Hoops starved punters can watch today’s match with Kickers Stuttgart on Celtic tv with the game kicking off at 5pm CPT.
Following on from the 0-0 draw with Augsberg Neil Lennon’s side are strongly fancied to get the better of Third Division Kickers with the visitors 1.5 with bet-at-home. A home win is 5.50 with a draw rated at 3.75.
Bundesliga 3 kicks off next Saturday with Kickers away to Hansa Rostok with other well known names such as Karlruher, Arminia Bielfeld and Saarbrucken also in the division.
After a week at their training base the Celtic squad should be well acclimatised to the local conditions and are unlikely to be missing the internal flights that were a major factor in last season’s preparations in Australia.
Lennon’s main priority is preparing his squad for the Champions League qualifiers with the draw for the third qualifying draw taking place on Friday.
Celtic will be seeded but are certain to be drawn against a team that has won through from the second round qualifiers with well known sides like Maribor, Slask Wroclaw, Debrecen and HJK Helsinki all possible opponents in Friday’s draw.
“I’m really wary of these games,” Lennon admitted looking ahead to the draw. “I know how important the Champions League is to everyone associated with the club.
“Our primary objective this season is to try to get through the two qualifiers so we can enhance the club’s reputation in Europe.
“The group stage of the Champions League is a great arena to play in and it’s the next level of progression for this team.
“If these qualifiers were in September I wouldn’t be losing any sleep at all but because they come so early, as we’ve seen with Braga, Utrecht and Sion, we haven’t done as well as we should’ve done.
“Now we have to show we’ve been able to learn from those experiences.”
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Lennon added: “The players will have had a huge shot in the arm from the games against Udinese, Rennes and Atletico Madrid but those ties were all in September, October, November and December time.
“So the match fitness was going to be different from the European games we lost.
“That’s why we have tried to balance the pre-season work and get in as many games of quality as we can.
“Were not flying all over the world and that helps. The fact we can walk out the door of our hotel in Germany and do technical or fitness stuff is brilliant. The lads are progressing the right way.”
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Hail hail
Got to say though, the lack of signings is really concerning. We desperately need a strong centre half who the others will look up to.
Glad that we have gone to Germany for some pre-season training, and not half way round the world like last summer. I know that we are a global brand who have supporters everywhere and they deserve to cheer on the hoops in their own countries, but it affects the performance of the players because the close season seems to get shorter every year.
Still, I’m looking forward to the Real Madrid game over in Philly. Another point on the Inter game: I have a good Italian friend who is a big Inter fan, and he told me about the game 2 days before it was officially announced by Celtic; saw it on the Inter website.
HH!!
Glad to see we appear to be learning from previous mistakes. As regards signings, it would be nice to have someone in place, but balanced against this might be the fact we can afford / attract a better quality replacement if we get through…a gamble for sure, but then so is every transfer.
The Real Madrid friendly was advertised at least a week ahead of the official announcement by the organizers.
Hopefully sky don’t move the Aberdeen game from sat to sun I think that will fuk things up aswell, get that game out of the way on sat then prep for CLQ every1s a winner !!
Im not to worried we have not signed anybody just yet. We have some quality players in all areas of the pitch. We have also offloaded some fringe players which will help the wage bill.
This team has been growing up together as a unit and will get stronger with every game they play together. I still feel we must not sell our better players no matter what the bids are, if we want to progress in Europe.