Much of our Champions League history was on show last night, apart from the fragility which has accompanied Celtic so often on the road. The game was immeasurably more difficult than any challenge we face in domestic football. The opening minutes were so stressful, otherwise composed players were spooked, but winning is all about how you react when you are spooked. Do you crumble and concede an early goal?
With less than three minutes on the clock, and Spartak about to take their third corner kick, how many of us thought back to early goals lost in the opening minutes of recent European adventures?
Not for this team, who reacted to being spooked by scoring a genuinely top class goal.
It wasn’t until Spartak went down to 10 men that we made them look like Motherwell (the similarity in possession, passing, composure last night and on Saturday are remarkable) but, Spartak going down to 10 men was not the deciding factor in the outcome of the game. Kris Commons should have won a penalty when Celtic were 0-1 up and Gary Hooper was clean through on the goalkeeper at the incident which led to the red card.
Once level, with 20 minutes remaining, the stage was Celtic’s, but a more illustrious (i.e. expensive and feted) Celtic team had the same stage against a weaker opponent in Anderlecht in 2003 but ended up losing the game. Last night Hooper, Izaguirre, Samaras, Forrest and Brown went about their business in a steady and unspectacular fashion, exuding the confidence you need to win at this level.
No result is achieved in this competition without an enormous performance; just ask those who lost in Belgium nine years ago, including the proudest man in Europe last night.
Bring on the Salt ‘n’ Sauce Rangers.
The next issue of CQN Magazine is in the planning. If you would like to contribute an article, or advertise, let me know, articles@cqnmagazine.co.uk.
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Just been watching Sammi’s header while in relaxed mode. It reminds me of Big Billy’s to win the Cup in ’65, which was the beginning of our golden period. Oh, if history is to be repeated….
DBBIA,
Yeh, have to agree; it couldn’t have much of a stooshie, if it only lasted a week on CQN.
Has O.G. come clean yet?
Often, when a player is either transferred or out through injury, his stock rises exponentially. Sammi, Kayal and Scott Brown are cases in point. Aiden McGeady was, IMO, rated much higher on htese pages after he left Celtic than he was whilst with us. With that in mind, I had a closer look at Aiden last night and concluded that Aiden has more natural skill than James Forrest but James, even in this below standard spell he is enduring, is a more dangerous player than Aiden.
If we ever have to sell the likes of James, Victor and Hoops, I hope I am able to say the same about their replacements. With McGeouch,Twardzic and Watt on our books, that situation might not be as outrageous as it first might appear.
The Future`s bright; The future`s green and White.
JJ
O.G Rafferty just give us a wee hint as to whats in the pipeline……
or is is going to be a saga like lord of the ra gers with minty ,mbb & chucky green
also staring the zombie orcs
imo i think its will be about the 12oct with bdo and court proccedings
internetbampots csc
listening to tommy on his radio show
Cracking line to Snyde executive in phone call
Putting the fun in to fundamentalism
O G
Lotto numbers for tonight please??
Awe_Naw, it’s got nothing to do with profit. Profit is determined by the difference between income and expenditure, not income alone.
Each great player had a moment when his reputation was far greater than his ability. Teams who want to create more great historical moments know when to replace these guys with players whose ability is greater than their reputation.
Teams who prefer not to manage their assets will hit a brick wall and a major rebuilding exercise (see Fir Park, 2005).
Is the game or highlights on the telly anywhere today?
SOUTH OF TUNIS
The MBB put it all on Ally being good enough to beat Maribor,Malmo,Falkirk,etc.
Just a wee run of bad luck,could happen to anyone doncha know?
He’ll be back-hopefully with a couple of floating (depth) charges to sink The Rangers…..
Headtheball – The lawyers of former Rangers owner Craig Whyte have moved to have him declared bankrupt.
What did he do with the £2 Charlie Green gave him? (thumbsup)
Much weeping, grinding of teeth and rending of yellow garments in Brazil as the national football team is given its lowest place ever in the FIFA men’s world rankings (brought to you by Coca-Cola).
Brazil are an unprecedented 14th in the list for October.
They don’t ken they’re born. Scotland are 56th. Ireland are 28th. Blighty are fifth.
Spain are first, followed by Germany, then Portugal, then Argentina.
