Celtic face Icelandic champions Stjarnan in their opening Champions League qualifier, with the first leg just three weeks away. Stjarnan knocked Motherwell out of the Europa League last season, by all accounts the Scottish club should have given a much better account of themselves.
It will be vastly more concerning to Ronny Deila that they went on to eliminate Lech Poznan in the next round. Lech finished second in Poland, just two points behind our old pals Legia Warsaw, and the Polish season starts two weeks before Scotland’s, so there is nothing to be complacent about.
A three goal home defeat at the hands of Inter Milan ended Stjarnan’s European adventure, but by that stage the Icelandic fans must had expired their European budget for the season, the trip to the San Siro would have been a suitable place to bow out.
The other consequential information when we draw teams from near the Arctic Circle is that they are midseason and (from what I can make out) play on an artificial surface.
I’ve no idea what happened to Motherwell and Lech Poznan but there are no excuses for either team and there will be none for Celtic. Let’s get the job done.
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I wonder if Paul’s next article will be about comparing recently deceased clubs
thomthethim,
‘Working man’s clothes’ as my da said.
bournesouprecipe,
I’m just surprised I’m not in the same position as your re multiple fixtures.
Árd Macha
thompsontwin….
Are you nuts?
A 40000 stadium?
Couldn’t get all the ST holders in!
Listen to Jock Stein on the subject!
Dear God give me the strength….
HH
BMCUW
“I don’t think weakening the team to the extent that we failed to qualify for the group stages is sensible or prudent.
Downright foolhardy would be a polite term for it.”
Well, the intent was not to fail. If we accept that teams that have splashed the cash, still managed to fail at CL qualifying, then the equation becomes:-
Spend lots and you still risk a qualifying failure.
Spend sensibly and you still risk a qualifying failure
Spend nothing and it is still a risk.
You then realise that spending guarantees nothing. Teams from Poland. Slovenia Kazakhstan can still derail you even if you have a £5m centre forward or two of them.
So, how much do you have to spend to guarantee success? The answer is, no one knows. There is a relationship between long term spend and long term success but it is not easily predictable. You might win more regularly by backing the favourite in every race but you will still build up heavy losses in doing so.
So, the sensible strategy is to spend what you can afford and take your sporting chances. There are no guarantees, no matter whether you or I use pejorative language in our rhetoric, to describe the alternative approach. Do you see any club that is using this much vaunted “speculate to accumulate” model? I can point to many who are living within their means, guaranteeing survival, and getting a chance to tilt their lance.
You call that lack of ambition. I call it staying alive and taking your chances. There are a lot of cautionary tales out there in the form of Rangers, Leeds, Parma, Forrest etc;
How much did the club lose by being sensible and prudent when a properly planned and funded campaign would have paid dividends?
Lawwell got away with it once,which resulted in us getting embarrassed in the group stages. He thought he’d try it again-which resulted in us being embarrassed in the qualifiers. Twice.
What are the parameters of this “proper” funding. What level of extra spend guarantees you anything? We can see examples of Italian and Spanish clubs spending at the level you might wish for and achieving moderate success. You can cite many examples of English clubs spending way above what you would sanction and advise and still getting moderate success. What have Man City won with all their millions.
What all the Spanish and Italian and English clubs enjoy is a hard competitive environment that hones them better for Europe. We saw that, even an expensively assembled squad of SPL level stars, guys stolen from Hearts, Motherwell, Kilmarnock and Dundee United, Internationalists among them, suffered due to the competitive environment they were forced to endure for three years. The sevco squad was not as bad as the sum of their achievements. It is hard to raise your game to SPL standards when 50% of that has been enough to win Div3 and Div2 of the Scottish leagues, and it is hard for us to play the best of Europe when we are used to playing ICT’s journeymen from League Two or non-league in England.
