James Forrest has been carrying an injury for 10 months, which has affected the player’s effectiveness, so, irrespective of the outcome of his neurologist visit last week, I’m working on the assumption Celtic will play Adam Matthews in front of Michael Lustig on the right. This pair have speed, enormous energy, can cross and can defend. They have the making of a promising partnership.
Dirk Boerrigter has seen only 30 minutes football this season, and that was almost a month ago, but with the lack of options in the striker role, and the memory of just how effective he was during those 30 minutes, I expect we’ll see him from the start. He would also lift the atmosphere a degree or two higher.
Emilio Izaguirre will, of course, play left back. With Emilio bombing forward it is crucial we don’t leave the left flank exposed. This is a regular habit of Celtic’s which is seldom exposed in domestic football but Spartak Moscow scored their only goal at Celtic Park last season by exploiting the acres behind Emilio.
With Anthony Stokes looking unlikely, it will probably be Georgios Samaras leading the line with Kris Commons in the free role. Some of Georgios’ best performances away from home in Europe have been up front but it’s not his best position. Kris Commons I have no worries about. He knows exactly what is required tonight. In particular, expect him to win free kicks near the box and perhaps a penalty. I’ll make no comment on what to expect if we are awarded a spot kick.
Central midfield will have Scott Brown and Joe Ledley. Watch for Joe making back post runs. We can expect marking to be tight tonight, so a late run into the box could offer our best chance of a breakthrough.
I think we can be sure we’ll not see two novice (to Celtic) central defenders again. Steven Mouyokolo, new at the club after three years of little football, was singled out for criticism in some places after last week’s defeat which was particularly unfair. Defences work as a unit and the unit in Astana was dysfunctional. Steven was no guiltier than half the team.
Efe Ambrose will play, probably with Virgil van Dijk, although I wouldn’t be surprised to see Charlie Mulgrew selected instead.
It will be close to 2am in Kazakhstan when the second half gets underway. Shakhter Karagandy players will be suffering from the effects of jetlag. Minds and bodies will be tired, leading to diminished concentration and rash decision making. Celtic players should be on the lookout to play on, and exploit, this.
Play to their vulnerability. Remove the lighting tubes from their changing room and have the heating on full blast. We’ve all been tired in a room that’s too warm, it’s not conducive for football preparation. This is an environmental advantage of playing at home. Use it.
Playing in front of a stimulating crowd might actually help Shakhter early on, but the adrenaline boost will fade, leaving tired limbs. The value of fresh legs is enormously underappreciated in football. Get subs on midway through the second half and work their defence off the ball. If we aim to have our players tired after 60 minutes, we’ll know we are on the right track, as they will be suffering a lot more.
It is not important to get an early goal, even conceding one would not be the end of the story. This is going to be a long night, stick with it.
We cannot afford to get a man sent off but there can be nothing cordial about this game. Shakhter’s manager, Victor Kumykov, sounded less sure of himself yesterday, perhaps filled with trepidation. Don’t let him or his players settle, be professional but make sure he knows he has been disrespectful to his guests, and that he is now out of his depth.
They are a long way from home, make sure they know this. There will be opportunities for friendly chat after the final whistle.
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Saint Stivs
Having a quiet day are you?
Will be in front of the South Stand at 7pm.
4 – 0
COYBIG
Cheers dbbia.
Just heading into town to meet him now.
Tusker. Just replied in a text message. Hopefully see you later. Mon the hoops.
Hi Paul67,
“…Remove the ighting tubes from their changing room and have the heating on full blast. We’ve all been tired in a room that’s too warm, it’s not conducive for football preparation. This is an environmental advantage of playing at home.”
Are you trying to suggestthere was a wee bit of Gamesmanship a’fore the away tie?
Mmmm
If they did that warm dressing room treatment, it could back fire on them.
Stick Kris in a warm cozy room and the rest of the team in a cold store!
Hail Hail
Thanka ct
CQN live from Hope St…….Celtic have won three of their four European ties where they lost the first leg 2-0 away from home.
We lacked belief last week and lost too many 50/50 balls. We have height in our team but didn’t win the ball in the air often enough. This can be partially explained by the artificial pitch but it was also evident against ICT at the weekend.
So for me tonight is more about mental toughness than tactics. Controlled aggression from the very first minute through to extra time if required.
