Shakhter Karagandy covered 5k more ground than Celtic last night, 500m per outfield player. That’s 5.5m per minute, per player, or an extra meter every 10 seconds or so. That kind of advantage means that when the ball breaks loose in and around the danger area, the more active team are in space – which happened at both goals.
Conversely, when Celtic were in advanced positions Shakhter players were there in numbers. The difference was not caused by exceptional exertion by Shakhter, in their match with Maribor last night, Viktoria Plzen covered 11k more than Celtic, or a clear 2 meters every 10 seconds per outfield player.
Despite enjoying the vast majority of possession the Celtic players were lacking in movement and ideas. Being short of ideas is one thing but lack of movement is altogether unacceptable. We have to prepare fitness levels ahead of the second leg meticulously; Inverness on Saturday is only relevant for those who need game time ahead of Wednesday.
The Mouhokolo-van Dijk novice partnership was a surprise; a lot of faith was shown in players few of us know much about. Could we have held Kelvin for another few weeks? Would it have been less of a risk to play Ambrose and/or Mulgrew in defence? Yes to both, I suspect.
We learned Georgios is not a striker in 2009. He is one of our most effective players when away from home but not as a striker. Anthony Stokes is a striker but his style is just as unsuited to the formation we played last night as Georgios’. We seemed to pick a team to combat Shakhter’s strengths which didn’t play to our own.
I’m not convinced signing a player one week before an important game is an ideal preparation but taking the money early for Hooper, weeks before Amido Balde (or anyone else) has settled and considered a viable starter, is a calculated risk which is now in sharp focus.
We should also show some respect to Shakhter. The club are miles out of their depth at this stage of European football but they left with all the credit. After the game, manager Kumykov played down his chances, “we are not the favourites”. He’s a clever man who knows what he is doing.
It is possible Celtic will play as badly next week but it’s more likely that we will put on a vastly better performance. Between now and then we have plenty of opportunity to wallow in an embarrassing defeat, so knock yourself out, but I’ll hold fire until the tie is decided, which I expect to be in Celtic’s favour. Bring it on.
You got to love European football.
Penalty kick practice, please……
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Blantyrekev 10.39
Spoken like a true entrepreneur .
(:-)
TT
New book on Liverpool “Red or Dead”
New book on Spivco “In the Red and Dead”
Theoriginalsadiesbhoy.
Entrepreneur must have been a common word used in Fife schools.
(:-)
TT
theoriginalsadiesbhoy
Absolutely, I couldnt agree with you more.I must say I do have my concerns.
Peter may have made an almightly blunder here.He will be making buttons at parkhead next wednesday.
#pushedtheenvelopetoofar
the honest mistake loves being first
10:23 on 22 August, 2013
Seems to me there is only one way forward here.
Stop buying season tickets, sell all the players, buy a striker, goalie, midfielder, centre half. We’ve got to oust the board, put in a true Celtic man like Hugh Keevins. Need to get murdo sainted, buy daily records. We need to lose the game next week, we need to wave goodbye to Fraser Forster. We need to look at the first team squad and think journeymen. We need to go to the carpark, phone the hotline after phoning Clyde. We need to hope that Fraser Forster takes Scott broon with him. We need to find a leader, we need to be lead. We need to stop being ostrich sheep that follow leaders with our heads in the sand, except the new leaders who are true Celtic men. All before the end of next week.
********
It all sounds so simplebwhen you put it like that.
It’s a wonder that it hasn’t been done! : > )
The striker signing policy has clearly not worked. A list of strikers brought in for similar/no money:
Morten Rasmussen
Daryl Murphy
Mohamed Bangura
Lassad
Miku
Pawel Brozek
Ben Hutchinson
Perhaps just once we could buy somebody with proven pedigree. There has been a fair bit spent to no real advantage. Seems you can get value in other positions but you need to be a lottery winner to spend pennies and get a real goal scorer. I know, I know, I’m not a real Celtic supporter blah, blah, blah!
Blantyrekev
informed and honest comment
BRTH
whatever happens this season serious mistakes have been made
i am dismayed at the approach to this transfer window …
team buliding…in nothing but name
any idea why we want to hoard so much cash ?
Marti
Are you sure re the CL music? Don’t re all hearing it the other evening.
Re the floodlights, you know what I mean. Late summer evening, relatively bright. Not a typical Euro tie under floodlights on a dark, cold night.
HH.
A Stor Mo Chroi
Hi mate. I don’t mean this to sound snippy but we beat Barcelona last year. In your direct comparison to WGS’s tenure that’s an improvement, right?
