When Braga lined up for kick-off I thought, “Three at the back against a front three away from home in Europe, we should be OK here.” And so we should have been. Braga were average-to-poor during the opening 20 minutes, as Celtic settled into a pattern of attack, primarily down the left flank (we’ll come to that later).
There is always a temptation to scapegoat after a poor result and it would be unnecessarily harsh to single out Kasper Schmeichel for not stopping a shot from 33 yards which went directly above his frame. Kasper’s decline is clear to see, but the team in front of him last night were not any better.
Once the goal went in, Braga players seemed to grow a few inches, while Celtic’s shrunk in stature. The visitors went man-for-man when out of possession and Celtic were – yet again – unable to pass through the press. The possession horseshoe of doom was in full swing and midfielders, facing their own goal, only passed sideways or back to Cameron Carter-Vickers or Liam Scales. Or, of course, Kasper.
The entire support could not wait until halftime in the hope that Brendan Rodgers would sort things out. The change was a surprise. Celtic went three at the back to match up to Braga (note, match up to Braga, who are seventh in the Portuguese league). This created a bit more opportunity in the middle of the park, although the personnel change, which saw Marcelo Saracchi play an advanced role on the left had a lot to do with the improvement.
Changing to an untested formation was a risk. Twice Celtic rode their luck as Braga exploited the space where a right back would normally be, but the chances were not taken. Kelechi Ịheanachọ again stepped up, won a loose ball and smacked his shot below the keeper into the net. To the incredulity of the majority inside Celtic Park, the referee disallowed the goal and VAR did not see enough of an error to overrule the official.
Some sides grow with a sense of injustice, but that did not happen. One man’s thing to fight against is another’s excuse.
Braga’s second goal was a classic of the pressing genre. They pressed a poorly structured team all night and got their reward by forcing Celtic so far back a clearance took a ricochet and flew into the net. Fair play to them. A team who are midtable in Portugal, who could not afford our players or their wages, and a manager who is under severe pressure, tactically out-thought Celtic. Our left flank, with Seb, Kieran and Marcelo, were bossed by a Swedish defender Gus Lagerbielke.
We are like the kid who turns up at the board to play draughts when everyone else is playing chess. Motherwell come to Celtic Park on Sunday undefeated in all competitions this season. Whisper it, they have a good manager. Jens Berthel Askou is like the chess-playing kid and is not keen on excuses.
275 Comments- Pages:
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- »
Hola
Let the fun and games begin
HH
Infamy!
Braga playing chess, BR and the team playing draughts and the Board playing hide and seek.
‘were bossed by a Swedish defender Gus Lagerbielke’
———————————————————————————-
The same player who passed the ball to Kelechi, while in the process then tackled his own player, allowing a goal that should have stood.
The same player who was outjumped by KT at a set piece only for the goalkeeper to save his bacon with a wonder stop.
That Lagerbielke?
Braga team are worth 135 mn
We paid out 52 mn for our squad
Don’t see how that gives us any advantage.
Fholk have short memories, for most of the last 15 years that Braga result would not have been extraordinary.
In his two seasons in charge Ange lost eleven European games.
Last year in the UC League
Pld 8 W3 D3 L2
That high point and saw the return of fortress Celtic Park it is why this seasons games are disappointing.
Yet we must remember that peak came from BR&CO lifting us up a level.
Get used to the new normal, it is the same as the old normal.
As long as this Board is in situ, Celtic FC are going to show no ambition.
Hail Hail
I thought they started the game like a team who had very little belief in how they were being asked to play but finished it very comfortable
I thought by the end we looked like we had very little belief ourselves
So, regress to partner club to maintain the old firm and you get humiliated and left behind by the rest of Europe. About as surprising as it is new!
Change the chief executive, change the manager, change the players – won’t make any difference (of course you could make things worse by downgrading the manager as we have seen before).
As long as the overarching principle remains it will be deja vu all over again.
And again. And again. And again…….
I thought the first 10- 15 minutes of the second half , even “ goal” aside, were a big improvement , especially down the left flank. Saracchi upped the energy levels significantly.
While Nygren and Bernardo were not great by any means I fail to understand why they were subbed off just as we were in the ascendency for the first real time in the game.
For me , it completely disrupted that ascendency and our rhythm and we dropped to a poor level again for most of the rest of the game.
A lot of Paul’s article I wouldn’t take issue with , but he was obviously watching a different Gustaf to me .
A one man closing down of an entire wing of our attack a la Rudiger or Casemiro in his prime ? Er.. naw .
Translating from anti-Brendanese into english , it means the manager sold the best defender on the park without giving him a chance out of some personal pettiness or spite with the board .
Which , of course , is entirely seperate from the fact that both the team and the manager were pish last night .
I play draughts, at a very high level. It is quite different from chess. It is a highly sophisticated, complex, difficult game, as is chess. Just saying…….
