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
- »
Celtic40me @ 1:00, 1:01 pm,
Ange was recommended into Celtic by a mate, he was recommended into Spurs by a mate and he has a mate that owns Notts Forest – Ange will be fine.
Since we got beat by Feyenoord over two years ago, Bayern Munich are the only Club to beat us at home before last night.
Disappointing result that could have gone either way, but not close to a sacking offence is it.
“Bit of a distraction all this money chat isnt it?”
Yes – not sure why P67 erroneously brought it up.
Hail Hail
THE BATTERED BUNNET on 3RD OCTOBER 2025 1:09 PM
..
We’ll know the answer in the next 4 weeks , if we lose the semi to the Hun then the handwriting is on the wall , and to safe face Brendan should be mutually consented out the door.
HH
EKBhoy @ 1:22 pm,
Brendan Rodgers has made it clear he is here until his contract is up, that’s if it’s not extended.
So unless this drastically change there will be no mutualled consent.
Hail Hail
Chairbhoy on 3rd October 2025 12:51 pm
Current Operating expresses are circa £120m. Rev last year with CL was circa £140m.
Its not an opinion, its just counting
CHAIRBHOY on 3RD OCTOBER 2025 1:28 PM
EKBhoy @ 1:22 pm,
Brendan Rodgers has made it clear he is here until his contract is up, that’s if it’s not extended.
So unless this drastically change there will be no mutualled consent.
Hail Hail
…..
Events may overtake this …. Let’s hope not … if Brendan did get mutually consented then this should be carried out in a professional manner , Brendan has provided a lot of good times at the club. And that cannot be forgotten; if his times up then best to act quickly
Goodtochatcfc
The more i think of it the more the disallowed goal had a huge influence ….I think we would have went on and won the game
Paul I felt couldn’t hide his glee writing that ….
No mention of excellent saves from keeper
Peter Lawwell booked ghastly last night. He needs to chuck it, for his own health, if nothing else. Time for unity and leadership 🤔
MOISEY17 on 3RD OCTOBER @ 1:14 PM
Fair comment, Engels contributed a lot last season – he settled quickly and deserved his starting place in the team. He has been unsettled equally quickly this season 🤷♂️
vinniethedog on 3rd October 2025 1:42 pm
The more i think of it the more the disallowed goal had a huge influence ….I think we would have went on and won the game
Paul I felt couldn’t hide his glee writing that ….
No mention of excellent saves from keeper
—–
I don’t think we were terrible. We were the slightly better team before the first goal (individual error), then Braga were a lot better for the first half. We were unlucky not to score in the second. An individual error by CCV helped contribute to the second goal. A mostly even game between two teams who are on a par. Booing doesn’t help
Notthebus @ 1:29 pm,
The PLC get a great reputation for managing costs – in any football club, you would expect the first team salary to be a significant part of the costs
However it looks like we have 90 mn operating expenses outside the first team salary.
You stated…
“…Net result is we will make a trading loss this year because of the eye watering salaries we are paying.”
That’s not what the figures are telling me.
Our revenues might well drop by 30 mn this year due to no UCL and fan unrest.
UEFA allow 70% of football revenues for squad costs.
That is made up of player and coaches salaries, agents fees and amortised transfer fees.
We have 52 mn in transfer fees amortised over mainly five years – that is circa 12 mn.
We have circa 25 mn in salaries.
We have lots of headroom in our football revenues, football expenses ratio.
So we must ask, why are our operational costs so high?
Our football squad costs are well under control, so the losses will becoming from elsewhere.
Hail Hail
if we are looking at where to start to improve the team look no further than the back 4 and the keeper.
I’ve not seen you referencing bed wetters in a while, Paul.
Is that because many of us were right about the way the club was and is being run. Some of us can see the bigger picture.
It’s all gone wrong and yet we still incredibly get 45000 for a game against Braga. 40 years ago when we had a much better side, club identity and league we would have bit your hand off for such a crowd.
A sticking plaster won’t fix this, nor will the Gordon Strachan principle that winning games will make it all go away. This is bigger than that. Change is needed at a strategic level and if it doesn’t happen crowds will drop even if tickets are paid for. When the club is united we genuinely have 60000 in because people want to see every game. When it is functional we often drop 5-10000 seats.
The myth about last season needs brought up. We had a few good games in Europe and competed really well but domestically it was up and down from November/December. Dull at times even
Those of us who go to the majority of games have a different perspective from those that sit in the house watching it. A 1-0 win in the rain and the cold can look very different at CP on a Wednesday in January.