We get beat in the big stages because, even with your proposed levels of increased spending, we are up against teams with a spending level 5 times our limit. No spend that keeps us this side of bankruptcy can alter that equation. We are left with only the option of good coaching and taking our sporting chances. We are doing this a lot better than any period since 1974. Our moaning about it does not coincide with the last couple of years of failure; that has been going on since MON left. We moaned about downsizing through two last 16 achievements by WGS and by one from NFL. This is not about the last year or two; this is about being stuck in the 60s and about mistakeing the European credibility (no more than that) being restored by MON, being mistaken for a return of the Lisbon Lions era. It is not and it is unlikely to happen anytime soon unless the glass ceiling we operate under gets smashed by factors beyond our control. Neither my “prudent spend” or your ” just a wee £5m more here or there” changes that by any appreciable amount.
His idea of being sensible and prudent has been to sell our top players to balance the books in case we don’t qualify. With inevitable results.
And Raheem Sterling is leaving Liverpool, and Cristiano & Beckham left Man U, and Southampton lost all their stars and Ajax lost all theirs and every club in Belgium lost theirs. You either sell them or you take a bath on them when they walk. It just gives us something to hit “the suits” about. They lack ambition because they sell our best or they fail to benefit the clubs by letting talent walk for nothing just so we could get one more lousy season out off them. Forster, Ki, Wanyam etc; good as they were, they were not Henrik. They were not worth losing 10, 6 or 12 million on just to get one more season out of them.
canamalar
11:25 on 23 June
Continuous Improvement is an ongoing aspiration…….we could be very lucky, and get someone like SDM in the future…..now, I’m away to take the dog out for a walk before you fall out with me altogether….hahahahahahaha…..oh, it’s good to be a Tim, and it’s great to be a Celtic Football Fan ….!!!!!!!!
Aff oot now- will catch replies later.
We do not NEED any new players. MAYBE a new back up `keeper will be needed and maybe not. Maybe Craig will stay injury free and. if not, maybe one of our young` keepers has what it takes. MAYBE another left back would come in handy and maybe not and the same goes for ANOTHER striker. Sport without uncertainty is not sport.
The players we have are hot, hot favourites to win our domestic Title. So, obviously, when people are talking of making our team stronger, they are talking about the Champions League.
How much would it cost to make our team strong enough to give an almost GUARANTEED decent account of itself in the CL? It seems to me that that is what the disgruntled fans are asking for.
Who are the players who would provide that guarantee and would they come to Scotland?
It really does seem a waste of page space moaning about the best team in Scotland if specific solutions are not offered. Even then I would hazard a guess that PL and company are in a better position to judge than we are.
Cheerio for now,
JJ
SETTINGFREETHEBEARS
I just love a circuitous argument,a circular saw as I called it once.
To answer your last point first,I’ll let Neil Lennon do so. When asked why his last season in charge had been so poor,he replied-“Well,to be fair,Demot. You took my best players and replaced them with shite” This pattern was repeated the following season,with the results we all saw.
It isn’t a case of holding on to players till their value is zero. It is about using that income to replace to a similar standard. Or better.
Your next point,predictably,is that clubs spend but don’t always achieve. That’s inevitable in sport where winners are few but those teams which spend are able to compete at the level they are aiming for. If we are doing that then I worry all the more.
Finally,if you back horses you stand to lose your money if you haven’t done your homework. If you have then you stand to win. If you keep your money in your pocket,you’ll get nowhere.
setting free the bears for Res. 12 & Oscar Knox
Good post.
The European competition is important for us. Whether it be at CL or EL level.
Doesn;t matter how good the league is.
International football and European competition at club football level is where players get better and improve.
That is a major reason for players taking a punt and coming to Scotland to play for Celtic and play against inferior opposition on a weekly basis. Players know that playing 6-8 games in Europe at the top level is testing them against some of the best players in the world.
I have watched with a lot of interest the WGS Scotland team. It is noticeable that when players with European experience become available WGS has them in his squad and usually in his team. That sort of experience is vital at international level and it is the same at CL level if you have a clutch of international games under your belt.
The Celtic manager will know what he wants but he also knows that the players he has now are atoned to his ways and also to his demands. They know what is expected and he knows what they can do.
