A man down as well
Do Celtic win the league today?
Yes if rangers lose
Huns level in 6th min of injury time to prolong the season
@ChairmanDan ’s rangers get a last minute equaliser at pittodrie to keep Celtic waiting to be crowned .Aberdeen fcuked it away .
That was some finish from Hagi, as good a domestic league finish as I’ve seen all season.
Bit of a drift/anti-climax to the season since the CL elimination in Munich given the huge league lead, even with the cup & a treble still in play. The semi-final is tomorrow against St Johnstone & a chance to avenge a recent league defeat to them. Aberdeen await in the final after a late extra time victory against 9-man Hearts. Palestinian international striker Oday Dabbagh with the winner.
I think some of the league displays since Christmas have irked supporters & the team has been particularly vulnerable away from home. As much as you’d take the trophies every season, losing the last two derbies has still rankled quite a bit & there could conceivably be a treble trophy winning season along with a treble of derby defeats if the huns win in the league at Ibrox in a couple of weeks. That could lead to a strange end of season undercurrent, but there’s first a chance to seal the league away to Dundee United next Saturday. 15 points clear with 5 games left at the moment.
Rodgers has been unusually critical of the team in public lately & said it’s imperative to freshen things up & avoid complacency by either changing the players or manager. That prompted a load of “Rodgers considering his future” articles before he clarified he was definitively staying put for next season but was referring to adding to the squad. He’ll be entering the last year of his 3-year contract though so it’ll be interesting if he extends it in the summer. There’s a tendency for his best work to be early in his reigns before things come apart a little.
Other than that:
- Schmeichel is back in light training but not ready to play yet.
- Adam Idah was plastered over social media puking in a taxi on a midweek night out.
- Celtic have made a final attempt to keep Greg Taylor. They’ve offered him increased terms but I’m not pushed about it really. Seems kinda bizarre to jettison him for Schlupp & then see Schlupp get a bit casual post Munich & then decide that Taylor is worth pushing the boat out for again when he’s not. We’ve got Tierney coming back so if there’s a limited wage budget then you’d hardly use a chunk of it on a backup left back if he’s reportedly looking for a material bump up.
- 7 Celtic players in the PFA team of the year: Schmeichel, Johnston, CCV, McGregor, Hatate, Kuhn, Maeda.
I’m broadly supportive of Taylor staying. I think he’s a decent player, he is clever on the ball. Lacks pace and some defensive nous but as a backup or semi-regular left back he’s good. Schlupp would probably want/need a lot more in terms of wages and I don’t think he’s a significant upgrade, if at all. It’s a shame we’ve nobody coming through who could be backup but having a good player there is helpful given Tierney’s injury history and also the ability to play Tierney at centre back on occassion.
I think there will need to be a bit of an overhaul over the summer. Kuhn was a valuable asset a couple of months ago, I don’t think we’d get more than 5/6m for him now and I’d be inclined to take it. We’ll need another winger anyway. Frequent murmurings about Hatate leaving but not really sure where his market would be. A middle of the road team in one of the bigger leagues with sunnier climates perhaps.
I wonder about CCV too. I think he’s had a poor season defensively and he seems to be completely excused from having to do anything creative with the ball. We have bombed out the left sided centre back a few times for being poor with their passing. And Nawrocki also gets jettisoned when he plays on the wrong side and his slow with his passing. CCV plays on his preferred side every time and he rarely shows any ambition or speed of passing. I don’t think we’ll sell him - or want to sell him - but he’s either the common denominator in a team that always has too much possession among the centre backs. Or he’s the cause of it.
Jeffrey Shlupp just won an FA cup final medal, on the same week he won an SPL medal.
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I wonder if Honohan might tick a few box’s for back up left back with the potential to take over from Tierney in time? He’d also come in and be guaranteed minimum half of a sixty season with Tierney’s injury record/ fitness
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How is the Cork City match shaping up?
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Sad news, I make it only the 3 Lions left, Jim Craig, Willie Wallace and Bobby Lennox.
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It’s class
How do you bhoys view things @Rocko @starryplough @Little_Lord_Fauntleroy @Bisto @Realbhoy @flattythehurdler @RaymondCrotty ? I know I’m leaving people out but I’ve had a mind blank - apologies.
There’s that little bit of uncertainty with Rodgers only having 1 year left of his 3-year deal…I think he’ll probably sign a 1-year rolling deal in the next while but it’ll become an ongoing media thing if he doesn’t, as much as he tries to play it down.
That in turn leads to talk about whether everybody’s aligned in signing targets & wider transfer strategy.
Again, my memory is gone to shit but I’ll list the INs & OUTs I can think of.