Can’t wait!
Well Wednesday has arrived , even inside my head!
Mind you I would have known it even without the aid of a calendar, a phone reminder, a text from my pal and the combined triggers of Radio Scotland, Radio 4 and the reaction of the token darksider in our block who answered my cheery greeting with some strange mediaeval desire to talk about Berwick Rangers. Fortunately I was able to employ my mind’s ability to time jump and re-entered the year of 1967 and assumed that he was talking about the English minnows knocking out a now non-existent team from an era when the talk was of sacrificing goats rather than sheep!
He looked angry so I through a couple of bob in his coke and returned to my own reverie as tonight’s game sits on the precipice of time, shouting it’s exhortation of drama, action and heartpumping belief!
No! No calendar required at all; after all, we can taste it, touch it, smell it and hear it.
I can’t string too many words together anymore so maybe a wee reminder of a similar day, a similar prize when we all sat together on the edge of a similar precipice as we awaited our visitors from Moscow.
I wrote this before that game, and I think it still applies!
The power of faith!
If you want the banality of cowardly certainty then get yerself along tae Princes Square on Buchanan street and have a swatch at Foucault’s pendulum as it traces out its interminable, invariable predetermined path, reflecting and confirming the fact that not only does the earth spin on its access, but it does so with a metronomic regularity of 23.93 hours per cycle.
(Ha. You all thought there was 24 hours in a day. Well adjust your watches now for not only are you older than you think, but tonight’s game is just that wee bit closer!)
As you escalate your way to the top of that monument to capitalism, peer down the rod and bob as, prompted to swing on a single plane, it deviates in harmony with the earth spinning round and round, round and round, never ending or beginning in a never ending…..(whoops nearly broke into song there).
Which when you come to think about it, is a damn good thing since just about everything we rely on to walk, talk, eat, breath, sleep and generally function as human beings is a consequence of this monotonous regularity of the cosmos.
But there again superficially this existence of ours can just seem so depressingly pointless!
Born, breathe, eat, sleep, work, yer fingers tae the bone, worry, worry, worry, get bashed, stop worrying, get hangover, worry, worry, worry and die!. Get buried, become one with universe, but have no real say in or influence over anything!
Laws of motion, thermodynamics, relativity, gravity, conservation of energy, genetics… all just part of an accidental orchestral composition now controlled by a manic dictatorial conductor defying us to play flat and not sharp, jazz and not class, greens instead of blues.
As last nights ‘Cote du Rhone Villages’ evaporated from my bloodstream and the burr of the dawn traffic drifted through my open window, I roused from my slumber, looked out of the window, greeted the day with a Gary Pendrey scoreline and contemplated a world that would go through the same old routine as yesterday, will do the same tomorrow, and will keep doing so until such time as the sun’s diminishing fuel causes a supernova, we all disappear in a fireball while in another constellation, another solar system, and another inhospitable planet, an infinitesimal bit of dirt for some reason or another replicates itself and the whole damn thing starts over again.
(Then 4 billion years later the universe will echo to a renewed….. “No Huns on Vulcan…… there’ll be no Huns on Vulcan……”)
But look under the surface , and what do we find.
Certainty may allow us to survive, but it is uncertainty that makes us alive!
It is uncertainty dressed in its Sunday best, the unexpected, that makes us laugh and cry, thrive and grow, imagine the future, regret the past.
It is this that makes life worth living.
So its time to play a major instead of a minor, a seventh instead of a diminished and remind that control junkie in the sky with his set score and his Foucault’s baton of universal laws, that we have our own wee band about to break into his sterile controlled world of stiff shirts, pressed suits and viola strings.
Meet rock and roll and meet ‘the uncertainty principle’; that blip in the universal laws, a ripple in the fabric of space and time, that just gives us the chance of unpredictability, allows the concept of chaos, creates the mirage of control and endows us with the illusion of free-will and choice.
But control and free-will are only mirages and illusions when uncertainty runs unfettered.
Tonight is different. There will be no mirages and no illusions.
Tonight our wee rock and roll combo is about to hit them chords, batter them scales, and show the world and the great megalomaniac in the sky that this is our world, as we bring the inexplicable uncertainty to heel by the even greater mystery that is faith with its power to service the highest ideals.
