Celtic almost certainly face a trip to eastern Euorpe in order to qualify for the group stages of the Champions League.
A goal-less draw tonight in Sweden against Elfsborg eased the SPL champions into the final qualifying round where there will be drawn against FK Austria Wien, Legia Warszawa, NK Maribor (of Slovenia), PFC Ludogorets Razgrad of Bulgaria or Kazakstan champions FC Shakhter Karagandy.
There were no major shocks in the third qualifying round with Legia Warsaw the last side into the draw following a 0-0 draw at home to Molde that took the Poles through on a 1-1 aggregate thanks to the away goals rule.
For travel reasons a trip to FC Shakhter Karagandy would best be avoided with the Kazakstan champions seeing off KS Skenderbeu from Albania on a 5-3 aggregate to reach the final qualifying tie.
The draw for the final qualifying round takes place on Friday with a separate draw for the non-champions route providing five places in the group stage with teams such as Arsenal, AC Milan and Lyon among those involved. The final qualifiers will be played on August 20/21 and 27/28.
After watching his side qualify tonight Lennon admitted that it was almost certainly Kelvin Wilson’s last appearance for the club.
The Celtic boss admitted: “It’s probably Kelvin’s last game for us but he can go with his head held high, he was unbelievable tonight.
“I’m not sure if a deal has been agreed yet but I don’t think it’s far away. We asked him to play tonight and he didn’t want to let the team down and he certainly didn’t.”
If Kelvin goes he will be missed. He had a good game tonight when not many did.
Your ars Joe Wilson is a liability and makes mistakes galore the way he tackled the night in that box a hundred referees would a given a penalty. Van dik will be amazing for celtic wait and see this boy playing.
Sorry Mick, I understand your misgivings about Wilson, understandable though I disagree, although maybe another victim of the overly generous Celtic support (see hooper), but where does ‘a hundred referees would give a penalty’ stuff come in?
HH
Risky tackle, but it wasn’t a penalty.
one hundred referees would be wrong he got the ball and it was an important tackle,just saying like
Any of them who WANTS to go can Go …. The shirt does not shrink to fit inferior players
Think that’s a bit harsh mate. The guy makes mistakes for sure but who doesn’t….
If someone WANTS to go, good luck to them, they gave us there all….. Some good and some bad, some we’ll be sorry to see go and others we wont even notice they have gone….
But, I reckon big Kelvin although not a world beater will be sadly and obviously missed until Van Dijk or A.Nother steps up… Good luck to the guy! HH!
Good Job Jose! We signed anybody yet? Ha
I believe that we have more than one plan in mind for the remainder of the transfer window.
Lennon after the boy Wells from Bradford and lowry from Millwall. We need a player like Lubo in from Slovakia plenty out there.
A bit of an ask for anybody, Mick.
HH
one of the rags were on about a 21 y/o Italian wonder kid Marco Capauno en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Capuano
My thoughts exactly Joe.
It’s a double sided sword, we don’t want to spend the dough for multi million pound players to play in the spl and multi million pound players don’t want to play in the spl, ergo tonights result……………….
agree 100%
I would think that we’re in for a number of players Bhoys, but we were never going to spend millions unless we qualified tonight.
We were never going to splash the cash for players to play in the spl, tonight was the kerching night.
I’m quite sure up until tonight we had a two tier transfer list, one to win the spl and one for if we won tonight.
(I hope ;o$)
HH
apologies that performance was inept the passing was woeful no midfield forrest got the ball to his feet and did nothing big sammi was shocking but his effort first leg was admirable however i feel i have been conned 12 million comes in 0 goes out before a game so important ? i honestly cant see this squad winning next qualifier anyway look on the bright side no league cup tussle with the bears a long way to go just for a bridie ally should have just taken them to greggs hee haw come on the bhoys
Kelvin Wilson was part of a Celtic team that achieved so much and restored a lot of pride in Celtic Football Club , so any chance of just wishing him , Hooper and Victor all the best .. we are starting to sound like every other football supporter .. and i thought we where the best supporters in the world
I honestly can’t see were the sentiment of this post comes from.
I can only see one post uncomplimentary of the lad, If you read Joes blog about Kelvin you’ll find plenty of good wishes for the man from ‘the best supporters in the world’.
HH
Well done Celtic did not see the game was told that Ambrose was crapp please get a taxi and send him down to England Good selling Wilson Now let go out and buy three good players Before the next round please
I understand the reasoning in not spending big and looking after the club but we need to spend decent money on decent players ,we need to be destroying teams in front of us , we need to have the team settled from day one.Celtic should have won the SPL buy a mile last season but i saw more bad games than good.If we had spent good money to bring in a couple quality experienced players we could have beaten Juventus and god only knows what would have happened then.
Can tell me why Celtic seem to be able to produce forward capable of breaking into the first team, but cannot seem to produce defenders capable of making the breakthrough.
I can only remember McManus coming in as a regular.
MAYBE people should moan,when theres. reason too..A) we qualified
B) pitch
C)early season
thats reasons to celebrate going thru a tricky test.-plus we will sign-made a fortune in the transfer market–be no duff n guff at our door–HH GOOD JOB BHOYS
A performance to forget and don’t think that dodgy pitch helped but the main objective was getting through and we done that.
Efe Ambrose though is an accident waiting to happen and I have a horrible feeling he is going to cost us big time in Europe (of Juve proportions) if he continues to play as he breeds anxiety throughout the team. If there is genuine interest from down south and we can at least make our money back imo that would be a good bit of business.
Glad to see Wilson go wish he would take iffy with him