All over them by the end. Hughes. Mitchell and those lads came on and changed it.
The Scottish league is blessed to have tv coverage on sky sports… Celtic as the poster boy would want to get their shit together before sky scrap the coverage and the Scottish league fades into oblivion
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Hearts winning the league or a title race going to the wire would only drive up TV ratings surely? Who’s going to tune in to watch Celtic v Kilmarnock if the league is wrapped up in early April? Bar a few of the die hards here posting maeeeeeeda as the 4th goes in obviously.
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Could it be possible that Celtic just aren’t as big or their standing as lofty as many are thinking. Their European Cup winning heroics are more than half a century ago and their adventures abroad have been chastening in recent times. The uptick in reportage currently is bordering on the macabre with vultures picking away at a rotting corpse.
They may be a big club in Scotland but that’s about it. The SPL isn’t a whole shake above League 1 football down south and the whole sectarian bitterness only serves to drag it down further.
Lads worried about who’ll be the next lamb to the slaughter need to give their heads a wobble, it’s only soccer and the Scottish version at that.
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It’s never been the same since they got rid of this theme music.
It screams “John Bomber Brown”.
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This is like saying Ajax or Benfica aren’t big clubs.
Celtic, like Rangers, are a whale trapped in a swimming pool, and not a big Olympic size swimming pool, one of those hotel type swimming pools.
If you imagine how calm and reasoned a whale trapped in a hotel swimming pool would be, you can apply that to how calm and reasoned Celtic’s support tends to be.
But who wants calm and reason in football. Nobody with a soul.
Celtic, like Rangers but unlike Ajax and Benfica however, are a mass support team trapped in a society which doesn’t produce actual footballers any more.
Italy is going a bit the same way to be fair. The best team in Italy has two Scotsmen as their best players.
That’s a tune!!
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The fan ambition is to become somewhat relevant in Europe, e.g. making runs like last year’s in the CL a common occurrence. Nobody’s under any illusions about the changing football landscape & the financial limitations of the domestic league but they’d like the board to (within reason) invest in the playing squad to that end. It’s currently a case of maintaining cash reserves of c.£100mn in case the team doesn’t qualify for the CL instead of spending a fair portion of that to make qualifying a very strong prospect each season. The pot of cash to be earned from qualifying (plus achieving some results in it) would then justify the spend & become…what do they call it?…a virtuous circle. Now the squad is shit, they don’t qualify but then congratulate themselves for being prudent.
I think there’s serious gaslighting from the board in being incredulous about the fan complaints that arise. We’ve won 13/14 leagues! We’ve qualified for European group phase football for 19/20 seasons! Yeah you finished ahead of Motherwell & Aberdeen to win the league, lost a CL qualifier to a Kazakh/Slovak/Greek/Swedish/Romanian side etc etc & then dropped automatically into the Europa League as a consolation. Like the huns have qualified for a UEFA Cup final, died, came back under a new guise & qualified for a Europa League final since Celtic last won a European knock out tie. I know it’s not 1967 or even 2003 but a properly functioning club of Celtic’s size should have a qualified head of football operations (not Paul Tisdale) with executive authority to make football decisions (not at Dermot Desmond’s whims). He should implement & oversee good scouting & recruitment, proper player trading, a fit for purpose youth academy & work in close quarters with a decent manager & coaching staff.
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Just as a point of order @Chancer is decrying sectarianism yet would have observed loyalists burning folk out of their homes in Belfast in the 1960s, the launch of the civil rights movement & then Bloody Sunday…& decided to throw his lot in with Liverpool FC in the middle of that. Thereafter came Ballymurphy, shoot to kill, the Miami Showband, Heysel…has he condemned any of them & withdrawn his allegiance to those dirty murdering orange bastards?
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I’ve said it before, but Celtic and Bielsa would be a love match.
He’s 70. Give it Martin O’Neill until the end of season and then bring in the YOUNGER MAN after he’s done with the World Cup.
