Stevie G wants to tag along too to get pissed and to get over Clonard’s defeat yesterday. ClarkeyCat possibly also, NCC’s in the area too - we’ll make a soiree out of it yet.
ill be in town watching it with a Celt I work with & the best interneter in the world roversbhoy - we are heading towards IFSC,Abbey ST general area
where are you all watching it
Well, we’d arranged for The 51 to input the codes to tune in BBC Scotland before we knew it was on Setanta so we’ll probably still go there in a show of solidarity and support.
where is the 51?
Haddington Road, near Baggot Street bridge.
Went in there on a Saturday evening in June and there was literally 3 customers in the place. Very odd, it was about 6pm on a lovely sunny day.
We went over the road to Smyths, nice pints in there.
Sounds like this has the makings of a cracking evening’s entertainment. It might even be worth conferring official TFK social calendar status on it.
Preview from The Herald:
Tony Mowbray has spent the early weeks of his Celtic management politely patting down concerns over his admirable but risky ideology. Tonight in Moscow’s Khimki Stadium, a pretty little arena that is Dynamo’s temporary digs, he will face the first collective test of his and his players’ resolve.
Mowbray is adamant that Celtic will be as crusading in their approach as they were in the first leg, though indications are that key midfielder Scott Brown will not be risked from the start. He underwent ankle surgery at the end of the season and made his first appearance since against Sunderland last Saturday.
Mowbray, who looks set to pair Massimo Donati and Landry N’Guemo in midfield, invited Dynamo to come out fighting rather than protect their away-goal advantage.
It is an attitude the old Bolsheviks would have relished. While the Celtic plc board may decree otherwise, Mowbray’s almost carefree stance is founded on the realisation that even the worst-case scenario offers the consolation of a place in the final qualifying round for the Europa League.
As he weighed up the merits and drawbacks of starting Brown after one friendly outing since ankle surgery, Mowbray refused to elaborate on his plans other than to reaffirm his intention to attack.
“They Dynamo are a pretty solid team but I am convinced with the evidence of last week that we will have enough of the ball and create enough chances to score a goal,” he said in the salubrious surroundings of the Ararat Hyatt Park. "We will try to win this game in Moscow and everyone will be more content. If we get beaten then in my mind we will just have to get on with the next game. The stats last week were 65% to 35% possession for us, and apart from the first 10 minutes, we dominated the match from start to finish. Nothing suggests we can’t do exactly the same over here.
“Their strength is their unity. The all know their jobs and look like a team that has gone through the trials and tribulations of a season. In a strange way, you want them to come out a bit. They played a bit narrow last week and denied space to our wide players who were coming inside. If they play very narrow again we have to keep our wide players wide and try to get one-on-one.”
Elimination would be costly, with the group stages generating around 12m in much-needed revenue. Yet it would not be considered disastrous by a manager who has been left bemused by the scale of indignation at the recent setbacks endured by Scotland’s less illustrious representatives in Europe. “Somebody showed me the Week of Shame’ headline,” he said of the tabloid ire provoked by Motherwell, Falkirk and Aberdeen losing.
"With total respect to Motherwell they lost to Steaua Bucharest. It shouldn’t be a Week of Shame’. They won the European Cup by beating Barcelona not so long ago.
"I understand the patriotic side of this is Scotland, these are our teams’ but football is changing daily I would suggest. Manchester City are changing the horizon just as Chelsea did five years ago.
"I have to rationalise that in my own mind. Was losing to Moscow shameful? No, I thought we played really well. I genuinely cannot allow myself to be influenced by other people’s opinions.
When you do the groundwork and lay the foundations they will stand the test of time. I hope we can get through this tie and let’s hope we do and don’t draw Arsenal.
“Whoever we play will be tough but let’s get through and show this team, our team, can compete on a certain stage. If it is not to be this year I am very confident it will be next year or the year after with the group of players we’ve got.”
If his previous work is anything to go by, Mowbray’s evolutionary process will leave the squad unrecognisable to the one he inherited. This churn is complicated by the financial high-wire act that will be defined by occasions such as tonight.
“This is my team; this is what I’ll get judged on,” he said. "I’m not in a position to say, this is not my team’ or this is not my pre-season.’ It might not be the programme I’d have fitted in around Champions League games but this is what we deal with. We get on with it. I’m a no-excuse coach. We make the best of what we have to do but it is difficult to give everyone game time in the middle of the Champions League games.
