Fir Park.
During these games, Celtic did not inspire. They were behind after an hour on their last trip to Motherwell. Rangers thought they had the point they needed after 93 minutes in one game, then had the lead on their next visit to Celtic Park, but Celtic conceded nothing. Even that glorious night at Tannadice was tight and could have gone either way (United had a chance just before the break). The match reports from that run-in were not reassuring, and they were up against a good Rangers team too.
There is a clear route for Celtic to win this league. We concede nothing, continue to give the manager and players time, and concentrate on winning the next game. I’m here for it.
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Head firmly in the sand, then.
That Strachan team had a bit more fight than the shower we have now…thanks to our recruitment gurus.
Learning lessons? What about if you weaken your team you will weaken your team? Strengthen from a position of strength? Sign players who fit into the system you play? Back successful managers? You could write a book!
League to win let’s go
:-))
HH
Interesting and actually quite amazing that there is a very slim chance of winning this league . Considering the amount of serious weakening that has been done to the team .
Perhaps the board will be commended in showing the extra-fine judgement needed in creating a cliffhanger finish while still triumphing in the end ?
Yes , that’ll be it ! Far from being incompetent they are masters of brinkmanship .
Kudos to Desmond and his little helpers !
Paul 67,
Lessons to be learned is the most discredited phrase in English vocabulary.
HH.
Greenpinata on 14th April 2026 12:54 pm
Paul 67,
Lessons to be learned is the most discredited phrase in English vocabulary.
HH.
——————-
i wi;;go for …………..
but i thought i was a doctot
In 2007/8 we had Scott McDonald and Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink upfront – 31 and 15 goals that season respectively.
Just saying…
Someone should have warned us about the need to replace all the goals we sold last summer…
Someone should have spent the entire summer highlighting just how many goals the team had lost…
Before the league season started, I posted a valuable lesson as seen on Twitter…
“You can’t hope to compete in Europe, if you sell your best strikers and replace them with rumours”
I suppose ‘europe’ could be interchange with ‘scotland’ and ‘rumours’ with ‘underperforming loan deals’ though the point remains (and is doubtless more relevant than 18 years ago)
Are we learning?
It is abundantly clear, Trump need psychiatric help immediately.
His latest attck om the Pope, laughable.
But maybe he wants a regime change in the Vatican, so don’t be surprised when US tanks roll into Rome
Flynn, thanks for the good wishes, best to you and yours
kingLUBO
Paul
Are we still bed wetters?
Since Brendan’s peak side competed with a draw in Munich last season, ( and were unlucky, with 1-1 )
Bayern now have 105 league goals in 29 games.
We have 59 from 33 ( in the the wee Diddy league )
Trailing the full fats and diets
Off a cliff CSC
How often have we heard players and managers saying they will learn from something then repeat the same thing in the next game? For years we have heard it said after most CL games when our all-conquering SPFL team got humiliated by a team from an even smaller league.
It applies accross all sports at all levels, even at the very top. I watched the Masters at the weekend and couldn’t believe Rory hadn’t learnt or refused to learn that using the driver was jeopardising his chance of winning . Time after time he missed the fairway. At one point in round three he was 90th out of 91 for keeping the ball on the fairway. If he had used the 3 wood off the tee he would almost certainly have built on his lead instead of nearly throwing it all away. Scheffler was 12 shots off the lead with two rounds to go and ended up one shot back having missed an easy birdie putt with two to go.
Rory won in the end, fair enough, but he didn’t learn from his mistakes.
I find a fairly strong similarity between Benji and Kyogo in a funny way. Both scurried around the box looking for a sniff of goal
Maybe I’m wrong
kingLUBO
If memory serves most could see Scott Brown was in poor form but WGS was reluctant to drop him. It was only when he got injured that WGS was forced to change the midfield and the combo of Paul Hartley and Barry Robson would prove instrumental in us winning the league.
That’s how I remember it anyway.
The lesson?
Play the players in form regardless of reputation.
Does anyone know what has happened to Bernardo? Good enough to be given a 5-year contract in 2024 and now is literally invisible. Luke gets on ahead of him.
Watching Celtic on recent weeks has been hard work.