Tonight on the celebration of the Feast of ‘Uncertainty’, a party in its honour will be held at Celtic Park, Kerrydale Street Glasgow G40, (arrive 7.15 for a 7.45 start) where each and every-one of us will demonstrate just how ultimately powerful our faith and support can be.
Observers from Moscow will be there to verify the magnificence of what is about to be undertaken.
So……
As you don your colours, think not that you are going to a football match where the prize may or may not be entry to the CL group stage; instead think about how those colours arose, think of who has worn them down through the decades, think of the achievements, and think of the sacrifices made to glory the humanity at the core of each and every one of us.
As you walk, drive, fly your chosen route to Celtic Park, bar, computer screen, or radio don’t just think of the ninety minutes ahead and the eleven players on that park, go instead with a smile on your face, a steel in your eye and a gallusness in your stride. Think of tonight as a present to you from the generations that have gone before; a reward that says not only thanks for keeping the flame alight, but one that reminds you of the responsibility to care for the gift and pass it on not only undamaged but enhanced to the generations to come.
As you stand on the slopes of Paradise or watch and listen from afar, don’t just join in with the words, the tunes or applause, instead remind the world of all that has gone before, what we are, why we are here and where we are going. Make the passion shine and explode like a nebulae, not to intimidate our visitors but to inspire everyone around you and those who have the privilege to wear the hoops tonight.
As the theatre of the evening unfolds on the greatest stage in the world, don’t just see 4-3-3, or 4-4-2, passes and tackles to be attempted, gaps to be filled, balls to be reached, and goals to be scored; instead harness all that belief and faith inside and around you, shout it out and create in this holy ground an aura of invincibility that will infuse, enthuse, nurture and inspire every player to run a yard faster, sprint a yard further, stretch a foot higher, see a pass better, and take the risks needed to achieve what is necessary.
And then when that greenest of places in this dear green city is rocking and rolling to the sight of heroic deeds on the park, fuelled by the similarly heroic unbending belief off the park, we can all say that we – the players, we – the support in the ground, we – the watching and listening diaspora– we – as one Celtic, harnessed uncertainty, controlled chaos and even if it wasn’t enough it was our very best.
But somehow I think it will be good enough, somehow immovable objects will be moved, unstoppable forces will be stopped, and we will all have played our part!
So let’s get them Celtic!
More than a club!
Hail Hail
Estadio.
Disclaimer: Please note that all of the foregoing applies to the manifest mystery of the natural world, the harmony of majestic star formation with the enchantment of conscious thinking, the magic of music and the rigour of mathematics all brought together in the seething soul of emotions by the travails of such great Celtic supporters as Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Archimedes, Da Vinci, Galileo, Newton, Maxwell, Einstein Heisenberg and our very own Gerald O’Donnell**. It has absolutely nothing to do with what goes on in Edmiston drive, where the inhabitants, beliefs, traditions and culture are the self proclaimed product of a pre-big-bang, post digestive evacuation of a mythical giant tortoise’s alimentary canal!
** Gerald O’Donnell – Initials G.O.D.
dexter
13:25 on 28 August, 2013Wee hypothetical here;FF sold for handsome profit with Shay Given in on a free?Anyone fancy that?
Aye PL.
CQN live from Hope St * takes mind if growing nervousness*
Name an all time Celtic baldies eleven – I’ll start………
Bobo
Amido
Thomas Gravessen
Oglach @12:50
Cheers for that bud.
Long time since I’ve been here and a few changes for me.
I’m heading out and goin’ to see if they’ll put it on for me.
Hail, Hail! And COYBIG!
Going to be a long afternoon in work, can’t wait to get the colours on and get to Paradise.
bournesouprecipe
Henrik for a few seasons
Hartson before his hair transplant
Ive just carried out my private superstition test for tonight and it came out positive -but only just. That should mean we will win but with a last minute goal in extra time or maybe on penaltys. Remember you saw it here first.
BSR – me?
COYBIG!!!
Estadio,
Beautifully put.
I do not want to see us concede an early goal, like the Juve game. Avoid losing an early goal and we should get through although it is going to be a long old night!
I hear that BBC overseas sports are in town (not to be confused with the msm shortbread) and they will make their way from the city centre to the stadium doing interviews in pubs along the way.
BSR
Big Desperate Dan!
