Before Barcelona opened the scoring with a 27th minute penalty, Ferencvaros hit the crossbar and had a goal disallowed for offside; incidents that would make it into a season review DVD around these parts. Messi & Co. eventually won 5-1, but that gap was half that until the final 8 minutes.
The Hungarians are remarkably organised, but that should not have been enough to remain in the Champions League after they left Celtic Park.
I suspect that both Celtic and Milan have bigger fish to fry this week than each other in tomorrow’s Europa League game. Milan sit atop Serie A with maximum points from four games and face Roma on Monday. Celtic’s most important game of the week is in Aberdeen on Sunday. The domestic league, as always, remains paramount.
The biggest prize on offer to Celtic tomorrow is an opportunity to win some pride back. Aberdeen will be flying after beating Hamilton last night, a result, or performance, against Milan, will go a considerable way to building confidence in a team that looked short on Saturday.
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!!BADA BING!! on 21ST OCTOBER 2020 7:27 PM
Paul Byrne?
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pick a prize from the middle shelf, well done, in a minute and a half.
I also thought Neil looked distant and disconnected in his interview . Not the way he usually comes across at all .
Neil looks pissed off.
As he should be,
How would we feel if he came to the presser woopin and scopping, laughin and a jokin ?
the bhoy cant win.
48000 at that waterford celtic match, amazing.
I might have expected a ‘come out fighting’ tone , but that’s just me .
Willie callum moment in Madrid.
Collum
Didn’t look well to me either Parkhead & hasn’t looked well for some time.;
Rumours are abounding, couldn’t repeat all the different tit bits that I’ve heard.
I do believe we are reaching a sink or swim moment.
If Tiny Tim is correct and I certainly hope he is not, I reckon Lenny will be gone next week.
If the team clicks into gear puts up a show against Milan & beat Aberdeen redemption could be still achieved.
The” beatification” of the Sevco squad by the MSM is a sickening thing to behold.
Elyounusi use his foot to chip McGregor instead of his chin and Goldson would be getting held up for what he is, He was beyond hopeless in that incident
instead he is the new Beckenbauer
if Neal was reading the personal slanderous and often horrible personal comments about himself on here, he might well be feeling unwell.
Maybe thinking the last people I expect to talk about this way is Celtic supporters.
I was at that Waterford v Celtic game at Lsnsdowne Road. Amazing day. I was near, but not too near, that big guy who cleared everything around him. Amazing game. Celtic fans from all around UK. Dublin was jumping that day. I worked in British Railways at that time and went to the game with a couple of pals. The crossing from Dun Laoghaire to Heysham was very rough especially with the amount of booze we had consumed. Ah the memories of my teenage years. I ‘Lloyd never forget Lou Macari’s back heeled goal though!
I’ll not I Lloyd. Predictive text strikes yet again.
Corkcelt,
Like most on here I too have heard loads of unsubstantiated rumours.
One thing I remember when we could socialise face to face was concern about NFL’s health and general demeanour. This was at the very start of the season and was commentated on here.
Collectively as Celtic supporters we owe Neil Lennon. We should not and cannot forget that. Ultimately, we are all Neil Lennon and our club has a duty of care to NFL exactly the same as any employee.
We all want the best for Celtic and change is unstoppable and unrelenting however Neil must never be flung under the proverbial bus.
HH.
SETTING FREE THE BEARS FOR RES. 12 & OSCAR KNOX on 21ST OCTOBER 2020 6:34 PM
Yes & I’m also fond of the lyrics by Clive James.
…………………….
The answer to the question about what I mean by more professional will sound…unprofessional.
To start with
1) I’ve recently moved from the camp of those comfortable with how Celtic are run to another camp of less impressed folk.
2) My frustration at what I see as a decline on so many Celtic fronts this season has got me over-thinking stuff & making my wife avoid me more often than not when games are on.
My days of making up excuses for the things that go wrong at Celtic are pretty much over.
