What we learn from tonight

Bearing in mind this is a Barcelona team than stuck 6 goals past Bilbao and Celta Vigo, 7 past Valencia and 8 past Deportivo, what do you think Liam Henderson would have done to change the course of events?

 

We need to stop acting like a big club from Scotland, just happy to be there.

Scottish football league is too small for us, we need to change the mentality of that.

We need to start to change things for our self. We need to start acknowledging that we are the 'worst' team in the champions league and build our club on that basis.

Build a club/squad to improve our standing in the champions league will take care of the Scottish league anyway.

Start speculating some spending in the playing squad appropriately to get the swusf good enough to move up the league table in the champions league.

There are 32 teams in this league, we are 25th. (Pot standing). We need to look to get to midtable (14-16th), where we can float between bottom of pot 2 and top of pot 3. To do that we need to start spending a bit more on the ready made calibre of those sort of teams. And this season alone we have shown that we can do that. 4million on Sinclair at 30k a week(correct?) is clearly great business and a quality player. It can be done - and that's buying from the inflated English market. We need another 2 or 3 of that standard. Accompanied by some 'projects' like the van dijks, wanyama, ki of the past and some old heads like toure of today.

This isn't rocket science. Build a team to progress in the champions league (seriously being a club capable of topping pot 3 and flirting with pot 2 is realistic) and we will see less of the sort of drubbing we seen on Tuesday and will see again against man city. And in turn that team will automatically be capable of beating the rest of Scotland.
.just now we do enough to stay top of Scottish football, just. And see it as a massive success to just make it past teams that really are no better than st Johnston.

Keane for me is spot on and I think that is what he means.

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Bitton offered absolutely nothing when we needed someone to out themselves about.

It doesnt matter who they have pumped before. We should be makiing it as difficult as possible for them. Lets be honest, we arent going to out play Barca. But we can definitely out fight them. Despite everything quite a few teams have done it, including ourselves.

 

Rodgers got it wrong simple as that. All teams who play them should play top heavy against them so they can't build from the back and force them to play the long high ball then most teams are on an even keel with them but sit back and allow them to do what they want is when they are at there best not rocket science there is it. Starve the Barca front 3 and you have a chance

 

Can't disagree with anything you've put, however one of the problems we have is squad continuity from one year to the next when it comes to better players.

So as you say in 3, our better players will attract interest, increase value and we sell, e.g. current crop, Moussa, Sinclair, Erik to name 3, which then weakens the side - I'd also include Brendan in this category, who will be gone within 3 years but with a better CV.

So we then have to bring in new players/manager, point 1, and start again, albeit hopefully at a higher level. However here we're limited because we buy players within a certain budget in order to balance the books and nowadays players that would cost £3m a few years ago probably cost £5m....but we are still operating on the £3m budget. So we take cheaper "projects", who end up being not the right fit and we send them to the likes of Barnsley on loan

Point 2 - the learning experience. Every Manager from MON to BR has talked about this. Every year our "learning experience" has been CL qualifiers and we've struggled because they're within 2/3 weeks of the Lads coming back after previous season, which won't change. If we get past Qualifiers we have probably 6 Group games to learn, in between which we go back to battering SPFL sides, who don't test us. So we're lulled into a false sense of some fans believing we'll get something out of the likes of Barca, Man City. Our better players then attract the attention of other Clubs and we're back to point 3 in this never ending cycle.

There is one answer to all of this and one I don't like. By getting into the CL groups, our competitive profile is raised - our name is already way up there. So we attract the interest and accept a bid from some Far Eastern/Middle Eastern consortium or from the marketing Company Red Bull who then pump zillions into the Club and in financial terms make us competitive. Such a move would change us forever and, in my opinion, not for the better - turn us into a Corporate Club. Other than that, such is the gulf between us and teams in top 2 Divisions south of the border - which is only going to get bigger - and teams from Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the best we can hope for is to qualify for CL and hope that the Groups are loaded in our favour.

 

Thank-* we didn't make him our manager. Cannot stand the guy. That comment he made about us celebrating qualifying was Hunnish, thought he was supposed to be a Tim? Does he not understand the importance of us getting there? *.

 

I can see where Keane is coming from to an extent.

We are Celtic and we should be qualifying for the Champions League every single season. Over the last couple we've played tricky sides but ones that you would expect us to beat. That being said, I think he's wrong about celebrating it, of course we are going to celebrate qualifying for the first time in three years. Of course we are going to celebrate qualifying in Brendans first season (which hasn't been done before). It was a massive relief and he probably doesn't realise that, but he's right in the fact we should be beating those types of sides in qualifying.

I think if anything he is highlighting the size of the club and the fact we should always aim for more. He's probably showing a bit of ignorance but I don't think he is trying to offend anyone.

 

I agree with Keane for the most part, this happy to be here attitude is not one of a huge club, it's the mentality of a Hapoel Beer Sheva making the champions league for the first time.

I accept we will come bottom most likely but our mentality of being in awe of opponents is not somethings we should entertain.

 

I can agree with most of what Keane said, in fairness you could even see his frustration when saying what he said which probably didn't help.

But reading through the lines he is right, with the proper investment and with hiring the right people there is no excuse for falling so suddenly and so quickly after the exploits of the Barca win when it comes to europe to the point when qualifying is a big achievement.

 

Right it is simple we should have kicked * out of them. Stood back like a bunch of fannies playing no contact football!

 

I think to qualify now for us is the aim. Anything after that is a bonus. We couldn't qualify out of the group stage with Larsson, Sutton, Petrov, Lambert, Thompson, Mjallby and Valgaren et al back in the day. Perspective is important, 7-0 is not a nice scoreline but it was Barca not some 2nd rate European team. After the Deila disaster im just happy to be in the top competition again. Give us a chance to build for next season with a few more bucks behind us.

 

There's an element of truth to that.

 

What do you mean by CL quality? Other than Gamboa and De Vries who I haven't seen enough of, I'd consider our team from the other night CL quality. They're unproven but the only one who I'd have doubts over being able to hold his own is Bitton.

 

How can you possibly say that?

Apart from Forrest (who never played), Broony, Lustig and Toure none of our players had ever played in the CL.

 

Roberts, Sinclair, Dembele, Sviatchenko and Tierney. You don't think they're capable of playing in the CL?

 

I don't know mate, they have never played there.

I would hope they can but until you make that step up then it's all guesswork.

 

The main thing I learned or should I say relearned is that Bitton shouldn't play for us again unless he has what the Americans call an attitude adjustment.

Henderson, Rogic, Armstrong and McGregor all should be ahead of him in the pecking order now.

 

Message John Cena he will sort that out