Hooper was a goalscorer and he continued to score goals for us and will score goals in EPL
Every non scoring striker we have bought that has been a non scorer has continued to score no goals for us and has been money down the drain
BlantyreKev:
That was last year.
ST
As you say Hooper was pretty prolific before he came. Seeing people posting on Pukki not being a goal scorer makes gives me a bad feeling I’ve had before. I posted on here when we signed Daryl Murphy that it was a crazy signing as I had watched him play live many times and while whole hearted he ain’t no goal scorer. Ridicule was heaped upon me and I was accused of not being a ….blah, blah, blah
HH
Is it PL and the boards fault that Lenny spent millions on Amido, Virgil and Derk .
Yet none of them having made a positive contribution to our CL campaign.
The best Celtic forward in the CL campaign this season is a toss up between Sammy and Bangura.
Bangura is another striker Zkenny spent millions on , who doesn’t score enough goals.
Undoubtedly there have been mistakes made this season .
The have been made in the boardroom,the boot room , and the dressing room .
It does not all lye at PL’s feet.
Getting it right will ultimately fall at Dermot Desmond’s feet.
He is the real decision /policy maker at Celtic.
TT
CELTIC face a vital European tie next Wednesday against Shakhter Karagandy, and a packed Paradise can roar Neil Lennon’s team on as they aim to overturn the two-goal deficit from the first leg and reach the group stages of the UEFA Champions League.
The Hoops know what they have to do and with the play-off poised at half-time ahead of the second leg at Celtic Park, the team are focused on winning by at least three clear goals on the night.
I saw this on the website, don’t think it will be a full house at £25 a ticket though, have we not learned that the objective is to get fans into the ground where there will be peripheral spend?
A star mo chroi.
If you consider that a humping you can’t be much of a hit with the ladies.
No Bobby Does It Petta
11:02
Yes Bobby, it was played last night too at the Arsenal and Schalke games.
I know what you mean about the Summer evenings not generating the same atmosphere though.
Marti
Anyone heard any news coming out from Celtic re the GB/111?
Read on here last night that we may be getting positive news announced today.
Apologies if this has been covered already….at work….no time to scroll back through all pages.
HH
gerald
a poor excuse for a team transfered first class in a fancy jet
and a time zone only 5 hours ahead
and given over two days to acclimatize
in fact your`s is the worst excuse i`ve heard thus far
Brogan Rogan Trevino and Hogan
I always try to read your posts on here. Along with Auldheid and a few others, you are one of the voices of reason. I think you have given a very accurate account of the situation at Celtic as it exists at present and provoked so much anger and anxiety amongst a great many supporters. If we hadn’t taken in so much money from transfers through selling the spine of our team and last season’s CL money there may have been some sort of excuse but to sell key players without replacements when we knew for so long we had these 3 qualifiers is negligent in the extreme.
If Peter Lawell reads this blog, your post above ought to have a serious effect on his actions in the next 9 or 10 days or his future will will be very difficult at Celtic Park.
Beamish. Wikipedia is easy to see stats. Pukki scored 30 goals in 6 years.
The Swiss boy has scored 50 in 5 years
Don’t need to be a Celtic scout to say no to those sort of records
SydneyTim I,ll ask you the . I accept we should same question I asked KevJungle, give me your definition of a “Celtic supporter” Hooper although excellent for us on many occasions hardly kicked a ballforus after New Year his body language said it all. I,ll happily donate £50 to the charity of your choice if he scores more than 12 goals in the EPL this season. I accept we should have replaced long before now. Hail Hail Hebcelt
PFAYR
We won’t be hoarding as much cash as was expected.
Take CL income out if the equation and ALL our major income streams will be down 10’s of millions from where they were 5 years ago.
Will it take regular crowds of below 20k to see what a hash has been made over the last 5 years.
CL income compensates for all of those losses.
Without it , we will have the stature of the Celtic of circa 1993.
TT
Henrik Larsson, Feyenoord, 26 in 4 years.
St
Which begs the question why keep making the same mistake? Was worrying a few days ago to hear NL refer to John Park working behind the scenes when for a few weeks he had been talking about PL working behind the scenes with signings imminent. It suggested to me that JP had been instructed to go back to trawling budget options as a plan F.
TT
taking in £20m in transfer fees and bringing in players at a cost of £7m is not spending money
frankly, are you going to get any better than what we got for £7m
the big question is why we consider it necessary , on the back of a very successful CL run , to generate £13m profit in the transfer market
we have diluted the quality of the squad …substantially imo
Thanks for the answer to my question Lhads.
It’s just that I’m sitting in the hotel in feuengerola found fellow tims we get talking all things Celtic.