I admit that population size is a factor in achieving success but then again Iceland manages to prove the exact opposite at international level. I think that gets close to one aspect of what I mean by professionalism. Size & resources can be huge factors in how successful clubs are but both are very double edged if not allied to a very focused mindset. I think of how Celtic in 67 from a national population of 5 million, in the competition for the first time ever, with no pedigree, no money & no exotically named Latin players won the Big Cup. It was completely against the odds according to everyone outside Celtic’s squad & our equivalent of the boot-room. We had an extra dimension that we called Jock Stein magic back then, but today I think we’d describe it as the football equivalent of a corporate vision driven forward by the man behind it who had the clout & force of character to implement his visionary ideas.
Jock adopted a comprehensively professional approach to making Celtic successful, changing the whole culture of the club to support his vision.
Since Jock left Celtic have floundered trying to regain anywhere near that same level of success. The closest we came was Martin O’Neill, but he too had the personality, clout & resources to hand to impose his vision onto the club. In essence the club stopped functioning as a united organisation because one of those essential elements was missing.
Celtic no longer had the professional vision after Jock left. It’s been periodically replaced by approximations but they all faltered through lack of conviction or board buy in or internal feuding. Martin O’Neill’s tenure springs to mind.
In short the bigger & richer we’ve become the more we’ve moved away from a focused, dynamic & well run football club into one where we’ve lowered our ambitions to match our performances & achievements.
As for domestic league competitiveness, it seems to me that you tend to make my point for me.
The fact that Basle, Copenhagen & Ferencvaros (I know a stretch but for 2 seasons at least) are the dominant force in their own leagues suggests that their leagues are no more competitive that the SPFL. Like the SPFL too these leagues aren’t that rich & have to survive next door to richer, more powerful leagues & watch as their best talent is hoovered up by Italy, Germany, France, England etc. I admit that Portugal is a stretch too but the domination there by Porto & Benfica also has a familiar ring to Scotland to us & our erstwhile neighbours.
We had a minor sugar daddy called Fergus but in true Scottish style he was small, cross-eyed & argumentative rather than corrupt or soft & indulgent. Unlike Trump, Fergus knew how to make a deal & how to run a company back to financial health. On reflection he didn’t so much give us a bottomless pit of cash for life as he taught us how to run the business of our club.
Without our Fergus who knows where we’d be now?
An oxymoron – but honest & rich benefactors are as rare as hen’s teeth. We were lucky to get Fergus & not a Dave King or a David Murray.
As for feeder/sister clubs – I’m not sure what the financial arrangements between clubs consist of but if it’s workable, beneficial & mutually compatible then it’d be worth an enquiry at least. My son’s best friend is the wee brother of the Salzburg manager Jesse Marsch. Jesse managed Red Bull New York, was Asst Manager at RB Leipzig & is now in his 2nd year as manager at RB Salzburg. I know from his brother that Jesse was impressed from the start by the professionalism of the RB organisation.
As for what is professionalism.
It’s
– Smaller, leaner, less wealthy clubs from non traditional football places beating Celtic against the odds – like we did to Inter in 1967.
– rejecting short term & easier successes at the expense of real progress but pretending things are still fine
– being prepared to make tough decisions regardless of the person’s antecedents
– being prepared to effect & affect changes, radical ones if needed
– NOT making excuses for failures so that it inhibits ambition & induces apathy.
– NOT appearing to be clueless about your club direction
– NOT changing managerial/coaching “styles” because it’s convenient or just expedient
I suppose for me, I see much of what occurs at Celtic as amateur hour stuff which we rend to overlook because of the car crash club on the southside. But as they recover our own shortcomings are in sharper focus – none more so for me than since the start of this season.
Another 2 goals for Toney in the first 30 minutes away to Sheffield Wednesday. I think we missed a good one here.
Think this puts our Covid excuses in the shade :)
“Thirteen-time European Cup winners Real Madrid were handed a humiliating home defeat as a shambolic first-half performance was clinically punished by a second-string Shakhtar Donetsk side.