Seems like the BBC is having some internal battles over its coverage of Sevco.
A story titled “Rangers’ final tax bill tops £94m, Duff and Phelps reveals” in the news (not sport) pages said about Green:
“He has since formed a new club which is playing in the Scottish Football League Third Division.”
1 October 2012 Last updated at 12:28 (retrieved @ 19.20 1/10/12)
But then, with no change to the timestamp it became:
“He has since formed a new company which runs Rangers, now playing in the Scottish Football League Third Division.”
1 October 2012 Last updated at 12:28 (retrieved @ 21.56 2/10/12)
But today we have:
“He has since formed a new club, now playing in the Scottish Football League Third Division.”
2 October 2012 Last updated at 22:30 (retrieved @ 12.11 3/10/12)
PAUL67
Apologies,you are right,I was as usual wrong-it was their captain Glen Buck-sp-who was sent off.
I (cherry)picked the wrong fella.
Contrived wee Ayrshire fitba joke there………
SCLC Fourth Round Draw
« backall articles »
Monday 1st October 2012
Following close cooperation with participating Clubs and our Partners the Scottish Government , the Scottish Football League has agreed to switch the venue and timing of the SCLC quarter final draw to The National Stadium, Hampden Park, Glasgow at 2.00 p.m. on Thursday 4th October, 2012. This will assist all clubs and our Government Colleagues in ensuring that this important draw is attended and supported by all concerned .
At last they have got the balls heated up or chipped. Expect Sevco to be at home.
Carles Puyol is out for eight weeks. Fishal.
OG
With all respect, are you modelling your career on Alex Cameron’s sealed envelope? I think he left it in the drawer of his desk when he checked out. It didn’t serve him terribly well in the long run.
Gordon_J backing Neil Lennon
12:11 on
3 October, 2012
I see another ex Celt is interested in the Blackburn job. Or as the Daily Mirror puts it,
Keane Keen On Keane Job
~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~
Perhaps someone with a long memory at Blackburn will tell Keane that it’s a done deal,then back out at the last minute.
Aiden McGeady ineffective yesterday? I read his interview to the Russian press. Aiden said that his play in the first half was inefective due to Celtic good play. For that reason he was moved closer to the centre in the second half. He is not a shadow of the player that left Celtic. Neil Lennon tactics and Celtic players made him ineffective yesterday.
Paul,
The project is working, simple as that.
Well done Celtic, so very proud of that performance, bring on the Hearts.
Bobby Murdoch
Nice to see the Glenbuck Cherrypickers get a mention.
Call me a pedant, but if Liverpool fans are going to go to all the trouble of:
1. Finding out where Glenbuck is
2. Going all the way there to unveil a statue to its most famous son and their most famous manager …
… they simply had to get the engraving right, without the rogue apostrophe. It just wastes it.
The Samaras header seem to happen in slow motion. I think I was mid air jumping off my bar stool as it hit the net. Hail hail!
Awe Naw
Don’t disagree, our attacking was remarkably effective in the 1st half, which can’t be said for our possession game.
#wedowinningaway . Thats all I have to say :)
Whyte is being declared bankrupt to make it less likely,that the likes of Ticketus and Sevco go after him.
You can’t get blood out of a stone.
Our hero has his stash well hidden.
A67
OG loves to be a little tease. Just spill the beans man. Or a wee summary of what you feel you can tell please.
Zbyszek
Agree completely!
Jock Stein used to say “you can only play as well as the opposition let you”.
Thanks also for your pre match news.
nothing without fans – “Rangers” is like Lord Voldemort, i.e. it can exist as either a disembodied spirit of evil or opportunistically graft itself parasitically to a host. (thumbsup)
Page 3 pode.
Well I never!
Even until the sending off, Celtic had been playing very well, with the exception of Ambrose in defence (more than forgivable considering it’s his 3rd start in the hoops) and Brown (in front of the midfield in an unfamiliar role). Wanyama and Mulgrew were excellent in CM, while Hooper was outstanding.
One thing I found puzzling was the positioning of Brown (no.10 role) and Commons (wide right). Commons has proved over a number of games how good he is in the no.10 role behind Gary Hooper, while Brown is equally used to and effective at RM, especially in Celtic’s more difficult games. There must have been a tactical reason for this – possibly Lenny thought Brown’s movement would be useful against their defensive midfielder/CBs – but I don’t think the decision benefited either player.