"At West Brom I think there were only two players left over after three years there from the 30 I inherited when I went. I didn’t go in there thinking, I’ve got to get rid of everybody’, it’s just how it happens.
“What I do know is that if you are bringing a player in, he has to fit into your plans for what you are trying to build. Here at Celtic that process is just beginning for me. In two or three transfer windows’ time the team will be hugely different from what we have now.”
It will be incumbent on the present employees to repair the damage of a week ago. Mowbray’s hesitation over Brown’s involvement is understandable but it is inconceivable the irrepressible midfielder will not be unleashed at least for a chunk of the game.
Finding the balance between sustained attack and defensive security is his biggest concern. Marc-Antoine Fortune and Scott McDonald are likely to be supplied by the influential and industrious pair of Aiden McGeady and Shaun Maloney on either wing, with N’Guemo offering a protective layer for the increasingly put-upon central defensive partnership of Gary Caldwell and Glenn Loovens. Lee Naylor could be out if he cannot overcome an ankle knock.
Mowbray is utterly convinced his team has goalscoring outlets galore despite squandering a surfeit of chances in the first leg.
“If I’m sitting here at the end of the season and the strikers have not scored enough goals, fine, but I’ve got every confidence the team will score enough goals to have a decent season,” he said.
“I think we’ve got three or four midfielders who can also get goals. Teams are about balance: if you don’t have a centre-forward who can hold the ball up, then your midfielders will rarely be able to get into the box and score goals. It is all about putting the jigsaw together.”
Falling to pieces is not on Celtic’s agenda.
5 hours to go.
We’ll need cool minds and proud Fenian hearts this evening.
'Mon the fooking hoops.
"With total respect to Motherwell they lost to Steaua Bucharest. It shouldn’t be a Week of Shame’. They won the European Cup by beating Barcelona not so long ago.
Mogga’s clutching at straws there, it was in fucking 1986! 
I was thinking that too actually. Not defending the SPL here (honestly) but Motherwell were a bottom half team last season and got into Europe via their fair play record, while Falkirk stayed up on the last day of the season and got into Europe by virtue of getting to the Cup Final. The real shambles last week was Aberdeen getting the shit beaten out of them at home - that was a shocking result. The Celtic result wasn’t great either but we’ve already delivered in spades this season what with The Wembley Cup and a raft of other trophies sitting proudly in the trophy cabinet. Any more silverware at all will be a bonus.
I was at both games v Ajax in 2001, we lost the home leg 1-0 but won the away one 3-1.
The same thing will happen tonight, Celtic will win this game 3-1.
[quote=“Special Olympiakos”]I was at both games v Ajax in 2001, we lost the home leg 1-0 but won the away one 3-1.
The same thing will happen tonight, Celtic will win this game 3-1.[/quote]
The away victory was in the first leg in that game though (if I recall correctly). It’s a harder task tonight what with going away from home and carrying a deficit. Sutton’s header in Amsterdam - what a goal, what a player. 
Twas allright, I omitted that bit on purpose!
Didier Agathe’s finish that night was so good I didn’t need anything from a window later on…
[quote=“Special Olympiakos”]I was at both games v Ajax in 2001, we lost the home leg 1-0 but won the away one 3-1.
The same thing will happen tonight, Celtic will win this game 3-1.[/quote]
was at the game in the arena myself- didier was on fire
superb finish from sutton as well
Remember that Ajax game. One of best Celtic performances I can ever remember. SImply fantastic.
Graham Spiers in The Times on the biggest game an Irish side are likely to play this season, unless they get through this tie and the final qualifying round games will take this tag*:
Revolution will not come in Moscow but I will get it right, Tony Mowbray vows
With Tony Mowbray just about able to see the walls of the Kremlin from his hotel window in Moscow, it was appropriate that the Celtic manager hinted yesterday at something akin to the sort of five-year plan that the old Soviet system once much admired in these parts.
Mowbray and his players are in Moscow for urgent Champions League business tonight but the Celtic manager, notwithstanding his ambition in the here and now, has repeated that his true impact on the club will not be seen for some time. Mowbray plans to revolutionise Celtic, and he appears undaunted by having to square the circle, whereby he must improve his team while having relatively little money to spend.
