Benfica v Celtic, 20/11/12, 7:45PM.

You can bet on Barca playing a strong team, I'm confident Barca will beat them.

 

Yeah, I heard it. It was fairly loud.

 

Yes.

 

You guys are forgetting though that Barcelona have already qualified and won top spot, they are not going to risk injury to their best players. It is not a guarantee that they win against Benfica at home.

 

Lennon just had a pop at the ref - "the [Wanyama] booking was ridiculous"...hope nothing is made of this.

As for the ref I thought he was below par but I've seen worse and the Spanish/Portuguese/Italians always make the most of things so their job is 100 times harder against these teams. Benfica might have something to say about him as well - the time they waited to get their guy on in the first half was scandalous.

 

Yep. This can't be said enough. Best Celtic performance tonight came from the stands.

 

There's no reason they should. They're through in first and they put Deulofeu on near the end of the Spartak game. Would suggest to me that they're wanting to give their younger players a run out.

 

Yep. Or even we draw and they lose.

Go for the win though

 

He was brilliant in all other CL games though just tonight clearly wasn't fit enough.

Kinda hard for him to score when he had literally 0 midfield supporting him! Hoops must have touched the ball about 10 times all game and showed some lovely control in the 1st half when he flicked the ball over 2 Benfica players and took the * out them, but he had no1 to pass to!

 

We need to better Benfica's result. We're both on 7 points so if Barca win a draw would be enough.

A Benfica win or we lose and it's curtains.

 

Barca last 5 home league games
<TABLE class=tablehead cellSpacing=1 cellPadding=3><TBODY><TR class=colhead><TH></TH><TH style="TEXT-ALIGN: center">G</TH><TH style="TEXT-ALIGN: center">W</TH><TH style="TEXT-ALIGN: center">D</TH><TH style="TEXT-ALIGN: center">L</TH><TH style="TEXT-ALIGN: center">F</TH><TH style="TEXT-ALIGN: center">A</TH><TH style="TEXT-ALIGN: center">GD</TH><TH style="TEXT-ALIGN: center">GFA</TH><TH style="TEXT-ALIGN: center">GAA</TH><TH style="TEXT-ALIGN: center">PpG</TH><TH style="TEXT-ALIGN: center">Pts</TH><TH style="TEXT-ALIGN: center">Rank</TH></TR><TR class=oddrow align=center><TD width=175 align=right>Last 5</TD><TD>5</TD><TD>5</TD><TD>0</TD><TD>0</TD><TD>20</TD><TD>8</TD><TD>12</TD><TD>4.00</TD><TD>1.60</TD><TD>3.00</TD><TD>15</TD><TD>1

</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
Last season at home
<TABLE class=tablehead cellSpacing=1 cellPadding=3><TBODY><TR class=colhead><TH></TH><TH style="TEXT-ALIGN: center">G</TH><TH style="TEXT-ALIGN: center">W</TH><TH style="TEXT-ALIGN: center">D</TH><TH style="TEXT-ALIGN: center">L</TH><TH style="TEXT-ALIGN: center">F</TH><TH style="TEXT-ALIGN: center">A</TH><TH style="TEXT-ALIGN: center">GD</TH><TH style="TEXT-ALIGN: center">GFA</TH><TH style="TEXT-ALIGN: center">GAA</TH><TH style="TEXT-ALIGN: center">PpG</TH><TH style="TEXT-ALIGN: center">Pts</TH><TH style="TEXT-ALIGN: center">Rank</TH></TR><TR class=oddrow align=center><TD width=175 align=right>Home Record</TD><TD>19</TD><TD>17</TD><TD>1</TD><TD>1</TD><TD>73</TD><TD>11</TD><TD>62</TD><TD>3.84</TD><TD>0.58</TD><TD>2.74</TD><TD>52</TD><TD>1</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>

 

I think you're absolutely right.

Hard to believe Hooper wasn't substituted.

 

If anything...this result has brought us back down to earth again...and we needed to be as well....Spartak are a good side with nothing to loose,therefor tricky tie,believe me...can picture mcgeady getting a goal at parkhead (like brattback scored against us)......and over at the nou camp i can honestly see 20 mins in and the scoreline coming over 1-0 to benfica...then circulating through our crowd.....its going to be a hard night...and for people to say its a walkover with spartak need to think hard here....it wont be.......we need confidence not cockiness....yes we beat barca but itll be a distant memory if we start playing poor as * again.......agree though---im still over the moon with football over xmas.....just hope its CL,but id take europa(bit yer hand of in fact at start of draw)

 

no one is saying spartak is going to be a walkover but i cant see them getting anything at celtic park , even without the sending off in russia i still felt confident we would get something , spartak have nothing to play for who says they wont field a young team so they can focus on league?

also barca will have messi on the team,he wants as many games as possible to get the calender year goalscoring record

celtic supporters are a funny bunch! hail hail! everyone on this board would have taken this scenario a few months ago surely?

 

They'll have no pressure on them. We'll have 60,000 fans breathing down our necks. They'll be calm and composed they've nothing to lose.

On top of that that there a cracken team with a point to prove after we turned them over on there own patch.

A draw might do us as long as Barca beat Benfica.

 

Benfica are a good side and it didn't help that we didn't show up.

How I see it - Every team in this group is better than us on paper. We can beat any team on the planet on our day. However, it isn't realistic of us to expect to turn over better opposition every time we meet them. We can't be playing above ourselves on adrenaline every game.

Spartak are a good side, we'll do well to take something from them again, especially with Wanyama out. Just hope when we play them we have the belief back that we lacked tonight.

Either way, we are guaranteed Europe after Christmas which all of us would have agreed was some going when the group was drawn. We've done very well to secure that.

 

He's been out for a couple of weeks and then played today and it looked like he's not nearly fit enough. Lenny took a risk and it didn't pay off. I doubt he felt confident running full speed after having a hamstring issue.

 

Lennon just admitting he said we hope to get Hooper up to speed ???? so he was NOT FIT..yet we have a young man in Tony Watt who's in form and he drops him...* bizarre !!!!!

 

We aren't far from a good side! We are a good side.

 

Hate it when people say things like that:smiley-laughing002:

It doesn't change the fact we were * tonight and could have got through to the last 16.