On the road this week so today’s blog is by author Stephen O’Donnell:
Pick the bones out of that! I didn’t see Legia against St. Patrick’s Athletic in the previous qualifying round, but by all accounts they were fairly unimpressive, even in winning 5 – 0 in Dublin. I was even tempted to have a wee bet on Celtic to win by more than one goal on Wednesday night, and by the time my hastily arranged subscription to Premier Sports had come through things were looking good after Callum McGregor’s early strike.
Sadly, it didn’t last. It’s a measure of how poorly Celtic played on the night that they were lucky to escape from Warsaw with a 4 – 1 defeat because, let’s face it, but for Fraser Forster and some wayward penalty taking, it could have been worse.
As expected, it didn’t take long for the Celtic Newsnow stream to start filling up with tales of anguish and pontification from the mainstream media. From AEK Athens to Maribor, the list of European failures at certain other clubs (including one that is now defunct) is long and distinguished, but nothing gets the SMSM in full gloating mode like a painful Celtic defeat on the Continent.
On Wednesday we were reminded about Artmedia Bratislava, Utrecht, Karagandy etc., I even heard Neuchatel Xamax being mentioned at one point. The key of course is that there is no context and analysis provided when these previous losses are dragged up, Celtic supporters simply have to suffer such painful reminders.
This lack of constructive analysis is a pity because there are comparisons and parallels that can be usefully drawn with previous chastening experiences in Europe. It seems that new Celtic managers are particularly vulnerable to them; Tony Mowbray initially enjoyed a successful preseason, including winning the Wembley Cup, but his first competitive game was a 1 – 0 home defeat to Dynamo Moscow. Neil Lennon had Utrecht and Braga, and of course Gordon Strachan had Artmedia.
It’s what happened in Bratislava that I think has most relevance to Wednesday night – a new manager in post, replacing a club legend, trying to introduce a more cerebral approach, a squad clearly divided amongst those who are still pining for the previous incumbent and those who want to move on and embrace the new manager’s methods… the parallels in fact are numerous and really quite striking. Hopefully this is a sign that Ronny, like WGS before him, will turn this early setback around and grow into the role of Celtic manager.
One of the most important aspects of managerial success is the chemistry between the boss and his players. This lack of a connection in the dressing-room and on the training field is the reason John Collins failed at Hibs; it’s why Mowbray didn’t last out a season at Celtic. If the chemistry isn’t right then the team will lack focus, motivation and game intelligence at crucial times in the season, and these traits were all conspicuous by their absence in both Warsaw and Bratislava.
But chemistry takes time, it didn’t come immediately to either Lennon or Strachan, and Ronny Deila still has the opportunity to get his progressive ideas across and win the respect and admiration of his squad. If that happens then, like Lenny and WGS before him, he will go on to lead Celtic to domestic and European success.
In the meantime, there is the second leg still to come. If the parallels with Artmedia and Karagandy are to be heard in the media again then Legia could yet be in for a tough night next week. The tie is most certainly not over and it will slowly be dawning on the players who let themselves down on Wednesday that there is only one way to make up for what happened.
Pride and defiance have to come to the fore again, and the situation is still retrievable. All the ingredients are there for a potentially famous night at Murrayfield next Wednesday.
Follow Stephen O’Donnell on twitter @stephenodauthor
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Also interesting to see Manchester City will be sending players to New York City FC to develop and get game time. This is the future for wealthy clubs.
Bayern, Real Madrid and Barcelona have always had reserve sides playing in lower leagues. City will have feeder teams in the MLS and A-League. Chelsea loaned out 24 odd players (a lot to Vitesse Arnheim). Udinese, Granada and Watford move lots of players around as well.
Chelsea have invested 10+ million in Lukaku, loaned him out for a few seasons and made a healthy profit. De Bruyne was exactly the same. Kalas cost 5 million and is out on loan at Vitesse.
They do all this while nicking players like Islam Feruz and Nathan Ake.
They are hoarding all the young talent and moving them around. The big sides in Europe will be happy to monopolize young talent.
….PFayr supports WeeOscar
Yes I remember it well. Did he do it when it mattered?
LB
Watching the CG gymnastics reminded me of many years ago
Me and the brothers came in to watch Ludmilla tourischeva
Wit a stoater she was.