The whole shitshow has many elements.
Board, manager and sub standard players.
Time for a wholesale change.
The malcontents have been warning of our regression for the whole of 2025.
What followed was the usual denial and name calling (you and I know from whom)
Would appear we’re almost all on the same page now.
We have lots of well paid guys onthe pitch, in the dugout and in the boardroom.
Check your egos at the door, roll up your respective sleeves and sort out this utterly predictable, and predicted, shit show
Chairbhoy
Bragga worth €112 m last week in transfer market.
Vs our €137m. That’s an advantage.
DeniaBhoy on 3rd October 2025 12:02 pm
Let the fun and games begin
—-
Yip !
Each half of that game was turned in Braga’ favour game firstly by a ridiculous misjudgement by Schmeichel in the 1st half and a ridiculous decision by the officials in the 2nd half. That said this Celtic team are weak mentally and when things don’t happen for them they crumble.
Lots to agree with Paul, but the standalone Lagerbielke reference is unnecessary, IMHO and endangers diluting the resonance of an otherwise very readable piece.
All about opinions – including yours Paul – but last night my eyes saw a no more than half decent but increasingly composed and confident Gustaf do his job unfussily within an effective frame.
That frame was not effective in the first 15 minutes when the Swedish defender was tested and tested by our left winger.
They tweaked (nowt to do with Gustaf) we didn’t.
FWIW? – I liked the kid when he was at Celtic.
Struck me he was one of few defenders whose heart rate didn’t spike when the ball came in to the red zone and (heaven forbid) he was asked to do his job !
Typo: Tested and bested
I once knew an infamous draughts player; he had a very chequered history.
BoomBoom!
BasilBrush CSC
Burnley78 @ 12:29 pm,
Those figures aren’t correct, I posted on the last thread where the 52 mn came from.
Do you know Ange’s squad is valued at 550 mn, quite incredible really.
It shows you, that the value of the squad is not as crucial as you suggest.
Hail Hail
We have assembled the most expenicsquad in our history. We have hired an “elie ” English Premiership level manager and we look like Ronnie Deliah team ..we cant score a goal, far less put a winning run together.
Have a look at this and ask if we are getting value for money. Net result is we will make a trading loss this year because of the eye watering salaries we are paying.
https://www.salaryleaks.com/football/scottish-premiership-spfl/celtic
The fact Sevco are already sunk below the waterline means we will probably limp to another title and a tilt at Champions League. That should be the “reset” moment.
In the meantime, its going to be a long season !
Notthebus @ 12:45 pm,
We turned over 143 mn
We have a wage bill of 25 mn
So we will make a loss.
Who does your maths!?
You do know that no club in UEFA competitions are allowed to spend more than 70% of football revenue on the squad?
Celtic currently at 40% has no chance of breaching that and are not allowed to make a football trading loss.
Stop the scaremongering
Hail Hail
Couple of uncharacteristic factual errors.
The Ihenacho goal was given by the ref, overruled by VAR, which makes it an even more contentious outcome. The evidential bar is significantly higher for VAR changing a ref’s decision than it is for agreeing with it. We still don’t know what Christian Dingert saw that the rest of the world missed, we probably never will.
Secondly, Braga are probably similarly placed financially. They have a very similar squad value and regularly spend 20-30m a year while making a decent transfer profit. They spent around 30m this summer including two players over 10m, and while none of us know salary details I hope we can agree 10m type players come with 10m type wages.
We were on top at key times in the game, the Schmeichel mistake and the disallowed goal kicked the ar$e out of the team’s spirit. We faced a well matched team and failed to leverage home advantage (the only real advantage we had).
I can’t recall hearing so much booing at the end of a European tie.
This was from the 8,000 or so who were still in the ground.
We are not optimising our resources and the fans know it
HH.
“A team who are midtable in Portugal, who could not afford our players or their wages”
Braga spent €12M on one player this summer but sure why let the truth get in the way of a good old rant eh!
Our left flank, with Seb, Kieran and Marcelo, were bossed by a Swedish defender Gus Lagerbielke.
Is that the lagerbielke that oassed straight to ineacho and then tried to tackle his own defender ehen we “scored”.
The lagerbielke who needed his keeper to vail him out with a wonderave at the back post when ge lost KT for a free header
SonsOfErin on 3rd October 2025 12:52 pm
Player renumeration is on record.
HH.
Surely Lagerbielke alone is worth at least 80m?
CHAIRBHOY on 3RD OCTOBER 2025 12:41 PM
Ange will face the consequences of failure at Forest like he did at Spurs. He also won the Europa last season.
Bit of a distraction all this money chat isnt it?
B78
Indeed i can get on board with your suggestion and thankfully it does show some balance but not without a dig at BR.