IMHO, Martin probably thinks some of them need a severe hairdryer rant, but he also recognises the team is low on confidence, fragile and riddled with unfit, njured and in a few cases emotionally detached players.
His dilemna then is do I send guys like the misfiring wingers and striker and others back to their parent clubs / out on loan, or is it the case that he may need some of these guys if further injuries hit us.
Tbere is no easy answer, except to be resilient and trust MoN’s judgement.
Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers said: “I am delighted that we have secured Paulo on this long-term contract.
“Paulo had a real desire to join us permanently, having had a great experience already at Celtic, and from our side we wanted to bring a quality player who has already made such an important contribution to the club.
“Paulo made a great impact for us at some real pivotal moments, delivering for us when he needed to for the team and we are sure that he can bring that same determination, ability and quality to us over the next number of years.
“He has been a popular figure in the dressing-room and I know the rest of the players will welcome him back warmly.”
Am I missing something?
I thought that if we won all our remaining games , the worst we can can finish is 2nd (on goal difference).
As far as I can tell neither the full fats or lites are exactly ripping it up. As we are so close to them , and there is so few games left, I feel we have every right to think that winning the league is more than a remote possibility.
I’m with those that are walking on with hope in their hearts.
Seems a lot on here aren’t doing that
I also find the Bernardo situation puzzling . For me , he is a better and stronger player than Luke who seems more suited to the wing than to midfield . At a time when we’re crying out for impactful midfielders too . There must be reasons we’re not privy to .
Agreed Paul, the biggest indictment of this campaign is the lack of quality for all thre contenders. An argument could be made for the collapse of each .
However…we need to play our best players . Start with the strongest 11 and then make strategic subs. Engles and reo in from the start . Nygren and Ox, impact subs
Big Tam needs binned . Literally has nothing. Any of the other strikers please
Celtic v St Mirren
Tickets are now on general sale. Maximum of 6 tickets per transaction
£42.00
I felt a real surge of hope when Adamu back flicked it into the net on debut; but no, seems he’s not the answer to our screaming need for a striker. He and Mvuka; what a couple of stellar signings eh!!
Great points to consider Paul. A really interesting parallel.
Of course our current team are nowhere near what we had when Ange left. A high watermark in football enjoyment and in trophies won IMO.
Whoever is to blame for that is stuff for another day and will be debated for a time. In the absence of any coms from the club beyond DD’s and nothing from BR after his Honda Civic outburst we will never know really. Tisdale possibly had the answers (and knows where the bodies are buried hence he was indulged and that put us in the trouble we are in). That is for another day.
Sadly some folks seem to just want to kick the club regardless.
The same folk who boo’d the club that day v Motherwell.
The same folk who moaned and groaned all of WGS tenure, despite his success.
The same folk who moaned at the ‘slow lane’ which the board took post MON and the overspending of the 2001-5 seasons. Spend which led DD and others to have to bail the club out. Some seemed to have preferred the David Murray ego led alternative at Ibrox.
These folk with such a sound grasp of reality probably moaned and groaned through our best European Cup / CL performances in 50 years beating Milan and Man U and Benfica and others. No doubt a 75% winning league success rate was not enough for them either. Even against financially doped rival.
Still broken clocks are right 2 x each day and plenty of entitled and even justified moaning this season.
It is a good analogy Paul. I do think we made a few critical enforced and form induced changes toward the end that season. The great thing is we can also do this again this season. Engels can add the energy and AJ can add the dig at a critical time. Hopefully a 5 game fit KI can add the goals and the youth and belief of CO can do what we need this time.
The crowd can play its part in a positive sense. They were good on Saturday and hopefully can get even better the closer we get and the better the team does. We never had that until the rangers games on that run in in 2008.
Tannidice that Thursday night was one of my personal top ten ever. Lucky to be there with the whole family. This year, unfortunately, the whole gang will be in France watching son and ‘daughter law’ in the Iron Man 90, but I really hope those who are at CP can have the kind of time we enjoyed in 2008 up there and at CP in 1998 and 1981 and 1979.
Winning the league at CP on the last day of the season is something very rare indeed. What a chance for those who can be there to enjoy being a Celtic supporter well for 5 minutes at least until the rebuild starts and all the armchair experts can enjoy piling on again.