The Ukrainian champions arrived in Madrid without 13 first-team players after 19 positive Covid-19 tests throughout the club left them needing to call up youth-team players.
But Luis Castro’s young side were undaunted and swept into an amazing, but thoroughly warranted, 3-0 lead at Real’s empty Alfredo di Stefano training ground.”
Neil Lennon never experienced, true love from Celtic fan’s, because he didn’t experience a Jungle confirmation ceremony, week in, week out. Jeez, NL even experienced a barrage of booing in Glasgow, during the first leg at home, of Celtic FC’s first European Semi Final, in 30+ year’s vs Boavista FC, in the Uefa cup, during our run to Seville, in 2003, booed simply because he passed the ball back to our keeper to ensure we kept possession.
The worst thing that’s happened to our club in since 1994, was the loss of the Jungle, 12,000 strong engine room off the pitch, and it took almost 15 year’s later to create a singing area. Hopefully an upside from covid, will be the removal of the all seating arrangement’s that were brought about by, Thatcher’s wild overreaction to the terrible tragic result’s of, scandalous policing arrangement’s at Hillsborough, which led to the horrific passing of, 96 innocent Liverpool supporter’s. These supporter’s didn’t die from football terrace’s, but if you overcrowd an area to the extent that happened here, these are the tragic result’s that will follow.
God rest the 96. If covid fallout, brings back, the Jungle, the Kop, the Stretford End, etc, etc, then that’ll be a positive.
First post, not a hun. Hail Hail. Thank you to Paul67, for the best Celtic blog on the internet.
RM did rest a few players with Barca in mind this Saturday. That’s said, delighted to see the smaller clubs give the big boys a nose bleed.
The amount of rumours that circulate around us is unbelievable. It’ll hardly change anytime soon and as CalMac said, the players need to block out the noise.
We’ve a right as supporters to question the running of the club and the decisions of our manager but I personally find the questions raised regarding Neil’s health and appearance to be highly distasteful.
We’ll win on Sunday and get on with things. Hopefully the speculation around personal lives and health will be left behind us.
Atalanta, 3 points behind Milan, now up 3-0 in 42 minutes away to Midtjylland.
CELTIC WITHOUT THE JUNGLE IS JUST ANOTHER CLUB on 21ST OCTOBER 2020 8:39 PM
A very warm welcome to you and a belter of a debutant post.
May I slightly contradict your point about Neil Lennon getting booed for a backward pass. I was at this game and remember it vividly. The booing was frustration at the whole teams play not at an individual.
Cheers and HH.
Cor @ 8.22
Thanks for putting in all that effort to add a dose of reality in a sea of excuses by the hairsplitters / the happy clappers / the stats freaks / the board lovers.
It is quite scary how so many people will put so much effort into trying to rationalise and explain systemic failure by the current club board / management structure when the answer is staring them in the face.
We have a second rate property bean counter running the show for his own benefit not to put better football on the park. We are a club full of fans with blazers happy with low wages because they wear the badge and little is demanded of them.
We are a large scale club by way of the support outside the gates rather than the quality of management we have inside the gates.
At least your efforts mean that many of the excuses are now no longer valid by way of ignorance of reality.
Cornelius – I poured myself a glass of wine when I saw the length of your post 😀
Great stuff.
Incidentally Real Madrid are not playing at the Bernabue. They are playing at their reserves ground.
Is there any home advantage without fans?
HH.
IVAN TONEY scores 2 before half time.
Well done picolo pete just add him to mcginn etc.etc.
Most posters comments on Neil Lennon not quite ‘looking himself’ seem to me like genuine concern for the man himself rather than the crossing of some kind of personal line .
Personally , there’s nothing I’d like better than to see Lenny’s ‘aeroplane’ celebration after a good performance and win .
Maybe a more invigorating team performance will see a more invigorated manager.