Anyway instead of her,on came Olga Korbut
We thought,sh!t
Olga then started doing somersaults and backflips on the Beam
Then the ole fella looks over his paper to see wat the fuss is all about
Then say’s “that wee lassie better watch wit she’s daen or she’ll give herself a right sore crack
Exit me and the brothers wi our fists in our mooths,tears streaming
We don’t need to shop in the EPL market
We’ve missed a slew of Scottish players of late
Decent young players to take on loan from big clubs with too many players ….lower level La Liga players
The money we wasted on Pukki, Boeriggter and Balde is outrageous….
We can afford better than we have
Livi bhoy
12 in 16 would suggest yes
Not his fault that Mowbray dud stupid things like playing SB at left back
Big Wavy
In which case , you’re the boss, get a better scouting team in
….PFayr supports WeeOscar
I would argue that Robbie didn’t produce when it really mattered like when we lost games to Killie and Ross County.
I don;t think we got value for money with Robbie Keane.
LB
LiviBhoy
Yep, this attitude of a minority that they will only attend on the big occasions is not what being a supporter is all about. Some have been spoiled by the big nights.
I do believe that a better matchday atmosphere would entice a lot more along.
HH
Timaloy29
Not in that context.
We’re always told nowadays that football is a business. Fine, well businesses operate fundamentally on customer satisfaction. I realise there’s much fallout from Warsaw but whether or not this is soley responsible for the current ‘feel bad’ factor of a many Celtic fans is debatable. It exists nonetheless. In my opinion its a collection of rank bad results over the last four years or so.
PL is paid to balance the books but he does so at an emotional cost to his almost captive customer. I just think he could do it better.
Simonandgarfunkelcsc.
Safunny ole game
If we had beaten legia by two goals some would have grumbled that the £20 is way overpriced to watch us finish the job in embra
The fact we are 1-4 down going to murrayfield has many deciding not to go as the tie is over and we are pony
Come on you bhoys in green … Let’s all be true to the celts and back the team 100%
ACGR you might be right I’d phone them direct just to be sure (907) 279 1782 tell them Hebcelt told you to phone!!! Good Luch Hail Hail Hebcelt
The consequences of last summer’s disastrous transfer window will have an affect on money available this summer and in January. Failure to qualify for the CL will merely exacerbate this.
Whoever decided that spending circa £7-8m on Balde, Boerriggter & Pukki was a good use of limited resources should not be allowed anywhere near transfer dealings again. Sadly I suspect that they will be the ones calling the ‘cheaper’ shots again this summer.
RD will pay for the consequences of last summer in the same way NL had to pay for the consequences of the TM tenure.
@PFayr
Most of our players are better than the Scottish equivalent.
Sure if we kept David Marshall and signed McCormack, Snodgrass & McCarthy when we had the chance we might have been better off. But we would probably have as many duds like Fraser Fyvie, Gary O’Conner and so on.
traditionalist88
The biggest issue for people not attending is cost. Almost £30 for an SPFL match is about a tenner too expensive. When we had a sold out ground it was about £20. Everything has gone up since the days we filled our ground weekly except the wages of the fans.
LB
Happy Friday CQN!
Is Just another Tim on today?
I think it was him who set up the EPL Fantasy League and was looking for his code??
Ta
B-)
@ Livi Bhoy
Season books came down significantly and there was no uptake. Some fans only care about 6 CL games a year.
Awe Naw
got you.
btw the HTC One gets pretty hot when it’s running hard. Any big data usage and you can warm your cockles on a winter evening with it.
LiviBhoy
15:37 on
1 August, 2014
traditionalist88
The biggest issue for people not attending is cost. Almost £30 for an SPFL match is about a tenner too expensive. When we had a sold out ground it was about £20. Everything has gone up since the days we filled our ground weekly except the wages of the fans.
LB
==================
True, as usual the Germans have it spot on with regard to ticket prices though it is a bit easier when you have a large TV deal.
HH
Why are people bothering with EPL fantasy football?! Don’t feed the monster.
HH
@AgentScotland: Lokeren have contacted Celtic about a Season long loan move for Amido Baldé with a view of signing him permanently next Summer
sipsini
“The rainy day is upon us, fans are bored with the standard of player we are buying and staying away even although they’ve forked out their hard earned cash for a st.”
The analogy works but I would be replying, in a Crocodile Dundee manner, “Call that rain! I saw the rain in the 50s and the 90s. This is just scotch mist, not rain.”