Time for change. The fans don’t believe in a lot of the team and they don’t believe in each other in some cases. Some players have guts in adversity and some do not. Brendan confuses me at times with his choices but he is the manager for the next 7 months.
The collective needs to keep working at ways to agitate change. Lawwell and Nicholson looked lost last night and both deserve to go.
CHAIRBHOY on 3RD OCTOBER 2025 1:19 PM
At some point recent results become of more significance than older ones. Much more of the last few months and something will need to be done
Just because he’s failing now doesnt mean he hasn’t been a great Celtic manager, just like just because he’s been a great Celtic manager doesnt mean he isn’t failing now.
He might turn it round, hes done it before, although from a better position, but if he’s thinking like you and theres no problem hes done for
I’d give him the chance, but if there’s someone out there who we think we could get who could do a better job Celtic would be failing the fans if they didn’t consider it. Nobody is beyond the sack, regardless of their past record
But like I said, I wouldn’t sack him
Chairbhoy on 3rd October 2025 1:54 pm
We dont have £25m in salaries’ mate. you need to check the TOTAl wage bill.
Its not an argument,
Notthebus @ 1:29 pm,
It is worth looking back at what our Chairman said back in 2023.
History tells us that we will not always qualify for the Champions League and the benefit of holding cash reserves affords us the optionality of managing through seasons where we participate in the Europa League with the ability to retain our squad as opposed to selling key players to bridge the income shortfall between both competitions. The Financial sustainability rules are also a key feature of UEFA licencing and we need to be cognisant of running our club accordingly….
…Our successfully proven [recruitment] strategy has delivered stability and footballing success over many years and remains the same. We must balance the signing of players that can be developed and sold when conditions are optimal alongside the need to sign players who are able to make an immediate impact and deliver footballing success. The execution of this strategy is increasingly challenging owing to wage and transfer inflation, but this formula has underpinned both our footballing success and financial stability over a number of years now and it is vital that we adhere to it.”
So, we were well aware of the possibility of EUL level revenues rather than UCL.
We were well aware we would be dealing with player wage inflation.
So there is no reason why we would end up making unsustainable losses in 2026.
Hail Hail
Notthebus @ 2:04 pm,
It is not the total wage bill that is used for FSR, it is the first team squad bills.
You were suggesting that was the cause of our potential losses – it isnt.
If other costs are out of control and other salaries are out of control that’s on the CFO, the Executive as a whole and the Board.
Our football revenues are 140 mn and our first team costs are a fraction of that.
Hail Hail
Me “Well, at least it can’t get any worse than last night”
Mick McCarthy “It can”
Chairbhoy on 3rd October 2025 2:08 pm
Never mentioned FSR. i mentioned we will trade at a loss, that’s probably irrefutable
My point is we are financially geared as CL club, as years go by that tournament will be harder and harder to qualify for. That inevitably means reducing the overhead to stay in profit.
The question was “are we getting VFM for the current incumbents. ” I think not. However the concern is what lies ahead. We are on the wrong road
EKBhoy @ 1:40 pm, Celtic40me @ 2:02 pm,
Brendan Rodgers has been a very successful manager for Celtic, if our standards are dropping it is relative.
And it’s not science for rocketeers to know why our season’s preparations went so badly.
It hopefully can be turned around but if not and the manager moves on in May and we start again
But consider this – Celtic’s last seven Managerial appointments.
Tony Mowbray
Neil Lennon
Ronny Delia
Brendan Rodgers
Neil Lennon – JK caretaker
Ange Postecoglou
Brendan Rodgers
So BR has said he won’t be mutualled, he would have to be “emptied”.
Why would that not mean John Kennedy until June?
We were messing about with Eddie Howe for months before getting Ange on a sliding doors moment.
Not seeing this greener grass while this Board is in situ.
Agreed Celtic40me, sacking Brendan Rodgers would be the wrong move.
Hail Hail
CHAIRBHOY on 3RD OCTOBER 2025 2:24 PM
For now. You cant think he can survive until May if this carries on.
Sorry, didnt see ghastly getting booked.
Notthebus @ 2:17 pm,
It follows that if FSR is not an issue, then players salaries are not the issue.
Costs have crept up for quite sometime now, that’s not on the football dept.
Our costs of participating in the UCL would be higher, player bonuses for UCL wins and draws will be high for last year.
