First legs taking place tonight. Celtic v Bodo/Glimt at 8pm.
Aside from the bhoys, the most renowned clubs in the knock-out stages are probably Roma, PSV, Feyenoord, Marseille, Rennes, Leicester, Fenerbahce and Basel though you may quibble over a few teams I’ve excluded.
The 8 pre-Christmas group winners are already through to the round of 16.
The 8 ties in this knockout round consist of the 8 group runners up and the 8 third placed teams dropping down/in from the Europa League groups.
Bodo/Glimt have won the last 2 Norwegian leagues, the first in their history, but they’ve lost some key players since the season ended in December. The main one being midfielder Patrick Berg to Lens. They’ve replenished the squad with some signings and come into tonight’s game on the back of a few friendlies with the Norwegian league yet to start. They play an open and expansive style and thumped Roma 6-1 at home in the group. It should make for an attacking, end to end game anyway.
Celtic are likely to line up as follows:
Hart;
Juranovic, Carter-Vickers, Starfelt, Taylor;
O’Riley, McGregor, Hatate;
Abada, Giakoumakis, Jota.
Rogic and Maeda are the other players really pushing to get into the starting team.
Yeah think that’s likely the team to start tonight.
Think these guys are a step above what I might have expected from drawing a Norwegian team at this stage. But we’ve improved considerably since the start of the season and I expect us to progress over the two legs. Sounds like they’ll be very attacking too.
Is there much money to be made from going deep into this competition ? in light of the fact Scottish league winners could be getting €40m from automatic champs lge group qualification…
Also just because everyone talks about this as a guaranteed place for the Scottish league winners, it’s close to that but not quite. If the winners of this year’s CL don’t qualify for the CL next year through their domestic league then Scotland don’t have that automatic spot.
Not sure exactly who is in danger of that but at least Atletico Madrid, Villarreal, Juventus and maybe Manchester United look vulnerable.
Yep, decent little breakdown here of some sequences of play where we turned down the more progressive pass to take the safe option. He was seething alright.
I commented on Welsh at the time. Starfelt is far from brilliant on the ball but he shows the ambition in his passing more than Welsh who didn’t seem to have the ability or confidence to find the right pass. (Probably not helped by Taylor not playing who offers better movement inside than Scales).
Similar story with Ralston though some of that is just par for the course with him. He’s been excellent but his passing isn’t perfect and he needs a little more time on the ball than Juranovic who is a more natural footballer.
I reckon hatate must be being rested. He runs himself into the ground in every game.
I think it was a club in-joke when they openly mentioned twice in interview that he wasn’t fit.
Interested to see how Rogic and O’Riley combine. They’ve been an either or so far, each playing on the right of the midfield three, working wide to combine with full back and wide player, and then coming inside to use their stronger left foot. I don’t think they’ve been on the pitch together much, if at all. I thought Hatate was below par on Sunday, but was then giving him the benefit of the doubt because of how poor we were at releasing the ball forward to him and others. I’ve no real qualms with Maeda getting selected ahead of Giakoumakis, but I’d expect a good impact sub stint from the latter.
I reckon they way they are all playing, a fair few players are being rotated rather than dropped.
I like when Gia starts tbh.
It really is an excellent team and squad. It’s remarkable.
Ah yeah, fighting on three fronts still and gonna be pretty much playing 3 games every 7 days for the foreseeable. There’ll have to be rotation. I think Hatate’s been really excellent but he’s definitely fallen away in second halves to some degree so I don’t believe it’s an in joke or whatever. Obviously part of that is the very fast tempo Ange demands so there’s probably going to be a natural fall off as the game progresses but he’s done all his sensational work in the first half generally (2 goals and assist v huns, goal at Hearts etc). The midfield has flagged a bit after half time in some of these games, albeit from commanding half time positions, like at Hearts and Aberdeen. Rogic and O’Riley have that more languid, long striding style whereas Hatate is very busy and always darting around. As I say, interested to see if R&R complement each other or if they’re too alike and look to take up the same positions etc.