Fans will always want bigger and better players. especially after you have just lost an important game. It results in a mad industry, where in order to satisfy your customers, you sacrifice a regular supply of managers and transferred players, in order to convince them that success is just around the corner. But this regular sacrificing results in huge disruption to the preparation and continuity required to build a team and a system.
And, because every other club, is run in an equally mad fashion, they will be spending money they don’t have to tempt away the players you want to keep. At both ends a manager loses his tried and trusted players to transfer bids and his duds are sold at a loss cutting into the money you have to buy replacements. You are then, as manager, led to take punts on promising players who, unsurprisingly, bring you some hits and some misses. You, then, get the sack and the cycle repeats.
It is no way to run a business. Either we, as fans, grow up, and accept our limitations without losing our aspirations, or we are doomed in a self-destructive race for a 5 minute fix. Great, we bought a £5m forward, I’m excited, I’ll buy my Season Book, but What Next?
We are already going to win our league. We are likely to win one cup, maybe both. But we are still no less assured of CL qualification or success. We are still a Pot 4 team albeit with a £5m forward- Big Deal! Every Pot 3 team has a £10m forward, Pot 2 teams have £20m forwards and Pot 1 teams have £50m guys.
We may have bought a star forward (by SPFL standards) but we have not changed our stars.
The CL is not going to be won anytime soon by Celtic, Anderlecht, Legia, Rapid Vienna or Sparta Prague. It will not be won by Basel, Ajax, Galatasaray, Olympiakos or Benfica either. Since Porto won 10 years ago, the CL has been won 3 times by an EPL club, 4 times by a club from La Liga, twice by Serie A clubs and once by a Bundesliga club. These 10 winners and the 10 defeated finalists have come from the same four countries and from a grouping of 2 to 4 clubs within each who have contested the leagues in those countries. That is not a statistical fluke, it is a trend. It may be a balloon about to deflate but an awful lot of air is being pumped in, via TV companies to keep it soaring anytime it looks like doing so.
No ambition of mine or yours or Peter Lawwell’s are going to change those market conditions. It won’t be changed by Pierre Lavelle at Anderlecht, Piotr Lawellski at Legia. or Petros Lawellopoulos at Olympiakos.
Of course, we can do things better. We can get to the CL funfair more often and fall off the rides less often but we ain’t gonna win the Top Shelf prize at the shooting gallery.
You can call that a lack of ambition or you can call it realism. But, when you look for evidence led workable propositions, I do not see many clubs from countries of a population of 5m and a TV deal worth a couple of million doing better with any more regularity.
JJ @ 15:03
It certainly looked like our players smoked more grass than Leggia’s did though!
You seen Pedro’s MONEYBALL? If you do gee me a shout so i can boot it tae…
MWD says AYE
Timaloy
There’s no might about it …those players mentioned are much better than what we have …with the exception of goalkeeper
Johnny Russell too
@AgentScotland: Rotherham have bid £1.2m for Stevie May – £600k up front and £600k to be paid in 4 installments over the next year
Lokeren’s scouts must be as good as ours,when it comes to strikers,better selling him now as he will get rumbled quickly in a loan move
rt rev david hay
10:38 on
1 August, 2014
big wavy
barnes….until henrik broke his leg against
lyon the team was flying. could have been
the start of something big. just goes to show
one wee thing can make or break you.
*JB won the December manager of the month award and if my memory serves me well we were top of the League or damn near it…we were the form team when the winter break came…and then we took off for Portugal….something happened over there as on our return the players downed tools……1-1 away tae kilmasonic…2-3 at home tae the jambos surrendering a 2-0 lead and then the calamity of ICT.
The players saw JB off as the following week we went up to Dens Park in the snow and won comfortably 3-0.
When are the next set of accounts due
Gary67. That could be a good move for the player and Celtic Balde could get more game time and we would if he did well have the option to bring him back or sell him.If he doesnt do well we wont be any worse off. H.H.
setting free the bears for Res. 12 & Oscar Knox but saying no to CQN racists
I think you just pipped BRTH to post of the day.
LB
Tontine Tim
I remember that surrender to the Jambos….one of the very low moments
traditionalist88/LiviBhoy –
Reasons for a reduction in attendance are probably multiple :
– Lack of disposable income
– Lack of entertainment/perceived value
– Competition from other activities/events
– Perceived treatment of fans by stewards/police
etc…………..
