Kairat Almaty’s Champions League qualification campaign started five weeks ago with a draw at Olimpija Ljubljana. After eliminating the Slovenian champions they did the same to Finns KuPS Kuopio, overturning a 2-0 first leg defeat, before their epic tie against Slovan Bratislava, which they won on penalties.
Kairat are the lowest seed still in the competition, but all three of their earlier opponents were seeded higher, so they are punching above their weight this season. Brendan Rodgers biggest concern will be the fitness gap between the squads. Kairat are 19 games into their domestic league, are fully fit and tactically settled. Celtic will be three competitive games into the season when the sides meet in Glasgow on Wednesday. That is a material advantage.
Despite this, there can be no excuses. Over the last three years Kairat have signed players for money only twice, for fees totalling €350k. Kazakh football does not benefit from significant investment, the country has no player development heritage to speak of and this squad has never played anywhere like Celtic Park.
Prepare correctly and get the job done, Celtic.
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CHAIRBHOY on 13TH AUGUST 2025 3:20 PM
Burnley78 @ 3:11 pm,
Ange is some sort of hero to you and Brendan some sort of Charlatan.
Yet Brendan Rodgers time at Celtic had come to an end, he sat with the Executive and Principal Shareholder and negotiated a compensation package for Celtic.
Ange was tapped up mid-season and agreed to go to Spurs, thinking Celtic would not get a thing.
DD wasn’t having it, sure Ange was on a one year rolling contract but it didn’t give him the right to speak to Spurs without Celtic’s permission.
Celtic had to go after Spurs to get the compensation.
Brendan was welcomed back.
Ange won’t be.
It’s a Celtic thing…
Hail Hail
———-
Even Ange’s team prefer working for Brendan 🫢
Anybody got the app which locates pints being drunk by BRRB?
No excuses like the manager being shorted by the grasping Board on new players you mean? Making a virtue of lucking out on the draw is so this blog/ Board. Basel or Sturm Graz would’ve exposed this pathetic Board’s wilful negligence. Still its blogger mouthpiece never misses a chance to apply pressure on the one person of different level we have in the building because he is a consistent reminder of their own mediocrity.
Not much longer bud. He’ll be away at the end of the season and the St Aloysius boys can bring in the Kazakh manager happy to work with €350k of signings. He must be their wet dream of a manager.
Kev J
Have you seen the weather.
It’s far too hot for scarves 😀
With a forward line including a very low in confidence Idah, a 34 year old JF or a ridiculous inadequate Yang i dont think we can arrogantly/confidently expect to win.
If we can take Bayern to a minute away from ET who is to say the Kazakh’s can’t do the same to us.
Failing to prepare is a long followed strategy by our club and once again we go into the CL with a squad short of what is required.
I’m surprised we’ve not tried to re sign Bitton for the occasion.
jackiemac on 13th August 2025 3:13 pm
Putin prevented more innocent Russian speaking people who live in Ukraine from being slaughtered, who before 2014 when good guy President Obama and his Nato thugs overthrew the legitimately elected Government in Ukraine because he got on well with Russian people, who were good friends with Russia, and the peaceful Russian people, THAT, didn’t suit the warmongering bankers.
So Nato, Eu, Us, Uk, etc, started killing the Government in Ukraine, and blamed Russia for it. lol,
And Obama Led Nato Scumbags arrested all of the Ukraine opposition parties, banned all media who spoke any truth, and tried to create a 6 counties scenario on the Russian border, misfiring rockets into innocent civilian areas in Russia, killing lots of innocent people, from 2014 to 2022, and immediately Russia is blamed etc.
The slaughter of innocent Rus people started in 2014, NOT, 2022 like the media say, same media who say that the Gaza genocide started on 7/10/23, and not 1948.
Careful what you see on TV, or read in Western media, there is no media, they are all propagandists and war shills.
It would be great if CANAMALAR, and ERNIE LYNCH didn’t get his password diddled about with so that he couldn’t log in, and wasn’t banned as their knowledge was priceless.
Greenpinata on 13th August 2025 3:38 pm
Kev J
Have you seen the weather.
It’s far too hot for scarves 😀
%
Long may it continue. HH
We are playing Celtic of the Glasgow for football cup and if we don’t beat them , I will be execute!!
Boratcsc.
Chill
What do you call a friendly snowman in this weather ?
Puddle
Kev Racist
Not bitter and twisted at all
Highlighting your succulent unionist racism is a mere pastime.
It is a truth
And is Yvette not an old pal from his days as a socialist,before he started getting tenners sent from your disability check and became woke central on youchoob
I see the anti-Brendan brigade is out in full force today with their usual tiresome rubbish.