There is no panic to bring players in as we have an able and capable squad but fresh faces are inevitable at a club the size of Celtic and I think departures are also inevitable.
To sign players from the better leagues and the bigger clubs though it may take a few weeks yet until they return to full pre-season training.
I don;t think there is any need to panic.
LB
”
Well if you wanna go, K.A.N.O ., Hail Hail , Rain , Sleet or Snow
07:40 on 23 June, 2015
Morning bloggers.
Does anyone know a Peter Mccutcheon. Thought he was of this parish but not sure.
Thanks in advance
Sanna”
I only knew him from the financial http://www.iii.co.uk site.
I did notice that somebody did confirm a couple of months ago, the sad news of his passing away.
SFTB,
“We get beat in the big stages because, even with your proposed levels of increased spending, we are up against teams with a spending level 5 times our limit.”
We don’t meet too many team with spending level 5 times our limit for qualification which is how I read BMCUW point. In fact most we meet have far less than us.
SFTB,
You are bang on form today.
I think the problem may be that some supporters don’t fully understand the Bosman implications of players’ contracts.
The player holds all the aces at a certain stage in their contracts. Virgil hasn’t reached that yet. Perhaps after Christmas, or certainly next summer, will be the right time for the club.
It is a matter of trying to balance what suits the player and the club.
We are doing not to bad under those circumstances.
Pre Bosman, the clubs held all the power, as, even though a contract may have expired, the club held the registration, until it suited them to release the player.
The ole Finbogasson v Bangura debate.
Bobby M,
It is not about selling players and replacing them with like or better.
It is about selling players for more than we paid for them, due to having developed them to a higher standard.
We then seek to repeat the practice.
That is the only way we bridged the financial gap.
SFTB’s point of no guarantees is valid, I believe.
setting free the bears for res. 12 & oscar knox
11:31 on 23 June, 2015
Good post, and hard to argue/debate on.
All positive at Celtic :-)
https://twitter.com/celticfc/status/613298357725986817
£60,000 to CLIC Sargent Cancer Charity.
Well Done all
hail hail
Canamalar 11.25
I couldn’t agree more.
We need to seek to increase our means.
TT
bournesouprecipe
11:52 on
23 June, 2015
The ole Finbogasson v Bangura debate.
===============================
Tough one. Both have scored the same number of competitive goals for Celtic. Finbogasson scored them in fewer matches.
jungle jim hot smoked
11:37 on 23 June, 2015
Another good post, wow! That’s two in a row, the negatives won’t like this :)
THOMTHETHIM
With respect,I also thought the plan was to buy develop and sell at a profit. And repeat.
Perhaps you should tell PL that repeat does not mean put the cash in the bank to cover the shortfall in income caused by his failure to repeat.
67 heaven..,
Continuous improvement should be more than an aspiration
Interesting debates about forward strategy, as usual some very good stuff.
For myself I hope it’s academic, I believe we have a team (coaching) in place with the right attitude, tactics and strategy to get us where we need to be – past the UCL qualifiers.
We’ve had quite a few “plans” in recent times but have failed to get things right across the board. Leading to Partial success.
Our holistic approach RD and his team are putting in place I believe will deliver dividends.
Much of the stuff has been talked about, but I posted little while back about Brian Clough’s coaching approach being able to get performances out of players that no other Club can.
I like to see this as the “Garry Birtles effect.” Along with putting the other strategies in place and getting “Lennoxtown” right if we can achieve this, we can over-achieve.
Hail Hail
Maribor,Legia,and the big fright that was Karagandy.
They probably operate at 1/5 th of our income.
We severely under performed in the CL last season, and we’re very fortunate the season before when we defeated Karagandy.
TT
CHAIRBHOY
Brian Clough’s achievements with certain players were unbelievable. Probably the best English manager ever,IMO. Though Bob Paisley would come close…
Chairbhoy,
Agreed, Ronny is a good move and his ideas are very good however I believe he is getting more and better backing than was afforded to Neil Lennon.
Imagine if Celtic did sign a £10m striker who they paid £50k a week and the guy didn;t score goals?