Both Hooper and Mulgrew were superb last night, but I’d vote Sammi MOTM. Poor 1st half aside, he made the difference in the 2nd. The Spartak defence simply couldn’t deal with him down the wing or in the box, and he was a vital part of Celtic’s defence at set-pieces.
Msm? I got my answer..
(Glasgow)Herald leads with the Fletcher story albeit a pic of Sammi scoring..but Richard Wilson leads with the Levein/ Fletcher rubbish..
And they wonder why we don’t buy papers ?
HH
Starry Plough. maybe you could answer me regarding John Clark the kit man, i havent seen him in the dug-out for a while, i asked on here last week about him and was treated very shably with a couple of c q n punters ,1 was voguepunter, and the other 1 i think was el- diego bhoy. all i wanted to know was is the kit man still at the club , and another couple of things, so starry plough if you would be kind enough to reply to me ,i would be grateful,
philvisreturns
Preciseliamus.
zbyszek
Spot on mate , Celtic didn’t allow Aiden to be effective . We got our tactics / performance and our substitutions exactly right .
Philvis,
£2 !!! – you dont think that Craigy Bhoy was the punter with the 3-2 and Hoops to score first do you?
The Champions League Final 2014 to take place in Lisbon, surely not?
GettingCarriedAwayCSC
The scandal of the UEFA coefficient ratings system
Celtic currently sit sixth based on the UEFA system for the current season . Now this is just this years results, and the overall position is based on a 5 year assessment . However a look at this years coefficient highlights the inbuilt and permanent advantage handed to the major countries
http://kassiesa.home.xs4all.nl/bert/uefa/data/method4/tcoef2013.html
The overall rating is made up of match points, qualification points, and bonus points all of which are earned individually by the club. There is then a Country part which is a percentage of the average points earned by all clubs from a given country.
To put this into perspective. Malaga who didn’t play in Europe last year , or in any year in recent memory, were the beneficiary of a Country contribution of 4.2 for their ranking
To put that in perspective a team who have not played a single game in Europe since season 2002 -03 were GIVEN more ranking points than Celtic EARNED for getting into the CL Group stages this year, by being Scottish Champions and winning 4 qualification games. Celtic EARNED 4 points for all of that.
However it gets worse. Malaga currently have 2 match points and play tonight. Lets assume they lose. Lets further assume they win one more home match and lose everything else.
Their points for the season will be as follows :
Match Points 4
Bonus Points 4
Total EARNED 8
now lets assume Spain are as successful this year as they are on average
This will mean that Malaga will be GIVEN a further 4.2 points making their ranking points total for the year 12.2
Compare that to Celtic, currently we have EARNED 7 points from our own efforts and were “Given” a further .5 point. Which in truth was earned almost entirely by our contribution to the Scottish Total
Lets assume we win another 2 games. This will give us a further 4 points and a further .2 on the country part
Now I know this would mean we would be likely to move to a next stage , however for comparative purposes we should stop the comparison there, as Malaga will likely be out of Europe
We will have collected a total of 11.2 ranking points for being National Champions and winning 7 games and drawing one
Malaga will have earned 12.2 for entering in 4th place from La Liga and winning 3 games and drawing one
You could pretty much replicate this scenario for English teams as well. The system is flawed, it is designed to take out sporting fairness, in favour of preferential handicapping for the big countries.
I would like UEFA to give me a valid reason why ANY club should have a country element added to their ranking points.Why do we need it. Why should Malaga benefit from Barca’s efforts ? Think of the ludicrous nature of this. It’s akin to giving a Jamaican runner a 3 yard head start in the 100 metres because Usain Bolt is also Jamaican
It’s not enough the English benefit from ludicrous TV deals, and Financial doping by owners , they have to have an inbuilt advantage on the handicapping as well.
Platini should look at this as part of financial fair play
Can we spend the seville money now?
;)
Barcabhoy
Astonishing facts, it just shows what Celtic have to deal with in terms of having their hands tied when it comes to Europe and why we take a more frugal approach!
Viewfaethewindae, it sure is.