“This is only the start of a work in progress for me,” Mowbray said yesterday. “Every manager wants to build his own team. I’m not saying I’m going to be getting rid of every player but in two or three transfer windows’ time I think my team will be hugely different from what we have now.”
It has become fascinating to watch Mowbray set about his task. In cities as varied as Brisbane, Cardiff, London, Glasgow and now Moscow the process of “piecing together the jigsaw”, as he puts it, has begun. Mowbray also intends to educate as well as coach, such as in his faintly withering estimation yesterday — and not for a first time — of Scott Brown’s innate ability.
The Celtic manager, whose presence some have likened to Martin O’Neill’s arrival at the club nine years ago, has a huge task ahead of him. Yet Mowbray almost appears to relish the magnitude of it.
“We are being judged right now even though we are still in pre-season, but I have a process ahead of me,” he said. “At West Brom I think there were only two players left over my three years there from the 30 that I inherited when I went in. I didn’t go in there thinking, ‘I’ve got to get rid of everybody’, it’s just how it happens.
“Some players you want to move on, other players leave because they are not getting a game. What I do know is that if I am bringing a player in, he has to fit into my plans for what I am trying to build. And at Celtic that process is just beginning for me.
“I think I’ve got the raw materials of a decent team. But what I will say is, if it is about competing at a decent level, then if it’s not to be this year, I’m very confident it will be next year or the year after with the group of players we’ll have. Hopefully, my groundwork will stand the test of time.”
There is much debate about whether Brown will start for Celtic tonight, though Mowbray, while planning to build his new team around the midfield player, is no uncritical admirer of the 24-year-old’s gifts. In fact, Brown appears to infuriate mildly his new boss with his harum-scarum energy on the field.
“Scott has all the natural talent and enthusiasm you would ever want, but I want to try to add to that an understanding in him of the dynamics of the game,” Mowbray said. “I genuinely feel, as I move on with Scott Brown, that I can mould him into a more disciplined player.
“The best teams are the most disciplined — even the ones with a great fluency about them. It’s about where players are positioned on the pitch. You control the game through players positioning themselves the right way, and Scott needs to learn some of that. I believe you can help players by letting them understand that side of the game.”
Much of that is for the future. In the Russian capital tonight, in trying to overturn the 1-0 lead held by Dynamo Moscow, Mowbray has the chance to provide Celtic with a catalyst for the weeks ahead. Yet he also rebuffed suggestions that tonight would be “for the good of the Scottish game”, given some of the bleak European results suffered by Falkirk, Aberdeen and Motherwell recently.
In particular, Mowbray dismissed the antics of one Scottish tabloid, which had run a “week of shame” campaign in the wake of the European results. “Somebody showed me these ‘week of shame’ pieces, but I have to rationalise all that in my own mind,” Mowbray said. “Was losing to Dynamo last week shameful? I thought we played quite well.
“It shouldn’t be a ‘week of shame’. Motherwell lost to Steaua Bucharest, who are a massive club in Romania — every kid there grows up wanting to play for Steaua.
“I understand the patriotic side of ‘this is Scotland, these are our teams’ stuff, but football is changing. I can’t allow myself to be influenced by other people’s opinions.
“We all know at Celtic how important this game is for us. If we don’t win it, I know there will be some negativity going around, but the bigger picture will be, we move on to the next game. I don’t get too down or too up about any of it. What I do know is that this is a work in progress for me at Celtic.”
- Updated for Shan.
Larryduff exclusive. Team for this evening is:
Boruc
Hinkel Caldwell Loovens Fox
Maloney Donati NGuemo McGeady
Fortune McDonald
Comon the Dynamos to fuck!
[quote=“Bandage”]5 hours to go.
We’ll need cool minds and proud Fenian hearts this evening.
'Mon the fooking hoops.[/quote]
Two hours, 18 minutes. C’mon to fuck Celtic.
-
1 Artur Boruc
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2 Andreas Hinkel
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5 Gary Caldwell
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6 Landry Nguemo
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7 Scott McDonald
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10 Marc-Antoine Fortune
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11 Daniel Fox
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13 Shaun Maloney
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18 Massimo Donati
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22 Glenn Loovens
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46 Aiden McGeady