Ooft Peter Lawwell and the ole board would get it in the neck for being careless with the fans funds.
It’s a funny old game Saint…..
LB
I read recently that if you had placed £1 on Tony McCoy’s horse in every race he’d competed in during the 19 consecutive years in which he was Champion Jockey…
….you’d have lost £2000.
Since 2010/11, Manchester City has spent £292M NET on footballers, and sustain an annual wage bill in excess of £200M.
In that period, they have got to the last 16 of the Europa League twice, and the last 16 of the Champions League twice. One of their Europa Cup runs came off the back of finishing 5th in the EPL, while the other was a result of finishing 3rd in their Champions League group.
2 years ago, as EPL Champions, they finished BOTTOM of their Champions League group.
Their only 4 group stages campaigns – all since 2011/12 have finished:
3rd
4th
2nd
2nd
In the years they finished 2nd, they got papped out in the last 16.
That compares with Gordon Strachan and Neil Lennon for performance, but in terms of Bang for Buck, it’s in the damp squib category.
When it comes to gambling, it’s not about how much you stand to win, it’s about how much you can afford to lose. Thereafter, you makes your calls and takes your chances.
TINYTIM
Pretty much as I have said,mate. We got lucky two years ago-PL in particular. Instead of making sure that wasn’t repeated,he asset-stripped the team again last season.
Modren Finbogasson v Bangura debates are rubbish …
Scary that we scouted DW extensively. Very scary.
Not panicking yet about signings but I will require Pampers if we have no recruits soon.
Canamalar
The club changed their strategy when Neil got the gaffers job.
Remember Neil Lennon wanted/was linked with the following players.
David James
Emile Heskey
Jimmy Bullard
Eidur Gudjohnson
Sol Campbell
They would all have come on huge salaries.
The board said no and maybe the players also said no.
The strategy obviously changes year on year and is flexible. It depends on revenues. I think Ronny has bought fairly wisely so far.
Neil Lennon done some excellent work in the transfer market and also some bad work.
Of course the good signings are the managers and the bad signings are the board/Peter Lawwell’s
LB
THE PANTALOON DUCK and CAPTAIN BEEFHEART finally on the same page.
But are they singing from the same song sheet?
TBB,
I don’t see how ‘how much you can afford to loose’ is relevant to Celtic, we can’t afford to loose too much but as we kept being told we are not in it to loose we are supposed to be looking to improve and stay “within our means” that is my main contention, we don’t seem to have a plan to improve our means we simply look to cover shortfalls when we fail.
Livibhoy,
Just remind us, who linked Neil with these players ?
We got the players, coaching staff, and fans, it’s onwRds and upwards from here on in, all positive, no negatives, .
It’s of course the same every year, aweeee we need to buy new players, to me that’s just a sit back and wait to see if we get beat to say…see a told yi………..
That’s just me but get right in there an do the business, to be honest I really don’t have the time to slag PL and the board while my team are playing great football, four in a row? Ffs, you would think thems won four in a row, takes all kinds a suppose, me being one of them :)
Lurking Huns GIRFUYs.
We made millions and millions from the CL, merchandise and selling just about everybody a few years ago. I have no problem with sometimes selling. However when you replace with inferior crap?
We could and should have invested more. Nobody is suggesting we spend crazily.
Sadly, one gets the impression that some on here are content as long as Rangers are guff.
Our footballing ‘brand’ was humiliated last year.
PetetheBeat @ 11:47
Thanks for that info. Wasnt sure where I had seen his name. I was aware of his death.
Thanks
Sanna
Many are talking about spending.
One of our big problems is that our scouting has been erratic.
We have wasted tens of millions on failed forwards.
Rasmussen ,Murphy,Balde,Bangura,( the two lads that came and went from Spain),Pukki,Scepovic,Boeritger,Fortune.
All were failures.
Our senior scouts have failed on far too many occasions with major signings.
We are just told ,they can’t all be Larson’s.
But our failure rate on forwards is horrendous.
Tens of millions of pounds wasted.
TT