Celtic ,Champs League.

Little update on what's going on with our potential opponents in CL qualifiers.

Luzern 5:1 Young Boys
Basel 3:0 Neuchatel Xamax

Which means Basel can win the title in Helvetia if they draw or win against Young Boys, who are their main contenders. They have 77 points each, so draw would suffice. We need Basel to win the league so we can be seeded in qualifiers and avoid the likes of Tottenham and generally all 4th and 3rd placed teams in big European leagues.

So far it's all going in our favour so we can be seeded.

We also need Romanians to do something, think it's Steaua, but pardon my lack of understandment of coefficients there. And in Turkey we need Fener to win the league, they need to pump Bursa at home in last game of season. Should be piece of cake, but you never know with them...

 

a dont care who we play tbh bring them all on

 

+1

 

with the correct manager a few new faces like pedersen etc and a full house rocking unlike this season then ill fancy our chances against anyone at CP , time we turn it back into a Fortress

 

Not true - we'll only be seeded for the 3rd qualifying round and avoid the likes of Zenit, Kiev & Ajax. If we get through that we'll go to the play-off round where we are definitely going to get the 4th place from England/Spain/Italy or 3rd place from France & Germany.

It's a bit of a joke how hard it is to qualify, the old way was fine - if a team was good enough, they'd get through.

 

True about them being good enough mate but a think uefa wanted to bring other nations up to the level. Like we have seen Cypriot and Belarussian teams prove fairly competitive of late.

 

Wouldn't want a team from russia, ukraine, turkey, romania. Although some of tgeh other countries like Protugal and Holland would make for very difficult opponents, I feel that a tie played far away, i.e. russia, ukraine, turkey, the harder it is on our lads to play. So preferanly out of the nearer, mainland europe I owud prefer Basel or Club Brugge.

 

Suppose mate, but I don't think champions from say Lithuania or Iceland should get such a cosy route through, whereas bigger teams play to have each other, suppose it is the 'Champions' league though.

As it stands:

Seeded - Zenit, Ajax, Dynamo Kiev, Braga, Celtic
Unseeded - Unirea*, PAOK, Young Boys*, Gent, Bursaspor*

* means the team hasn't yet confirmed their place.


Would take Gent out of that lot, don't like the idea of playing a Turkish or Greek side, and would rather avoid Unirea TBH. If things don't go our way we'll drop into the Unseeded pot though - where they're all tough games.

 

I really agree m8. A think that uefa wanted to make it more competitive but the system is wrong. They cannot go a decade with changing something. No doubt they will re-vamp it inot even more of a joke at some point.

 

Have Unirea retained their league title ?

Still under Petrescu, or did he leave ?

 

Are you sure about this one? I must've mixed up coefficients, it's too * complicated!

There's no chance for us to get seeded if other teams (YB, Fener etc.) * up? We're getting Zenit, Dinamo Kiev and the likes for sure?

 

Aye bang on - teams from Cyprus & Belarus etc, they're never going to get out the group stage, lowers the quality of the whole competition, only positive is that it improves the quality of the Europa League.

Aye he went to Russia mate lol, Unirea might finish 2nd (that's what we want).

Defo sure lol.

Current situation is this

Turkey
We need Fenerbahce to win the Turkish league. They have a 1pt lead over Bursaspor, with one game to go. Fenerbahce are at home to 5th place Trabzonspor in their last game on Sunday, Bursaspor are at home to 4th place Besiktas in theirs. It's level on points, Bursaspor will win, based on their superior goal difference.

Romania
We need Steaua Bucharest to finish in any position other than 2nd. Currently, they're 5th - 4pts off 2nd place with just 2 games to go. So it's looking good here.

Switzerland
We need Basel to win the league. Level on points with Berne with 1 game to go - at Berne though, as mentioned a draw will do them & us.

 

Aw *, I actually spent time thinking about this while I was searching for coefficients. I actually thought we could be seeded if these predictions above come true.


Also, what's the deal with Romania? I couldn't find any useful info about them, I just know they're well above Scotland in nation coefficients and Steaua/Unirea/Cluj need to lose the title or something.

At the end of the day, this won't have much significance 'cause we'll face Zenit, Ajax etc. either way.

 

olympiakos is in europa league...celtic maybe will play with PAOK

 

Not true mate, we'll only play them if we're unseeded, obviously being seeded we'll play inferior opposition such as Genk & Unirea as listed. I don't fancy our chances against Zenit, Kiev or Ajax. Then we play the solid teams if we get through lol, if not we go straight to the Europa League groups like last season.

Cluj are leading the Romanian league by 3 points ahead of Unirea. As mentioned we don't care who does what as long as Steaua don't get 2nd lol.

 

It's so complicated. A really tough ask. Some achievement actually, going to moscow and beating Dinamo. Guna be harder this time

 

Got it now, cheers. I thought we have chance of being seeded in 4th round, not in 3rd. Apparently we're * either way because it will be quite tough in 3rd round, nevermind further. Hopefully not drawing some Eastern European team in top for with their season in full swing.

New system is pretty hard for non-champion sides, but hey, at least Italy, Spain and England have 3 teams going directly to group stage.

 

The Champions of these top leagues should be the only team from their league/country to get in directly.