Stephen Fletcher missed 2 gilt edge chances for Stoke – missed that one
:))))))))))))))))))))
CELTIC WITHOUT THE JUNGLE IS JUST ANOTHER CLUB on 21ST OCTOBER 2020 8:39 PM
Neil Lennon never experienced, true love from Celtic fan’s, because he didn’t experience a Jungle confirmation ceremony, week in, week out. Jeez, NL even experienced a barrage of booing in Glasgow, during the first leg at home, of Celtic FC’s first European Semi Final, in 30+ year’s vs Boavista FC, in the Uefa cup, during our run to Seville, in 2003, booed simply because he passed the ball back to our keeper to ensure we kept possession.
The worst thing that’s happened to our club in since 1994, was the loss of the Jungle, 12,000 strong engine room off the pitch, and it took almost 15 year’s later to create a singing area. Hopefully an upside from covid, will be the removal of the all seating arrangement’s that were brought about by, Thatcher’s wild overreaction to the terrible tragic result’s of, scandalous policing arrangement’s at Hillsborough, which led to the horrific passing of, 96 innocent Liverpool supporter’s. These supporter’s didn’t die from football terrace’s, but if you overcrowd an area to the extent that happened here, these are the tragic result’s that will follow.
God rest the 96. If covid fallout, brings back, the Jungle, the Kop, the Stretford End, etc, etc, then that’ll be a positive.
First post, not a hun. Hail Hail. Thank you to Paul67, for the best Celtic blog on the internet.
……………
Welcome and keep posting. However, I have to disagree with you on the resurrection of the Jungle, Kop and Stratford End. 66 died at Ibrox and 96 at Hillsborough. No matter how it came to pass all of those people lost their lives because of crushing due to areas of the stadium that were overcrowded. I was in a fair few crushes in my younger days. The worst without doubt was in Nottingham where we came close to having our very own Hillsborough for the exact same reasons. A police force who stood still outside the ground and opted out while thousands of Celtic fans streamed through wide open gates and headed into the first enclosure without any form of supervision from police or stewards. Fortunately our fans chanted ‘we are overcrowded’ and someone produced a key to open a track side gate to ease the pressure. The second worst crush I was in was before the 1967 Cup Final against Aberdeen. The crush was outside the gates at the Celtic End. Very, very scary. Thank God for seated stadia.
It is quite scary how so many people will put so much effort into trying to rationalise and explain systemic failure by the current club board / management structure when the answer is staring them in the face.
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11 trophies in a row, a world record.
if this is what failure looks like, what on earth is success ?
SFTB…my brothers and I were in the Cubs at St Bart’s though we were interlopers from across the road in Spittal. We were there early to late 70’s….oldest of us in mid 50″s now. What was your era…..
And I love frankie and the bhoys
O what a night 🕺
Real Madrid are not playing at the Barbacue
-))))
INIQUITOUSIV on 21ST OCTOBER 2020 8:28 PM
Another 2 goals for Toney in the first 30 minutes away to Sheffield Wednesday. I think we missed a good one here
—-let it go before——-
FAVOURITE UNCLE on 21ST OCTOBER 2020 8:56 PM
IVAN TONEY scores 2 before half time.
Well done picolo pete just add him to mcginn etc.etc.
—- ach to late.looks as tho it already is something to beat the club with..
lol :-)
hh
ST x 2 @ 9.11
What does success look like — Autumn European football on a Tuesday or Wednesday night.
“11 trophies in a row, a world record.
if this is what failure looks like, what on earth is success ?”
____________________________________________________________
I’m sure you’ll get your answer soon from the usual suspects…
played St Barts 4-1 victory at theirs,gubbed 4-1 at ours St Vincents.St julies had a good wee team too.was there a St Martins up there too?
hh
Having lost at home to Cadiz in the league at the weekend and tonight in CL to a Shaktar reserve/youth team, the weekend game away against Barca must have Zidane wondering if he’ll have a job for much longer.
Just as well the famous white hanky vote of no confidence can take place.
Can’t.