TBB
I got a new HTC M8 One
truth is its got me. .:-)
If its heating hop too much time to change the battery. Dont be a skinflint like me and wait until the battery becomes so pear shaped it cant come out of the casing
I will use that tip though for my next batch of xmas cookies .:-)
Which reminds me of the time I made the xmas turkey stuffing with an ounce of grass and never told anyone. Best xmas ever
HH
Think there are a couple of inter-related key strategic points that put us where we are:
1. Competing at the Top
We can’t now. The structure of football and the resourcing of it prevents us. We could do this but we would need to be in one of the rich closed markets or create a new one of similar scale. Neither of these looks likely AT ALL and so dreaming of a move is just that a dream. Rosenberg, Norway. Where are they now? From perennial CL pot 4s for 10 years to non-qualifiers now. That is our future if the closed markets continue to grow to our market detriment.
2. Why Go Anyway? – The Match ‘Experience’
Unfortunately this has also changed and is continuing to change. In my yoof it was a social experience shared with friends from early morning to late evening. Win, lose or draw the shared experience was nearly always excellent. Now you can no longer sit/meet friends, people travel alone, entertainment is ‘made’ rather than created. My daughter has a £50 season ticket, my son has a reeduced one. They have wanted to and still want to be next to the Green Brigade simply because they want to join in. They see that as a ‘good’ experience, whilst sitting in the ‘sit down I canny see’ seats with their aul da has the attraction value of 1 (I can still pay for s**t food and drink which stops it being 0)
3. Exciting Football
Even when we have gone through unsuccessful periods if we had some flair and skill to watch that is what we sought. Trying to compete defensively at the very top table is frankly the antithesis of this and people will get a better ‘football’ experience from an attacking open approach at a lower level.
The latest worrying trend impacted by these is the ‘season book but not going’ phenomena. 40k sales but only 20k attendees is an issue and one to be addressed. I suspect that in the 40k there is also a switch from full book proice to £50 seats.
So, if we accept that we are not at the top table and can’t compete, allow a more natural development of the ‘atmosphere’ and ‘experience’ rather than a financial customer one and deliver a football system with exciting attacking players we might just stop the rot in the short term.
I think there are still some radical solutions worthy of consideration… like…
How about joining the MLS in USA and sticking 2 fingers up to ‘Europe’ and ‘UEFA’? I suspect that’s a deal that we could achieve. It is a fast growing environment and one where a good team and model could thrive.
Which country league had most players at the World Cup? Yip, MLS USA. Scunner for the away support and Donegal Danny but perhaps 2 ‘home’ supports might be a way forward.
Fortune favours the brave CSC
HH
The problem with us as a club is that IMO we always try to do things on the cheap.
The only time we speculated to accumulate was during the MON era.
Excluding Larsson, McGrain Jinky and a few notable others we always sell our best players , or try to.
The suits tried to sell McGrory to Arsenal , sold Collins , Dalgleish, Nicholas .It is a fact of life for our club.
Top dollar is charged however for tickets, catering & merchandising.
We charge like a top European club but our signing policy is that of a lower tier team.
A real shame as our 2 managers who have got us to Euro finals did so without their main assets being sold.
This to me is evidence that with a bit of ambition we can reach the heights .
I live in hope the suits with reverse the policy of frugality, back the manager and we will all reap the rewards.
HH
Awe_Naw_No_Annoni_Oan_Anaw_Noo
16:02 on 1 August, 2014
New HTC M8 One overheating from all that Tony Hobby v1.0 data crunching? ;-))
@PFayr
That’s based on the assumption that we would be getting it right all the time and that those players would develop as well at Celtic than they did down south.
McCormack isn’t any better than Hooper. Snodgrass isn’t any better than Commons
McCarthy is the only one who would be a significant improvement and even then there is no guarantee he would develop the same at Celtic as he did at Wigan.
Post Drubbin Hangover Thoughts:
Artmedia! Dont think so…
We need a miracle to get thru this tie and I firmly believe it’s not gonna happen, however slowly but surely we are talkin up our chances, come Wed night would bet that the majority will believe we are going to pull it off, then post match after another bouncing everybody back on here well upset to analyse exactly how it all fell apart. Then, when the Europa League Qualifier draw gets made there will be some suggesting we can go all the way to the final and win it. Just love the optimists really do, an essential part of life, as long as you don’t buy into their mantra and leave yourself open to a massive disappointment when reality kicks in.
Praying for a miracle CSC
An ounce?
Good grief!