Yet we make more revenue from UCL matches in general and UCL bonuses payments for wins and draws – surely the Executive are not paying out more in bonuses than they are getting in.
So this year the revenues go down but so does squad costs.
My feeling is one of the biggest mistakes we made was re-purposing Lennoxtown from an elite academy into a first team training ground.
We talk about Brugge, Benfica etc as clubs we should emulate but forget these Clubs have elite academies that not only save costs on player recruitment but bring in revenue on player transfers.
That’s why we need a proper Football Club Board with ideas for sporting excellence.
Hail Hail
Chairbhoyon@3rdOctober202512:10pm
“As long as this Board is in situ, Celtic FC are going to show no ambition.”
……….
How do we get rid of the board and who would replace them?
The fans are even less trustworthy than the board.
The Celtic Collective is full of paper aeroplanes throwing types of rebellion pushers, or ‘just stop oil’ level of laughing stocks.
If I was the board I would warn these people that if they did not stop making an erchie of themselves then their tickets will be blocked/persona/non/grata and if they enter any Celtic areas, the Celtic Way for example, to protest, then they will be arrested on site.
Arrest thum and throw the key away.
In short – The PLC welcome a challenge from real Tims, not Snp college boys and girls with their heads full of woke guff.
How do we get rid of the Tory PLC structures out of the club when the majority of fans vote for a Tory-proxy-party ie: Snp accompanied by the Greens who think that constant NATO Wars have zero effect on Global warming, and they give Scottish people the same austerity as the London/Cardiff/Parliaments give to their voters.
All like the Blue/Red/Yellow/Green/Reform/Tories give to the English/Welsh people and these Celtic supporter voters can’t tell the difference, and are therefore too dumb/twisted/sleekit to be trusted with any kind of power.
Toryism at Celtic since 1994 has turned fans into Tories even if they don’t know it.
Voting for thoroughly disgusting scumbags and then telling everybody that you are the good guys is dumber than dumb, if not outright evil.
Celtic haven’t had a leader at ANY level of the club since MON walked out the door.
MON wasn’t out the door a year and he was being dismissed as a “long ball dinosaur” by fans who had been brainwashed by the “WE COULDN’T AFFORD THE O’NEILL SPENDING LEVELS” etc sleekit bunkum from Brian [bank of England crook] Quinn, type of soft soaped PLC fanbhoys and ghirls.
Zero debt but big bonuses is Toryism straight in your face.
The class levels that Celtic fans had about them up to Seville 2003, Barcelona 2004, Milan 2005, taking their own carrier bags to collect their own rubbish, further enhancing our reputation as the good guys who were so proud of our club, and led by a leader who lifted Celtic from the canvas and took us to our highest level since the great Stein era.
Reaching a European final is Stein era level.
Since MON left us, our standing as a club to be feared by European teams has disappeared.
Neil Lennon revived some of the MON stuff in the season we defeated Barcelona’s great Galacticos at Parkhead, and were 20 seconds away from a draw in the Nou Camp as well in our most memorable nights in Europe since WGS defeated Man Utd on a night when Parkhead was a fortress.
Fortress Parkhead does not exist anymore!
Spirited fans who are Clued up to keep our surroundings clean as we go, non muggable fans do not exist at Celtic now.
The always twisted, confrontational, bitching, snitching, grassing up their neighbours, or fellow posters, always believing the media narratives, over what traditional Celtic fans used to see as the alternative angle that the media don’t want you to know about because it is the REAL truth and facts.
When did Celtic fans start to push media narratives over dogs on the street REAL levels of info?
These extra special Celtic spider-senses were we automatically knew that we were being lied to, but now we want people banned for simply doing their traditional Celtic duties and informing their fellow Celts that, “HEY, DON’T BELIEVE THIS NEW NARRATIVE, LOOK WHO IS BEHIND THIS, AND THIS IS WHAT THEY ARE TRYING TO DO!!!”
Etc, etc.
Now if you don’t believe the Masonic/CIA/FBI media you are a troll trouble maker.
Timdom has fallen. Don’t blame me. Buy 60,000 mirrors.
“You need to impose yourself on the game”
That’s a Brendan Rodgers principle, we’ve heard it many times.
Last night he broke up his defining team formation at half time and aped the opposition.
Against a team certainly no better equipped than his.
At home.
That’s a pretty salient capitulation of principle.
