2012 is a recent high watermark for Celtic and AIK in European football. Celtic collected 10 points in the Champions League group stage that season, while that was the first and last time AIK reach the group stage of the Europa League; they finished bottom with four points. Today will see the Swedes compete in a playoff round for the first time since then, so this is nosebleed territory for tonight’s visitors.
Their most impressive result this season was a 1-2 win in Moldova against Sheriff. An early own-goal was enough to give them the edge for an aggregate win. They travel without suspended top scorer Tarik Elyounoussi, who handed Neil Lennon his pre-match team talk by telling the media “When you hear the name Celtic, you think they are a big team. But they lost four goals at home to Cluj and the Scottish league is not so good.”
It is helpful to hear a bit of disrespect from opponents before a game. I trust we will reserve comment on the standard of the Swedish league until after this tie.
There will be plenty of hurt in the Celtic dressing room before kick-off tonight. Hurt that three times they let Cluj back into the last tie and the manner of some of the defending. Hurt too, at what has been said and written since. Defeat is not a pleasant business at Celtic.
What matters is whether the manager and players can use this pain as fuel to destroy AIK at Celtic Park tonight. We will know soon enough.
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ROCK TREE BHOY
I can tell you for a fact that Lucky Cody is a massive Tim 🍀
Pog…if we win 4/5 nill tonight it will just be papering over the cracks 🤣
H.H.
TLT
Politicians should be criticised for being politicians and should be immune to NOT being criticised !
Fred C Dobbs
That`s how I see it.
Ger57
Your conclusion might not have come straight from the mouth of Wordsworth but I agree with it :-)
Right. Time to get ready for The Emerald Express.
Cheerio for now.
JJ
Another tv blackout for Celtic’s Europa to-night. I cannot remember any previous season when not one of Celtic’s big European qualifiers were covered by any of the sports channells. What’s going on. Why are we paying subs to these people.
SEVEN FISHES FOUR STEAKS on 22ND AUGUST 2019 3:03 PM
Ajer – Jozo – Jullien – Boli
Looks like being the back 4
====
Agree, I’d go with that.
Would be telling Ajer not to be too adventurous about getting forward till we see how our CB 2 are doing and how threatening AIK look. Get him to tuck in as much as possible when the balls on the other side and keep it tight.
HH
What height is Luck Cody?
Rock Tree Bhoy
You are making the ( understandable ) mistake of assuming Celtic Supporters really `Don`t care if we win,lose or draw.`
Deff off.
JJ
Boli free role, let him loose
HH
Paul67 LEAD THREAD TODAY ILLUSTRATES why we should be beating AIK comfortably.
Their record suggests that they are not even a mid range European pedigree.
Anything but a comfortable win tonight, will be deemed a further disappointment.
This isn’t the team Lenny will pick, but I would go :
——————-Gordon————————-
Ajer C.Jullien Jozo Holy Boli
—————McGregor————————
Forrest Christie Ntcham Johnston
————–Edouard———————-
We seem incapable of keeping a clean-sheet, therefore Ruggygman prediction for tonight : 3-1 win
BOURNESRECIPE
He’s well over six feet tall
#Lawell out
#Brown finished
agree leave SB on the bench
Neil Lennon has said Brown will play.
Ntcham will drop out for Boli & Elhamed for Julien.
Get home soon mince and tatties and half a bottle of red wine before the bus😂😉
Lenny already said Broony will play.
Performances will be under increased scrutiny after last week by those who have played the game and also some of who haven’t.
Incidentally didn’t Craig Levein get his job offer from Ann Budge, wonder what level she played the game to?! I hope Craig checked this before he accepted!
HH
I’ve noticed recent trend on here that I’m very confused over. Clearly, not everyone on here is also on Twitter. And even those that are on Twitter might follow different folk. If I see some sort of reasonably factual info on Twitter from our Club or even the BBC (I know!) I’d consider copying it on to CQN. However, if it’s just a few scrambled words from someone I’ve never heard of saying “I hear things are terrible, blah, blah” then what’s the point in copying that on to CQN saying ‘just seen this from abc67….’???
Those turnips are getting mashed tonight.
COME ON CELTIC!
Agreed Jobo…it’s as if…noo I may be wrong, it has been known…that there is a concerted effort to control a narrative that says we’re all doomed I tells ye 😂.
Some of the critisism has been fair and accurate, but it’s being drowned out by hysteria…I wonder why?
H.H.
Hysteria is a bassa.
tbh
The tweet mentioned didnt say anything a lot of us arent already thinking
JOBO BALDIE on 22ND AUGUST 2019 3:37 PM
I follow thon abc67 on Twitter and if he’s saying things are terrible etc, then we can forget about 9iar
Jobo Baldie on 22nd August 2019 3:37 pm
———
It’s a strange one, he’s been doing it for ages.
You wouldn’t copy random comments from CQN posters onto your twitter so why do the reverse??
https://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/sport/17854826.fraser-forster-pictured-glasgow-first-time-finalises-celtic-loan-deal/
SEVEN FISHES FOUR STEAKS on 22ND AUGUST 2019 3:03 PM
Ajer – Jozo – Jullien – Boli
Looks like being the back 4
McGregor back in midfield.
Good result tonight.
Few reinforcements in.
Crack on, get the 9.
