Media and Spartak take hit for underestimating Celtic

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Celtic’s win in Moscow on Tuesday has caused an interesting introspection in Russia, with both Spartak and some in the Russian media coming under scrutiny.  The pre-match tone was set by comments we reported from former Spartak player and coach, Andrey Tikhonov, who, on the day of the draw, said:

“Barcelona are favourites from the group. We and Benfica will be fighting for second place.

“Celtic are outsiders. The Champions League competition is about very good technical football.  It has nothing to do with running after the ball that somebody kicked forward.”

Another former Spartak player and Soviet international, who now works as a technical analyst and all-round raconteur , Aleksandr Bubnov, had a completely different take on Celtic, Spartak and the Russian and Scottish media.

Bubnov told Russian television:

“Spartak players thought they could push Celtic defenders around like toys.  They played long crosses forward like the idiots.  Celtic defenders knocked back everything.  It was like training for Celtic, they were on holiday.

“When Celtic attacked for the first time, de Zeeuw thought that Insarualde would stop the Celtic player, Insarualde thought Pareja will stop him.  When Celtic scored de Zeew asked, ‘Where was Pareja ?’  Pesjakov answered de Zeeuw, “You forgot?  Pareja is still at the lunch, he will be back for the second half.”

Bubnov criticised TV analysts who before the game debated whether Celtic would survive in the bottom half of the Russian premier division or a lower division.  He added:

“We were told by the experts that Spartak will shut Celtic out, kill them and bury outside the stadium.  They are experts, they watch games, they take money for this kind of analysis.  They told us Celtic are one story heroes.

“They talked about Rangers relegated to the fourth Division for financial cheating.  You see how they do things there?  What fantastic salvation. You are cheaters Rangers?  OK, go and take long rest.  Those in charge are professionals, nobody would help Rangers. They don’t go to the president, or the prime minister.

“Cherdantsev (TV expert) never played football.  You heard him, Spartak players and all these experts. ‘No problem, champions of Scotland?  Who are Celtic, who are Scotland?

“Experts?  Did they watch Celtic against Benfica? Benfica are top in Portugal, Celtic drew with them.  Even the stupid Scottish experts came here and told us Spartak would win 2-0.”

When asked how Spartak should play in the return game against Celtic, Bubnov suggested:

“You need to close wings and play carefully at the back. Celtic will not perform like Spartak did against Barcelona. They played and let the other team play.

“Neil Lennon was very smart coach.  He closed Spartak options on the wings.  Emeri (Spartak manager) should close Celtic wings.  Emeri’s tactics was move wingers to the centre to leave more room for attacks from left and right defenders.  But, our defenders were poor and slow.

“Emeri was stupid, he moved Aiden McGeady and Dmitri Kombarov to the centre because Neil Lennon closed wings.  What happened? They both played out of position and Kombarov scored an own goal.”

“Spartak were open on the wings and there was a brothel at the back.  Neil Lennon did what he wanted to do with Spartak”

Conversational Russian is apparently rich with imagery.

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965 Comments

  1. Good morning CQN

     

     

    Anyone going up in front of the SFL disciplinary panel

     

    Should take Green or McMoist with them guaranteed to be let off

     

    With a pat on the back

     

     

    Keep the Faith

     

     

    Hail

  2. BOBBY MURDOCH'S CURLED-UP WINKLEPICKERS on

    FORTUNE’S FAVOUR MIBBES

     

     

    Some vid,bud.

     

     

    Saved to favourites,hopefully it will stay up long enough to be more widely viewed.

     

     

    PETEC

     

     

    Glad you enjoyed Tuesday evening,mate. A great performance from every Celtic player that night,a very rare occurrence.

  3. Morning all!

     

     

    Since Tuesday night I have received countless e-mails and text messages from friends back in Scotland who have all taken great delight in ‘ripping the p*sh’ out of the zombies!

     

     

    They are sick! Good!

     

     

    As for the msm – or the ‘…stupid Scottish experts’ …- a lot of grudging praise from them. The general consensus was that we would lose, remember!

     

     

    Very much looking forward to Sunday – a full house hopefully, and a performance like Tuesday.

     

     

    It’s great to be a TIM!

     

     

    HH!!

  4. Nuclear Bovril and a Half Munched Pie on

    Alex T tweeting that there will be more from Craig Whytes parallel universe in his blog later today.

     

     

    Such fun!

  5. saltires en sevilla on

    Good morning fellow Celts, nice blue skies over Renfrewshire

     

     

    Well done to big Fraser on his selection for Engerlund….hope he gets a game soon

  6. Keeping with the oldest profession theme of the Spartak defending, to combat this Hearts are believed to be trying a new 3 at the back system for Sunday, in Edinburgh parlance I believe it’s called the hairy triangle?

  7. Dontbrattbakkinanger on

    goldstar10 – 5-0 will have the ole gazebo rockin!

     

     

    B/kev- so ole tremblin’ mince v tremblin’ minge?

  8. Margaret McGill

     

     

    I have to deny the generosity of provision of the bottle of Bacardi. Must have been someone else at the table who won this and donated it to you.

     

     

    Did Sannabhoy not win something in the raffle?

  9. glendaly just let me know that we have a new addition

     

     

    baby bhoy glen Daly born 2.30am..

     

     

    mother and baby doing well..

     

    father shattered after 48 hour labour….

     

     

    Well done….

  10. I see that the derby tonight is a sell out,who needs the cheats.Scottish football is on the way up.HH

  11. sftb ,

     

     

    would have been a good trick . didn’t buy a single raffle ticket ! I was givena bottle of ballantynes by mouldy67 so maggie’s bacardi might have come from that direction.

