Since Friday, I have heard that Celtic are lucky and that we should be embarrassed to have qualified for the next round of the Champions League.
I can’t really see why that ‘s the case. I’ve given my reasons below as to why I don’t think it is embarrassing.
I’d agree that the manner of the two defeats v Legia were embarrassing, even with no real sign of improving our squad, the team that played last year should have been too strong for Legia.
Before the decision was made by UEFA that allowed us to get into the next round of the tournament, I thought that Legia would lose their next game. I really didn’t see that they looked like a particularly good team.
On the other hand, the Barcelona team that we beat a few years ago should have been too strong for us. All that shows is that sometimes teams win games when they are up against a “stronger” team.
The fact that Legia beat us twice can be pointed at the new manager. Some of us may blame the board for it and some may place the blame on the players. I’d say it’s a combination of the three and there will be plenty of scope for people to argue their case as to what they believe caused the defeats.
One thing that we can’t argue about is that Legia fielding in ineligible player was our fault. It was someone who works at their club in the admin side of things who is purely at fault. From a football point of view, I do admit to having some sympathy for their players and for their fans.
I’d even go so far as to say that I believe this to be a genuine error from them, however, I can’t see how a team bringing on a defender, with less than five minutes to go in a tie where they are so far ahead makes any sense.
The fact remains that the rules were broken and there was punishment for breaking the rules. Unlike domestic football, there seems to be a set of rules combined with a pre-defined punishment if a club breaks these rules. So while it’s important to remember that we probably were a bit lucky, it’s even more important to remember that it wasn’t our fault that another club broke rules and ended up with a result reversal.
At the risk of sounding pedantic, I do also need to point out that Legia were not booted out of the competition as have widely been told. Due to the ineligible player, the result was changed to a 3-0 Celtic win. In turn that means the tie ended 4-4 and we go through on the away goals rule. With Legia missing 2 penalties in the first leg, I think it’s safe to say the blame wholly lies with them and not us.
We are just benefiting from someone else’s incompetence or mistakes.
Now that we have the game against Maribor coming up, I’m a bit nervous about this. Based on pre season games, we seemed to be doing ok. We’ve not played any competitive domestic football so we don’t really have anything to show how good / bad we actually are.
Without Fraser Forster, we might well struggle against European opposition. Is Craig Gordon or Lucasz Zaluska going to be the man in between the sticks for us? Are either of them good enough or are either fit enough to play in such an important match?
Will we have Virgil Van Dijk or will he be away as well? It’s been widely expected that both him and Forster were going to leave. One guy doesn’t make a team but one player can certainly improve the team.
In the past, I’ve been critical of Celtic because we haven’t been spending enough but the more I look into it, we have been spending a fair amount of money but it’s the selling of the good players that’s annoying me.
A few years ago, Hibs had a right good team in Scotland and lots of people have speculated as to how well they’d have done had their best players not been sold.
The same question could be asked about us. How would we be if Van Dijk and Kelvin Wilson had been playing together for a few years with Wanyama in front of them and Hooper up front. For me, that’s a great spine of a football team.
We can’t really expect to win anything or compete in anything outside the SPFL when we keep selling great players and replacing them with inferior players. Our scouting system has received a lot of praise for some of the players that have came in but for every Wanyama, we’ve also had a Miku or a Murphy or a Balde.
I’m of the opinion that the manager should be buying players and not someone in the background. Given that Craig Gordon was signed round about the same time as Deila came in, it’s safe to say that wasn’t one of the manager’s signings.
I guess if all else fails, we will have a few games in the Europa League to play in but that’s not really what we want and it’s not really where we feel our team belongs.
I wrote before about how I will be away and won’t see very much football over the next 12 months or so but I will get one more Champions League game at Parkhead. Could we maybe just pull off something similar to what we did last year against Karagandy?