Be positive CSC
SffS
——
There’s yer dinner.
it’s been a relentless week of misery and there will be no escape without results.
Every adverse rumour will be believed without evidence and its impact exaggerated beyond what it can bear (We survived a training ground fight between Tosh and Henrik; we can cope with thrown sandwiches if it happened)
Every signing will be scrutinised and deemed wanting even before they have been tried and tested in a Celtic shirt.
Every nuance of what Neil says will be dissected and translated to tell him what he really is saying because he does not know himself. And his body language too will be read with great imagination and very little academic approach.
These are all signs of hurt- we are lashing out in all directions.
We do not trust the football “experts” (my definition of an expert is someone who is called in at the last minute in order to take the Balme) because we fancy our own insights into a game few of us have played at any similar level.
It’s a complex equation. It is good to have lay scrutiny of medical practices so that the patient’s viewpoint is heard and responded to. It is not good to treat quack sites and unqualified people’s views as of equal value to someone who actually studied the topic for 7 years and praised for X number of years.
Maradominic may be able to state that his car is “f***ed” but it’s not a diagnosis, in any shape or form. A trained mechanic could come along and fix it quite quickly- so much for f***ed.
Similarly, Celtic is far from F***ed, we have just lost one game in nine played. It was a bad loss but we have been hear many times (Sachsenring, Wacker, Timisoara, Rapid, Partizan, Neuchatel, Artmedia, Aalborg, Braga, Utrecht, Sion, Legia, Maribor, Molde, Red Imps, AEK and Cluj). These are not aberrations- they are woven through our history of European completion. We have only 2 periods of history where we were competitive, 1966-74 and half of this millennium, mostly in the first half. There are strong signs that any grip on the top table is loosening with each passing year. And the trend affects us, and better teams like Ajax, Benfica and Basle and also our comparator clubs (Qarabag, Bate, Anderlecht, Red Star, Limassol etc;)
I don’t know where these memories of a golden age of Celtic come from. We were much more ineffective in the 80’s and 90s- the results show it but our fans stayed loyal until it became clear that we were slipping towards bankruptcy and irrelevance at even a Scottish Level.
I cannot state that “you have never had it so good” but I can say that we have enjoyed success at a level that has spoiled us.
We all want Celtic to be better and to claw back to becoming relevant in Europe. Even with a good development coach, like Brendan all we got was 2 CL Groups with large humpings (Man City games being the exceptional highlight) and one Europa campaign past Xmas.
Knowing that this is a hard arena in which to be competitive, we should show more understanding but there are people on here who genuinely convince themselves that they could do better, even though they have never proven their expertise.
Beating AIK over 2 legs is eminently doable. And aiming for a Europa League qualification is also doable with a favourable draw. My big worry is the relentless negativity of the crowd will get to the players again- I hope I am wrong.
Redemption is a long road, but it starts tonight
Blame not Balm
Practised not praised
This site is murder
https://mobile.twitter.com/dominho18/status/1164541120581394432
Robert Gumny, £5.8m from Lech Poznan according to this
Setting free the bears…very good post, even with the typos :-) HH
@SETTING FREE THE BEARS FOR RES. 12 & OSCAR KNOX on 22ND AUGUST 2019 4:02 PM
“and also our comparator clubs (Qarabag, Bate, Anderlecht, Red Star, Limassol etc;)”
Save for Anderlecht, maybe Red Star, I’m unsure how those teams constitute comparator clubs. We were recognised as being in the top 32 most valuable teams in Europe this year and I bet that the CEOs of the teams you mention arent pulling £3m out of the club for one season’s work.
ROBINBHOY on 22ND AUGUST 2019 3:16 PM
ROCK TREE BHOY
I can tell you for a fact that Lucky Cody is a massive Tim 🍀
_________________________________
Then I must have been born in Bejing.
Gordon Ajer Jullien Jozo Boli Forrest McGregor Brown Christie Johnson Edouard
http://celticbynumberscom.ipage.com/is-signing-forster-necessary/
It is not yet official but it looks like Forster is returning on a one-year loan.
Cover for injury of a genuine threat to the number one position?
Last season Bain was undisputed as the main man, but what does the current season performance data say?
The Hands
They have all been posted over the past 5 years as clubs who were doing better in Europe than Celtic by disgruntled posters- Madmitch , I think, cited Qarabag or BATE.
None of them really has a better record than Celtic over the long term but Limassol did make CL quarter finals and had a couple of years of sparkle. I could have included Rosenborg as another who gets too Q.3 and Play -offs quite often, but none of them have our money, apart from Anderlecht, which has more.
Main point is- we are a historical Big Club rather than a current Big Club. And it is getting harder every year, as the results show.
People will always reach for the simple solution- Blame the players, Blame the Board, Blame the Manager but we play our football in a fairly uncompetitive league where other clubs cannot make, even, Europa Groups, apart from maybe the Zombies
Sorry- I think I am getting Limassol mixed up with Hapoel in Cyprus.
That is my error
Haw’d the Bate bus
Currently getting hammered 3 – 0 off Astana in the Europa play-off round.
Their bubble well and truly burst a few years ago
SFTB
A very eloquent post.
No mention of the elephant in the room.
We continually make it difficult for ourselves when there really is no need, not a kneejerk reaction just a plain statement of truth (according to me, of course)
Bus time Hail Hail