It is a fact that the only voice the supporters have heard is that of BR because he is the only one prepared to speak. In my view he answers the questions he is asked – does he give his opinion? of course he does, what do you expect him to do? I believe he could have been a lot more critical than he was and I think he held back. If the exec had an issue then speak up but as usual they shit the bed and said nothing.
The football department has to be properly resourced and it also has to have balance – we cannot be a team of kids with potential as that will not work for us. The department has to involve coaching in recruitment – again the idea of lumping players at the squad without professional coaches input doesn’t work either. Its balance and compromise not something we are famous for sadly.
The big question is who puts together this dream team? The current exec has shown itself to be quite useless i’m afraid – there is literally no part of this seasons window that would get a pass. Personally, and i think it would be the majority view, this Exec could not be trusted to bring something like this together, the evidence of the last few windows is stacked against them i’m afraid.
As one of your chums has said and i agree with “we are not acting like a serious football club” and everyone that has had a hand in that should not forget their coat on the way out the door. Celtic self harm strikes again.
It was the linesman who ruled out the goal. I had a perfect view of him from my seat. He spoke to the ref. and indicated that an elbow had been used.
VAR took the longest time I can remember in an European game to make the decision.
The ref. didn’t even bother top look for himself.
It’s all getting a bit reminiscent of the last season of WGS.
A team that had punched well above its weight for 3 years, twice qualifying through to the last 16 of the Champions League, started to decline. It was the draws that did for us that season, 10 in the league. It was all so tired.
By January we were badly in need in refreshing and we got poor Willo Flood (Willo was a tidy wee player, btw, just not what was needed at that time). It transpired that WGS had let the club know he was for the off at the end of the season and it looked like the club kept the cash stashed for the incoming manager in the summer.
At the time it was my view that WGS should have been thanked in December when he said he was leaving, and his replacement appointed asap. This job demands the complete commitment of the manager, and one whose eye is on the door is naturally apt to lose focus. Moreover, players become less engaged, less likely to run through the pain for him.
Everything at Celtic at the moment screeches ‘going through the motions’. The sense is that the players no longer believe in the manager and the manager is detached from them, but no one will admit it.
We’ll see what kind of fist we can make of it over the next few weeks, but I’m inclined towards the same view when WGS was working his notice.
Get the new guy in as soon as practicable, give him the January window to get a head start and perhaps we can look forward with a little more optimism than we have currently.
It all rather comes down to this: Are we better off sticking with BR – the course and distance winner who’s now struggling – or going with the new untested guy as early as he can be appointed (let’s say by December)?
Mental to think that Russel Martin might outstay Brendan, but that’s an indication of where we’re at right now.
EKBhoy
I do not believe that Arne failed last season.
Is he failing now then yes i think he is and he looks a shadow of the guys that started with us last season. He was influential in every game he played, he was generally a 7.5/10 and occasionally an 8 or higher. He played every week and in every game in CL. Now dont forget this kid was 21 and yes his form did dip a little toward the end of the season and he was not alone but then it started.
From somewhere the value issue grew arms a legs and turned into torrent on here and elsewhere and he went from a good season and an excellent prospect to and £11m dud – where did that come from? I have my own theories on that but not for today but one things for sure, the boys confidence has fallen off a cliff – he has gone from playing for Belgium beside KDB to the Celtic bench in a few short months, how does that happen?
Greenpinata – No, player remuneration is not in the public domain. UK company accounts report metrics such as total operating costs of which player wages may be a significant contributor. I have no idea what Portuguese accounting requirements are.
There are plenty of bogus salary estimate sites, but I wouldn’t put any stock in them.
I have zero confidence in this squad to win any competition, the tactical approach is woeful, slow ponderous predictable double man the left winger we have no creation, the worst part for me the team know it and have chucked it, why is for the Management to deal with. If this is not addressed soon we are in big trouble.
I’ve always acknowledged the transfer window was bitterly disappointing, governance needs overhauled and the club needs modernised.
With that said and the inevitability of being labelled a “BR hater”, I’ll say this: the vast majority have not being paying attention.
The extra-time 3-3 League Cup victory back in December should have at least pricked your curiosity. If it didn’t, the subsequent capitulation at Mordor a few weeks later should certainly have grabbed your attention. The fact remains that a deflected goal against Young Boys is the only big game we’ve won this year.
To those who’ll be along soon saying “look at the trophies. He’s our best manager since Stein”, all I can say is past performance is no guide to the future. Alas, most things ultimately reach their sell by date and become stale.
Aided and abetted by a cack-handed transfer window the manager has managed to craft a narrative that has thus far deflected from what has been happening in front of our eyes. However, some of the commentary following last night’s result has been interesting. In my experience crowd psychology typically moves in 3 phases: denial > migration > panic. Perhaps understandably most have been in ‘denial’, but I detect the ‘migration’ phase has begun. Hopefully we never get to ‘panic’. That’s where your hand is forced and decision making becomes sub-optimal.