It’s like talking to family, you hit it off with them immediately .
What a bond we have.
Hail hail. Makes you proud.
Give Mulgrew a game up front
SydneyTim just read your stats posts would you care to post Henriks stats before he arrived. Hail Hail Hebcelt
BlantyreKev
Buy a lottery ticket every week and surely sometime you will win something. It is however not a formula for week to week budgeting.
HH
Afternoon Timland, hot and hun free as ever in the mountain valley.
Some very good posts this morning, some passionate ones.
Like others, I agree and disagree with a lot of what Kev writes, what I don’t like is when he gets rounded on for his stance.
Too many posters on here are resorting to the same trait, I and a few others are getting called towel chuckers for looking at things differently, posters getting their digs in, but don’t have the balls to name us in person.
We are all after the same thing, we want Celtic to win, nothing more, nothing less.
We all see things a different way, how the club is ran, how the manager should set the team up, what players he picks, but yet it’s always the happy clappers who have to get their digs in.
NOBODY wants Celtic to do well more than I do, Nobody.
That is not me saying that I am the best supporter, far from it, but I and others are entitled to hold and voice our opinions without all the sly digs, all the put downs cos we see things a different way.
I want us to qualify next week, but I am realistic, from what has gone on so far this season, there is a possibility that we wont, and posters take great delight in calling me and others for having the same view, as non Celtic supporters and all the rest.
Fine, if it makes you feel better, carry on, it’s water off my back, I could say that I don’t give a toss, I do, not for my feelings, but for your feelings.
There is turmoil at the club just now, with the GB situation, with the lack of transfer activity, selling of players, the situ at the sfa, the club getting cheated etc, the constant negative press from the msm, some of which will inetivitably rub off on the playing staff.
Turmoil most of us can live with.
We are all Celtic supporters, act like one.
HH
KTF
Blindlemonchitlin
Thanks for the reply and I think we both want the best for the team.
Lots of emotion going on here this past few days and though I don’t post often, I feel very strongly about this so maybe missed your parody.
As for PL, you’re correct, we do not know everything that happens behind the curtain.
We don’t need to know everything but we do need to have a sense of trust that the board are doing their best to support the team.
What we do see are the results on the park, no cutting edge and selling best assets without replacements.
If we didn’t get first choices the we should have had second choices lined up.
I think that PL took an unvcessary gamble with CL qualification for that he deserves criticsm.
Someone mentioned on here recently about fans putting shares together to have more of a say at the AGM.
Count me in for that, its time this board were more accountable for their actions or lack of.
Hail hail.
TT
we will be authors of our own financial misfortune
no CL football at CP coupled with the usual SPL dross
hardly exciting entertainment to offer the casual fan
the hardcore will attend , if they can afford it ……the choice of CP at £30 a ticket or watching it in the pub and spending less on bevvy will be very appealling to many
Pfayr.
Didn’t realise that the transfer window shut already.
SydneyTim sorry my first post seems to have gone through the mixer hope it makes sense if not I,ll repost. Hail Hail Hebcelt
A lottery ticket?
Lottery tickets are scouting via Wikipedia and stats.
I’ve seen the Swiss boy Innocent play live against Basel he scored one or both of their goals, it was a couple of years back, he’s very fast and makes intelligent runs through the defence or on the shoulder of the last man, I didn’t really consider him to be a centre forward though, he’s brave for his size and very quick but he is small I can’t see him leading the line for Celtic…
Centre Forward please Pete one who puts the ball in the Netty…
comparing ever non scoring CF , that we are linked with, to Larsson is almosta s daft as comparing the current CFC to Ajax
I think we need a bit more thought on how easy or difficult it is to buy top strikers. I do believe we have tried to buy forward players in this window, but the difficulty of both getting the club to accept a fee and then the player to come to the SPFL have scuppered several potential deals.
Because goal stats are so obvious, striker is perhaps the easiest position to evaluate on a superficial level. One in six? Not that good. One in two? Decent player.
The problem is simply that any player with a good goal scoring record becomes a target for clubs in better leagues than the one we play in. Even if we could meet a fee and offer similar wages, many good strikers would rather go to a mid table or lover league team in a higher rated league. It’s not as simple as throwing big money about; the player needs to want to come to Scotland. And many simply don’t.
What’s the answer? Well if you can’t get a proven player you need to take chances. Someone who has scored at lower levels might make the step up. A young player might mature into a good one. A player out of favour at a club, or who has made a move that doesn’t suit might take a chance to get his career back on track. But finding a good one in these circumstances isn’t easy, and success isn’t at all guaranteed.