The thought of pushing further beyond the Govan lot and their imaginary girlfriend of a record really would be sweet.
Paul
That’s exactly my attitude. We’ve got to ignore what happens elsewhere and totally focus on what we’re doing. Ignore goal difference and win this league on points.
If we don’t play with 2 strikers then we are playing charades like Rodgers did in the one horse league.
Nothing changes until the PLC structure is dismantled.
No wonder big unlearning Angeball was straight oot the traps to distance himself from the sleekit PLC back channel tentacles.
The PLC won’t be dismantled because the rebels have been replaced with spoiled all seated molly coddled pampered pooches!
The PLC will dilly dally about until they see how many had the balls to not renew season tickets, then the Motherwell tippy tappy guy, or Broony will be wheeled oot as the savior in our hour of need, for old firm reasons.
If the huns win the league and go straight into the CL then Celtic PLC will have a collective wet dream!
And dim Tims will fall for all of the PLC straight upper lip time propaganda because dim Tims are emotionally weak.
Slithering PLC Sharks utterly love emotionally weak suckers!
There would be no Celtic if emotional weaklings were the majority in 1994.
Sad are the homes….
JVoH & Scott McD were in the team of 07/08. Although not the greatest strikers in our history they were decent & did striker stuff like scoring goals & assisting, too.
Our current team basically play without strikers.
That needed fixed since last January. Still waiting.
We could try Mick Nick up front. He’ll be able to ghost about the box as naebody ever sees him.
here’s a mad idea .. play two upfront ??? revolutionary I know
Even one up front would make a difference
Burnley – to me being critical of some club endeavours hardly marks anyone out as less a Celt than the self proclaimed Pollyannas among the fanbase.
We’ve fallen or certainly stalled from a position of pre eminent strength and I take zero thrills from having to accept and sometimes state that as a fan of 50+years standing.
That aside, you get your WC tix all sorted ?
Wee Scott Mc Donald was a brilliant striker for us.Hun skelper of great renown into the bargain.
Burnley,
Keep trying,its pure comedy gold.
” H,mm,if only we knew who was responsible for our catastrophic slump.If only we knew,who hired Nancy.If only we knew,when the team was struggling to score goals,who OKd the signing of,the worst three forwards,on loan,it was possible to do.
Of course all this can be discussed at a later date,when we have a clearer picture”
This is a wind up,right?
We’ve beat the Saints 3 times out of four this season already, could well have been 4 times if we had kept Martin & Co in charge. Beat them again at the weekend and that will be 3 wins in a row for the Celts, going onto play Falkirk who we have already beaten 4 times this season…. you see where I’m going with this…..
Things are going our way….
Bounce game.6 players now doubtful for the rest of the season.
🤐🤐🤐🤐🤐🤐🤐🤐🤐🤐🤐🤐🤐🤐🤐🤐🤐🤐
Iraoli leaving Bournemouth,end of season.
We must be favourites,surely.,,,,,,,,,,🤔
Scott McD’s peach at the Spam Siro 👌
https://youtu.be/iZTiaNik4Yc?si=jizquKH4NuTZ5pkk
I’ll never forget 2008 – one of my favourite league wins for sure.
I won’t give up on this one by any means until it’s done.
Others are right to point out that we had far better strikers in 2008 than now.
This is the full team that beat Dundee Utd to clinch the league in 2008:-
Celtic: Boruc, Hinkel, Caldwell, McManus, Naylor (Wilson 76), Nakamura (Scott Brown 62), Hartley, Robson, McGeady, McDonald, Vennegoor of Hesselink (Samaras 81).
Subs Not Used: Mark Brown, Donati, Sheridan, O’Dea.
I would say that we are marginally stronger in defence now but weaker in midfield and far weaker up front.
Can we win every game with this squad between now and the end of the season?
I think we can but I don’t think we will. What worries me is that we haven’t beaten Hearts or Rangers in a league game as yet this season.
Truth is , for me, that we are realistically relying on both Hearts and Rangers to have something of a collapse. Hearts are more likely for me to do so.
Long story short , we need some really solid performances and a bit of luck.
I don’t think Hearts or Rangers are much different in needing that too.
Neither are far better than us.