I don’t know why some of you spend so much time and energy debating people who aren’t interested in a debate. You have more chance of winning a political discussion in a Russian interrogation chamber than with some of the people on here. When they don’t have facts they invent them, such as this rubbish about how Ange never complained. There’s an obvious agenda.
Here’s an indisputable fact; whether you think Rodgers blew his last budget or not, it’s his budget to blow. He carries the can for failure. Different if he had failed, but he didn’t. Second stages of the Champions League, penalty kicks from a domestic treble … it must people on here sick to see him do so well.
Here’s another indisputable fact; if your argument is that Rodgers should get no more money from this board than that’s the dickhead rationale of all time. In stabbing the manager in the front you’re stabbing all the rest of the football department in the back and pissing all over the fans.
Explain to me how – in whatever scenario exists in your tiny minds – forcing the man to work with a weaker team than he had last season whilst money piles up in the bank is in the best interests of this club, either in the short, medium or long term? It’s stupid beyond belief. It’s fuckwittery beyond comprehension and you are defending it. Don’t pretend to be talking up Celtic or acting in its best interests.
You’re actively assisting an act of sabotage against this team. Nothing less.
Failing to prepare ?
2018/19 knocked out CL qualifiers by AEK Athens
2019/20 knocked out CL qualifiers by Cluj
2020/21 knocked out CL qualifiers by Ferencvaros
2021/22 knocked out CL qualifiers by Midtjylland
2022/23 knocked out CL qualifiers Bodo/Glimt
Is dickheadery a word ? If so, I like it.
It’s cool.
Kev Racist
It would be great if CANAMALAR, and ERNIE LYNCH didn’t get his password diddled about with so that he couldn’t log in,
Canamalar last seen bout the Dolphin and Kuwait.
Ernie,you can read in most Scottish broadsheet or for the supporters action group,if you know his pen name.
Canamalar got blocked by then mod and Ernie did too.nae luck,you should give them your cloak of invisibility(lols)(we can’t tell when you change name-you should try eeee-awww)
James Forrest
Do you just come on here to slag folk off? Is there any other point to your shouty pestiferousness?
Kevj – what constitutes ‘russian’?
not having a go – the mother russia narrative has been here for a while and ain’t going away.
The Ukrainian narrative is – if some of us have a funny accent it doesn’t mean you can kidnap our children?
No excuses.Really?.You say no excuses for BR and the team he has been dealt.Yet you seem to always make up excuses for his utterly pathetic employers.Do you ever read back what you write?.Your blog,once one of the best,has now become a laughing stock amongst other bloggers.This is down to your unswerving loyalty to this Board.Wee are being treated like paying fools.Not an utterance from them.Hiding in their Boardroom,like a variety of Scrooges,rubbing their wrinkled hands,as they pour over the books.And you cant see it beggars belief.You have turned into a fraud.Defrauding your readers of honest comments,while you bow at the feet of a whole Board of frauds,doing their bidding.
Shame on you.
The Blogger Formerly Known As GM @ 3:06 pm,
IMO a Kairat victory is unlikely, Celtic Park has become a European fortress again and BR has already been to Kazakhstan.
Yet Slovan Bratislava got a man sent off in the first round of their tie and got unlucky with the penalties on the home leg.
That’s football, that’s how it rolls…
Due to various circumstances we have sold our most effective forward, wr have a striker short of confidence, our best winger long term injured, our next best winger on poor form.
That’s football, that’s how it rolls…
Now, you either take steps to mitigate the impact of these events, in which case your chances of winning greatly improve
Or
You sit on you hands and do nothing as the PLC Board have done, chances are you are still going to go through, yet you still put yourself into jeopardy if events run against you as they did Bratislava.
Burnley78 @ 3:06 pm,
So far this century we have got to the knock out stages of the UCL twice.
That is a terrible indictment for a club with Celtic’s revenue and support.
Ronny and Lenny didn’t get sacked because of UCL failure – Ronny was replaced by a much better manager and Lenny lost the TIAR after being a disaster in the transfer market.
Brendan Rogers has been very successful and whether we are playing in the UCL or Europa, Brendan Rodgers will be our manager this season.
Of course Celtic PLC may pay him off before the end of his contract but that would be very expensive and they will not get a better manager to replace him.
The Return of Weeron @ 3:23 pm,
Many thanks….
Bournesouprecipe @ 3:28, 3:32 pm,
Was one a dentist – cause they will be replaced by A.I. bots…
Yes, remember Matt O’Riley gushing about Brendan as his price went up to ten, fifteen, twenty …. thirty million.
Ange didn’t get too attached to players – and voce-versa it seems.
Hail Hail
TBB,
Tell me one word of James Forrest post that is not fact.We are sleepwalking into a possible Board made disaster.The draw has been fortunate for us,but that does not condone the Board for hanging BR out to dry.Gambling when there is no need is the stupidest gamble of all.
James Forrest.