INs
Doohan (keeper)
Inamura (centre back/left back)
Tierney (left back)
Nygren (attacking centre mid)
Osmond (striker)
Yamada (striker)
So you’d say two first teamers in Tierney & Nygren. Doohan is the almost administrative/Scott Carsonesque third choice keeper role where he counts as a club trained & home grown player for Europe. Inamura & Osmond are more development signings that may feature if they surprise & take to the first team environment & Yamada doesn’t seem to be an upgrade on Idah.
OUTs
Taylor (left back)
Schlupp - end of loan (left back)
Nawrocki (centre back)
Lagerbielke (centre back)
Kühn (winger)
The likes of Kwon, Palma & Tilio will also probably leave either permanently or on loans with options to buy.
Overall, I’d say there’s still a fair bit of transfer business to do. When you consider Kyogo hasn’t properly been replaced (despite the signings of Osmond & Yamada), Kuhn is this season’s “big sale” after O’Riley last summer & Jota is long term injured…that’s a lot of goals & attacking potency to lose.
We’re lacking in the wide attacking areas & I still want a top striker signed, even though there’s now 4 on the books already. Johnny Kenny may go out on loan perhaps & Rodgers expressed some frustration with Idah the other day - most of the things we say on here: he needs to be authoritative, concentrated, alive, clinical. 20 goals was fine last season but his goals came in batches & then he’d stink the place out. He’d score 4 in 3 & then 0 in 10 & then 3 in 2 followed by 0 in 7… That consistency has been missing.
I’m also hoping that we don’t lose another main player late in the summer, e.g. Maeda or Hatate. Midfield looks relatively strong with Engels, Bernardo & McCowan options in there too. We probably need a left back to complement Tierney - his record suggests he won’t play 50 or 60 games per season - but I don’t know if Inamura might be the player already. An uncompromising centre back who can pass out from the back to partner CCV would also be nice - Trusty & Scales don’t convince - but I’ve seen some mentions that Dane Murray could be promoted from the ranks.
I dunno, the side looks weaker than last season absent another 3 or 4 signings but I think we really need a quality winger & striker. The key CL qualifier is in mid August so a little bit of time to get bodies in. Otherwise you’re looking at something like:
Schmeichel;
Johnston, CCV, Scales, Tierney;
Nygren, McGregor, Hatate;
Forrest/Yang: Idah; Maeda.
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I think the uncertainty over BRs contract situation is impacting transfer business. Certainly his comments on the new Japanese players don’t fill me with confidence that they were targeted by him. Clearly we need wingers but the real issue for me is centre forward. Idah is clearly not good enough so I’d be inclined to give Kenny a run. Given CCVs injury list and the crapness of Trusty and Scales I’d look at 2 centre halves as well. One of the podcasts during the week said that Engles and Trusty were both signed very late in the window last year so there’s still some hope but it’s been a very poor pre season, Tierney and Nygren excepted. If Der Hun get their act together and beat us at the Bigotdome in August( which is highly likely based on previous results) then the league could be a lot closer than a lot of people expect.
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The cup final could be the beginning of the end for this group … Celtic have a stale enough squad, as in the same key players are always asked to step up while the peripheral ones dip in and out of form .Would have preferred Nawrocki to stay and Scales /Trusty gone.Think the league will be tight
I’d expect Rangers will get a bounce from Russell Martin .
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I’m not in a panic yet but I think we need a lot of improving and that’s assuming all the current important squad members stay.
It’s a bit of a cliché to say that we should come out of every transfer window stronger than we went into it (because it’s a zero sum game for football as a whole so we can’t be winning them all, especially competing against financial muscle in England). But we do need to at a minimum significantly strengthen the front three to even maintain status quo.
I think we’re lacking at least two players. I’m not overly fussed about whether they are both wide players or one is a striker. The consensus seems to be we need a striker but we’ll certainly be high on quantity then if we add another #9. With Maeda’s versatility and the younger options off the bench I would be equally happy if we added two strong wingers to replace the “goal contributions” from Kuhn and Kyogo. The Jota injury is unfortunate but if he wasn’t in the squad I’d be arguing we need three wingers.
As things stand we’re probably set in midfield. Maybe there’s still a chance of a Lennon Miller addition. Nygren looks good and adds another option in there. We’d potentially have Engels, McCowan and Bernardo all on the bench with McArdle next in line as things stand. We could still do with another option to play the defensive midfield role but I think we have enough.
Defence is where we really could be upgrading as you say @Bandage. Tierney certainly does that but Scales and Trusty took turns in playing themselves out of the team last season and it’s hard to see much improvement in either of them. Both are fine as the third choice defender, and Murray played very well the other night after looking hopeless in earlier matches, but ideally we’d be brigning in a stronger centre back too.
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