Great Celtic Mysteries: No. 1 - Our Champions League Away Form

4-5-1 with two sitting midfielders and a big pacey striker is needed IMO - and to get rid of zonal marking in europe.

forster
wilson maj rogne izzy
kayal brown
commons ledley mulgrew
samaras

suhin like that.

 

if i remember correctly he passed back to keeper and a utrecht player came and applied pressure and got a penalty think it happened twice

 

early on i think it was a combination of poor tactics and being unlucky i think. Like most things though it's all in the head, the players will all have the poor record in the back of their minds, once we get a few good results it will disappear imo, jus look at the confidence shown domestically after the ibrox result

 

Psychological, plus the pressure of playing the "celtic way".

It's weird though, it's almost like the players lose 90% of their technical ability when they play away in Europe. Players who are used to passing all game and dominating, suddenly can't string two together.

I always thought a psychologist should come in and "program" the players to believe every game's at Celtic park - but maybe that would make us more fragile?

 

Combination of psychology, some very poor performances and some ridiculous bad luck for me.

The greatest performance we ever had away was our very 1st Champions League game V Juventus in Turin, when we were mugged in injury time by a diving *.

Nearly 10 years on and still no away win, staggering ...

 

I remember launching a full on rant at the t.v when this happened, it all looked so bright, the defence looked solid so far and we had the goal, then something like that happens, tbh though, it was typical Utd reverting to their cheating tactics when things arn't going well for them. At Old Trafford they will always get a penalty no matter what if they are getting beat.

 

its a puzzler for sure.to go from some almighty home performances to getting our arses skelped with little more than a wimper away from lesser teams,its certainly infuriating,especially when the mankies can pump lyon 3 0 away.mark my words tho'-when we do break the hoodoo it will be in style-4-0 at the bernabeau or summat

 

bratislava I just laughed at, pathetic showing that was. The funny thing was we won 4-0 at home so....

 

Maybe it's an inside job with the Bookies!!!!:icon_mrgreen: Trying to keep the £9m debt doon!!!!

 

Mystery No.2: Why the * did we sign Daryl Murphy?:icon_mrgreen:

 

Forget kidding on about that, that should be a real thread

 

That's the thing, i'm totally serious

 

Anyway, back to the away form, the only reason i can think of is that we go and try and win the game and leave ourselves exposed at the back a lot, only thing i can think of because Rangers like to park the bus and play on the counter attack and they get results away from home.

 

No mystery IMO. We have simply been one of the weaker teams in the CL since its creation, usually the weakest or second weakest team in the group. Its natural that in away games we tend to lose to technically far superior teams.

 

And teams like Cluj and Rosenburg are right up there?

 

Its a conspiracy

 

another thing is we are not used to defending as a team against teams with great technique and off the ball movement in the SPL. We just dont get the practice. In addition Celtic have tended to pour our resources into attacking players and fill the back with cheap players. Tommy did it. WGS did it. Lenny is doing it. This is even true to a lesser degree of MON. There was no defensive equivelent of Larrson or Sutton. We do that because in the SPL attack is more important for us.

The reason Rangers do better is simply because Wattie had a uniquely defensive mindset which he even used in the SPL and were well practiced in the dark arts of anti-football.

 

I think that's an error in judgement then. If either of the big two get one guy in their back four who is a rock then they tend to become very hard to score against domestically.

Clearly that defensive rock would become a big help in any European ties.

Perhaps Celtic should think about spending their budget on a top centre-back for a change instead of constantly looking at creative type players, we have lots of them now.

 

As has been sade previously some of the performances have been spot on and we have crumbled in the last 5/10 mins, its got to be down to tactics we cant be unlucky all the time. for example aalborg away we win there and we top the group and get an easier game in last 16 to be fair Gary caldwell did make a complete * of it but the tactics used throughout the game were *,

 

In europe i'd play something like:

Goalkeeper
Wilson Rogne Danny Izzy
Kayal Ledley
Brown Commons Mulgrew
Sammy

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