Rico Annoni
Estadio
Magnífico.
Thunder Road
Condolences, God bless your Dad and may he RIP
Time for a new hero or two to emerge tonight. 4 goals will do it
oh go on then – all time baldies
Here’s a wee hypothetical/philosophical poser to while away a few minutes between now and kick off. I’ve heard it mentioned here on a couple of occasions the UEFA will not “allow,” Celtic to be eliminated from the CL group stages. Everything from the location of Kazhakstan,the fact that we are on the PES marketing video beating Bayern Munich or the atmosphere of our stadium and what the club brings to the tournament has been cited.
I’m not sure I buy that theory, but let’s imagine for a moment it was true, and we benefitted and go through thanks to blatent bad/cheating, referee decisions.
How would you feel or react? Should the club register a complaint that the refereeing was biased, albeit towards us, or shoulkd we just say, them’s the breaks?
Discuss.
DBBIA
Haha,you’ll be in good company then as a buncha eejits try to behave like teenagers.
For about two hours,before reality kicks in…..
The reason for The Huddle at the end of the night is simple expediency. Holding each other up!
Starting off posh is the pla as we watch the Killie game,and all venues must allow colours.
Be a pleasure to finally meet you,and I reckon that will be echoed by all in attendance.
Though you will know more of them than I do!
Unusually, the short scripture reading for morning prayer, Wednesday, Week I, is from the book of Tobit. A bit of it says: “Bless the Lord in everything; beg him to guide your ways and bring your paths and purposes to their end.”
It’s only football. But “everything” must include football. That means we can beg the Lord to guide our ways on the park and bring our paths and purposes there to their end.
bournesouprecipe
Ian Wright – although not sure if he qualifies as I can’t remember him “playing” for us.
RP
Bob LobLaw
13:49 on 28 August, 2013
‘Here’s a wee hypothetical/philosophical poser to while away a few minutes between now and kick off. I’ve heard it mentioned here on a couple of occasions the UEFA will not “allow,” Celtic to be eliminated from the CL group stages.’
#####
No one has suggested that.
What has been suggested is that UEFA would, for commercial and logistic reasons, prefer that we went through.
Against that background we can expect a fair referee rather than one itching to penalise us, or likely to be hoodwinked by Asian theatrics.
Bob
“I’ve heard it mentioned here on a couple of occasions the UEFA will not “allow,” Celtic to be eliminated from the CL group stages. ”
What ? When did you read that ? I’ve never saw that on here, oh, plus its complete horsesh1te. Was that from Follow Follow ?
Marti
Dexter
13:25 on
28 August, 2013
No.
Catman,
allright bud.
Its just so easy to nip over to CP from Braehead along the new road, so I might as well get along and save myself some hassle, will look out for you on my way in,
C O Y B I G
Marti Sandino Supports Wee Oscar
13:55 on
28 August, 2013
He’s right. I saw it mentioned here on Monday, early doors. The poster suggestion if it was to happen, it would go some way to evening up all the benefits rangers received in their fight against us.
Not for me. We should win on sporting merit alone, to seek to benefit any other way would just make us hypocrites.
I would rather we lost fair and square than went through because it suits the suits.
Oan the cho cho on the way to meet the advance grey brigade party…..no sure if the butterflies are the game or the carnage that awaits me….
Kikinthenakas
bournesouprecipe
13:40 on 28 August, 2013
CQN live from Hope St * takes mind if growing nervousness*
Name an all time Celtic baldies eleven – I’ll start………
Bobo
Amido
Thomas Gravessen
=============
Add big Sammi’s gorgeous missus. I heard that…um…well…
WaxedCFC
@CelticFCTickets Livingston store has sold out of tickets for the match tonight! (a)17 Retweets 4 favorites Expand
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Celtic FC Tickets @CelticFCTickets If you are collecting tix for game today, after 4pm, collections will be from tix outlet at rear of superstore, please come along early! (a)8 Retweets 2 favorites Expand
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Celtic FC Tickets @CelticFCTickets Good morning the Ticket Office is now open. (am
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CQN Baddies..
SydneyTim..
NegAnon..
LearnieEinch
DonegalDanny..
Summa
Jeez! It was a bit of light hearted fun. No accusations are being made. Look up the word hypothetical. :) Laters.