James,it may well be iyo tiresome rubbish,the Celtic Internet is full of such shoit talkers,some even post different aspects of the same turd 3 or 4 times daily,some even go on to whore their thoughts,and offer ppv for their counselling.
The Celtic fan floats in and out them all,p67 like yourself is a fan offering a view,neither is taken as more knowledgeable than the other.
Coming on saying posters are off tiny mind James
Na ye can feek reet aff with that.
Do you not have the prowess to dismantle a view?
You are assuming just because folk post here they agree with P67,wrong,wrong and thrice wrong jf
HH
I miss SFTB to express what I’m thinking!
Chairbhoy: “they should not be sneered at by arrogant westerners‘.
I actually laughed out loud.
Point out some facts in terms of disparity of resources and you’re an “arrogant westerner”.
Nothing wrong with selling Kyogo last January, we knew he wanted away and it was an offer we couldn’t refuse. Not replacing him in the same window was poor planning, not replacing him at all, is taking poor planning, to a whole new level.
FWIW The notion that Daizen Maeda was a centre forward at least good enough to backfill, or rotate with Adam Idah arguably was enough for the League and a few Euro goals maybe not the treble? It’s well documented BR is on record as wanting another striker, Daizen will play wider where he’s gotten most of his goals, so long as they are both still there.
The criticism about Idah can also be levelled at Maeda – doesn’t hold the ball up – can’t mix it with big guys – can’t play with his back to goal – poor in the air – isn’t clinical . Doesn’t tick the boxes of a centre forward at all.
In fairness , Daizen is also a winger in name only, and he’s rarely found making crosses with pinpoint accuracy, dribbling to the byline, yada, yada. A striker is definitely what he is, a modern day Bobby Lennox who was labelled a winger, funnily enough he couldn’t stop scoring either all the way into the record books, a long time before we stole Daizen from Yokohama.
If you sell Maeda I just don’t think you understand.
…….then you come back 20 minutes later to tell us their chances of winning the tie are “unlikely” 😂
AT
Well said. I think he loves to see his own words in print. A wordsmith he is not.
HH
From Chairbhoy earlier ….
“Yes, quite, gone are the days Larsson mended the WiFi…”
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Board parsimony lottery;
1.Keep Sevco close enough behind so they can read our bumper stickers but just hope to Ghod they don’t accelerate past us .
2.DD has lost interest, taken his eye off the ball, and PL is taking advantage of that to wreak his revenge on the manager.
3.PL is taking advantage of MN being a weak kneed , toady ,yes man and has told him not to sanction any spend above £1.5m on an individual player .
4.DD is pissed off that the manager has spent £26m on players who aren’t setting the heather on fire and has stopped his pocket money .
not an exhaustive list , just a flavour of what has left fans scratching their heads and dominating Celtic cyberspace . Ably promoted by Grima Wormtongue of the daily Ranger and his pals . Completely uncontradicted by any facts or information from the club .
World class in everything we do .
What a state to be in .
sufferin sabotage
Yosemite tim
“Tiny minds”
That’s some way to describe your fellow Celtic fans.
Short vid – Brendan and Callum on getting Kairat in the UCL-Q
https://youtu.be/VX6EShd9Eks?si=GTs7cFRtEjAqjvcj
Hail Hail
Unlike some other Celtic sites, people are allowed to post their views on here safe in the knowledge that if they don’t agree with the hosts point of view their posts are still welcome and will not be met with a barrage of insults and/or foul language from the host in response to their comments.
The one absolute fact about the CL play-offs — The suits in Nyon will be collectively praying for a Celtic victory.
TLWIO @ 5.12
Well said.
TLWIO @ 5.12.
So is calling them “bedwetters”.
Good stuff today.
Taking short break from work to consume.
Burnley78 @ 1:01pm (lots of good comments to reply to but randomly picked yours)
“Tell me how many of his (BR) buys, since assuming control, have been decent in terms of quality on the park or indeed value potential or any ROI ?
I’ll intentionally avoid ROI and potential value.
As for quality on the park?
I’m fine with the contributions to date of Adam, Auston, Arne and Viljami
And Luke McCowan for that matter.
Goals, assists, defensive contributions, saves, clean sheets, minutes on the pitch …
…the five guys mentioned above (making up c.22% of the squad) …
Carried as much of the load as I expected them to.
John ‘Yogi’ Hughes on ACSOM claims a Celtic contact who tells him offers have been made to 2 forward players who have not said no, but both say they do not want to commit so early in the window. He suspects they’re waiting to see if Celtic make it past the play-offs.
Yogi also claims Mackay and Nicholson have authorised substantial bids for other players but Dermot Desmond has put his foot down, and refused to ratify the spends.
I make no comment as to the veracity of the above as I have no way of knowing. I merely pass it on.