Re the wage bill posted, it doesn’t appear to list Maeda. Also, Callum MacGregor is one lucky guy to be pocketing that wage for the next three seasons.
Celtic40me @ 2:33 pm,
Did you read the Roger Hannah piece that was from a Celtic insider and came from the Celtic “hierarchy”
If Brendan Rodgers gets sacked it will be business politics not football results.
Hail Hail
Does anyone have a CLEAR link to the `handball` that led to the `goal` being disallowed?
I can only find one which show the incident at normal speed and nothing is obvious.
RC disagree…..the problems for me are all middle to front…lack of goals ….up until last night the defence have been good !!!
Kev
You’ve got it in for the board, the manager, the team AND the fans….in other words there’s not ONE thing you like about Celtic….so why do you bother?
If you change EVERYTHING about Celtic then they’re not Celtic anymore….
You’d be as well concentrating your efforts elsewhere…
KevJungle @ 2:40 pm,
The one thing we rarely discuss is the huge Elephant in the room.
Celtic are a Company, a PLC.
Their Board are a PLC and their Executive act for the PLC – with their principal shareholder the puppetmaster.
They are untouchable, and the granting of the Monday meeting had more to do with the principal shareholder wanting an undisturbed game of golf in Scotland than anything else.
Hail Hail
One-eyed blog that ignores the hobbling of the team by systematically selling off our goal threat and the amateur hour attempt to replace it. For the umpteenth time since Lawwell came in as CEO the Board ripped the feel good spirit out of the club.
Which isn’t to excuse Rodgers. The team is getting close to unwatchable and the dearth of goal threat is frightening. Also worrying is the simultaneous collapse in form of big players like CalMac, CCV and Kasper.
We are pretty much rotten and absolutely there for the taking if the purple huns or original huns can keep it together.
It’s a team of mediocre talents and fragile confidence and I don’t agree with the booing -unless it’s directed against the Boardroom charlatans.
As a poor team they need our unqualified support more than ever and I’ll be back on Sunday to give them it.
Talking of unqualified, this team looks incapable of qualifying in the top 24 of the crappy Europa League. What an abysmal collective failure that would be on the part of all those highly paid (by us) guys in the Boardroom, dugout and on the field.
Forget my 2:46 request. Nothing will change the result.
CHAIRBHOY on 3RD OCTOBER 2025 2:42 PM
How bad do you think results need to get before he deserves the sack?
VINNIETHEDOG on 3RD OCTOBER 2025 2:46 PM
RC disagree…..the problems for me are all middle to front…lack of goals ….up until last night the defence have been good !!!
the only way the defence has been any good is imo very few teams attack us and they are happy ‘tactics wise’ to allow us to have the ball and create nothing from the back other than playing crab football, but if teams do attack us omg talk about panic and fear and lake of pace in our back line is rife.
lack
31003 on [3rd October 2025 2:49 pm
Kev
You’ve got it in for the board, the manager, the team AND the fans….in other words there’s not ONE thing you like about Celtic….so why do you bother?
If you change EVERYTHING about Celtic then they’re not Celtic anymore….
You’d be as well concentrating your efforts elsewhere…
……..
Board, Manager, Team, Fans, are alll to blame, and ALL need to be called out.
I should concentrate elswwhere why?
Because you are another one who does not like a bucket of reaity poured over you?
Then that is tough.
Last time that I spoke to you you said that you wished I was dead.
So go and do one.
You are evidently part of the classless Celtic supporter base.
Why don’t you concentrate on that instead of deflecting or demanding that those who don’t suck your narratives should just walk off of the reservation….and that would achieve what?
You feeling less awkward?
Celtic are not Celtic anymore when someone is not entitled to question Celtic stuff.
I didn’t do that – you did.
If you can’t handle having your cage rattled then maybe you were never a Tim in the first place?
Tims don’t wish that their fellow Tims were dead because you disagree with them, but you do.
PS, The Mod must have removed your post that wished I was dead, in case I weaponised it to prove that I was correct.
But I’m not dead so tough.
CHAIRBHOY
Is it a job for life regardless?
Thats an absolutely crazy fantasy
Kev
Calm your jets…I suggested you concentrating your ire elsewhere for the sake of your health and you’ve just went off on one
“Last time that I spoke to you you said that you wished I was dead.”
You said that before….and I’ll answer it the same way I did before..Your either getting me mixed up with someone else…or you’re a bare faced liar…I’ll go with the latter…