     

     

    Sanna

  12. Congrats to glendaly jnr. and the woman who did the hard work!

     

     

     

     

    According to The Huddleboard, someone recently traded/offloaded almost 450k Celtic shares.

     

     

    The speculation is that Dermot may have lost a bet at The Dunhill Cup.

     

     

    Any more poor golfing form and we could end up with Ian Botham as a majority shareholder.

     

     

    Sack the majority shareholder!

     

     

    Appoint Martin Kaymer in his place.

  13. Congratulations to Mr and Mrs Glen Daly and Jnr. Another Celt to the Celtic Family.

     

     

    HH

  14. gorbalstam

     

     

    Aye something along those lines they’re always due a skelping nasty little team with nasty orcish followers…..

     

     

    Intae them Celts..

  15. South Of Tunis on

    A wee bit of perspective ——

     

     

    Much talk in the Italian fitba media re the excellence of ” low cost ” Bate Borisov.. —– Cost of the side that humped Bayern Munich ? —— ” only 52 million euros “.

     

     

    Italian clubs in the Europa League——–

     

     

    Easy away win for Inter [ in Baku] . Great performance from the excellent Brazilian – Coutinho

     

    .

     

    Excellent away win for Udinese at Liverpool . Udinese started this season badly — must be hard to maintain standards when you constantly sell your best players and replace them with prospects . They now look like they are gelling .

     

     

    Lazio struggled to win 1-0 at home to Maribor [ attendance 10 k !]

     

     

    Napoli humped 3-0 by PSV in Eindhoven .. Napoli fielded it’s B team . Played like they didn’t give a toss ———— Napoli’s Manager – Mazzari said this after the game ————————

     

     

    ” Losing here doesn’t matter —– losing Sunday’s Serie A game v Udinese would matter a lot “.

     

     

    High 20s —- big sun and clear blue skies -early October -way down south .

  16. South Of Tunis on

    Is there any truth in the rumor that the next showing of Blue Peter will feature instructions re how to make a tax avoidance scheme ?

  17. traditionalist88 on

    Further to the comments re. the article about Celtic vs Shamrock Rovers in 86, there was a similiar article in one of the tabloids, one of their columnists is ex Rovers. Keely I think his name is. Said Celtic tried to sign him for 40k after the game but that there were some strange conditions attached to the move – he had to give the club his passport to look after(he told Celtic he was a teacher and could look after his own passport!) and he had to shave his beard as Celtic thought he looked a bit mad! Didnt sign in the end as Celtic were offering him schoolboy terms thinking he’d jump at the chance.

     

     

    Anyway, he said there was a bit of banter flying around during the match, Mo Johnstone kept calling him a ‘f*****g amateur’ and so on.He commented on how when the ball was played forward by Celtic Mo Johnstone would spin left and the other striker(McClair?) would spin right. He said one of the other Rovers defenders got his own back for the amateur jibes by waiting for Johnstone to spin off and sticking his arm into the air… Johnstone almost had his head taken off and it looked accidental.

     

     

    Your man Kelly said ‘it looked accidental, but I knew different!’

     

     

    We may not have thought so at the time, but he never hit him hard enough.

     

     

    HH

  18. Morning,

     

     

    (Joe Ledley)

     

    “Most people wanted to see an Old Firm game against Rangers but as players we don’t care,” the Welshman said. “Am I missing the Old Firm games? No, nowhere near it. When you’re playing in the Champions League it makes up for it. It was a fantastic achievement what we did in Moscow [beating Spartak 3-2 on Tuesday evening]. We are just happy with the way we are playing and who we are playing against.

     

     

    “It doesn’t bother us at all [if we face Rangers this season]. We just want to keep playing and see what happens. Our main aim is to win the league, win all the cups and to get as far as we possibly can in Europe. Those are our main aims. Rangers are not in the SPL so we have to get on with things. Can we do the clean sweep this season? Fingers crossed, yes, that is definitely our aim. It’s going to be difficult because people will be wanting to [beat us] but our aim is to win all three trophies.”

  19. South of Tunis

     

     

    I was watching a bit of the Liverpool – Udinese game last night. Was surprised to see that Di Natale is still at Udinese. I know that he’s getting on a bit now and that Udinese have performed at a decent level in recent years, but I thought that one of the traditional big clubs might have taken a punt on him for a season two in the summer. Was there any chat?

  20. Lennon n Mc....Mjallby on

    The Welsh are from great stock,no messing about with them,I dont know a Welshman I didnae like.

     

     

    Well said oor Joe.

  21. Family been told by police,April won’t be found alive.Scumbag charged with murder.Hang the b@$/@#d.

  22. ScotPatsFan

     

     

    04:54 on 5 October, 2012

     

     

    Memories of Kenilworth Avenue,the only place where I ever got a real kicking but it was my regular way home from Wishy in the 80’s.Just got off the Craigneuk CSC bus outside Arnotts/Bairds (can’t remember) walking along Kenilworth minding my own business when 6 or 7 huns decided I was to be the target for the day.I was lucky a passing driver stopped and gave me the chance to make a break for it it could have been worse.A night in the LAW A+E followed but still the criminal injuries came in handy…..:-)

     

     

    I remembered one of their faces and caught up with him a year or so later……..that was fun.I wonder to this day if he even realises who I was and why I did it.

     

     

    Ah memories of deepest darkest……just realised that was at least 30 years ago!!!