I agree with that. Challenging in Europe (in the Europa League) isn’t as impossible as the Board would have everyone believe. Especially when the club get to play in Europe every single year building up experience. Inferior teams with inferior teams have done much better than Celtic in recent seasons.
There’s still the challenge of domestic success though. I’m not sure who the last Europa Leagie winning team to also win their domestic league was. Leverkusen nearly did it. But the tournament has been dominated the bigger leagues recently.
But looking at bigger clubs from smaller leagues who have had some successes in Europe. Some have been really inconsistent like the Portuguese teams. Benfica have enjoyed the most sustained success of those I suppose. But they’ve won one league in the last 6 years. Celtic fans wouldn’t accept that even if there was more progress in Europe. (Look at poor Gio at the Huns).
The Dutch teams are similar probably in sharing domestic success and achieving competitiveness in Europe. But they end up being less “successful” than Celtic domestically and still not quite good enough to win a trophy in Europe either.
Club Brugge were everyone’s favourites recently after outplaying Celtic last year and dismantling the Huns this year. They had invested time in a system it seemed. And were developing players and planning for the long term. A couple of months later and they’ve sacked their manager, look like leaving the CL at the group stages and have lost two of the last three titles after dominating before then.
Midjytlland are another from a comparable enough league who looked like they were from a different dimension when they played Celtic recently. But they didn’t win their league last season and are 4 points behind the mighty Aarhus this season. They have their football factory and produce lots of players. But they won’t win everything and probably don’t win enough to satisfy a support like Celtic’s.
You have the likes of Bodo/Glimt as another type who have managed to impress both in Norway and in Europe. Even they’ve found the plateau now. They didn’t win their league and they’ll go out of Europe too. They have a much smaller budget than Celtic but they’re seen as very well run with that long term vision that supporters demand but maybe don’t want.
I guess the challenge is that setting a team up to keep progressing is kind of an impossible challenge. It’s like that statement everyone says about “leaving the transfer window stronger than we went into it” as though football can simply expand talent to make sure everyone gets better together with nobody having to fall behind. I don’t think Celtic supporters really want to pay any price for changing the model into a club that has a distinct or unique style with a factory of players in that mould.
There are more problems with Nancy apparently than the results so far. But when we win the SPL the talk is always about making inroads in Europe. But the only measure of success for a manager in Scotland is instant and recurring domestic success. Nobody will be happy with winning two out of five league titles if we get to a Europa League semi final somewhere in that spell too. They’re not necessarily mutually exclusive but the patience that might be required to build a more sustainable production of talent just doesn’t exist.
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Beating the Huns is always paramount, but with a significant financial clout, Celtic should be competitive in Europe, and really should be qualifying for the CL. The whole season and the latter half of last has been turgid until MON. I’m delighted Rogers left. It’s not boring anymore that’s for sure. I haven’t warmed to Nancy tbh.
Yeah I agree with that. I’d still prefer where are now than the slow demise under Rodgers.
I sort of hope we either turn things around immediately with a big win on Sunday or we lose and move on with someone else. I don’t want green shoots and a slow improvement. Either Nancy Ball works or it doesn’t.
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That’s my worry exactly. Well put.
They’re a great story. They were only founded at the turn of the 21st century following the amalgamation of two weaker clubs. In 2014 the owner of Brentford bought them and his moneyball or data analytics approach has resulted in four league titles since 2014, having won none before he took over. They’ve a small enough stadium but good supporters. Obviously an example that if you run a club properly you can prosper very quickly. Tony Bloom at Brighton got involved at Belgian side Royal Union Saint-Gilloise and they won the Belgian league more or less straight away for first time in over 100 years. He looks like he’s about to repeat the trick again at Hearts. Bloom and the chap at Brentford will make an instant success of any other club they get involved with in the future.
News alert: Wilfried Nancy spotted in McDonalds in Braehead Shopping Centre with his family.
Video footage of such has been uploaded to the INTERNET and viewed by this poster.
His manner of eating did not look apologetic enough for the person filming the video who shouted “what the actual fuck”.
This makes me want Coach Nancy to succeed.