Champions League Lazio v Celtic Tuesday November 28th kick off 5:45 TNT Sports 1

That's what I thought watching on TV aswell, didn't want to outright say "hiding" incase it came across as overly harsh but it's the first thing that came to mind.

 

Why is this season the year to 'make a mark' rather than next? We don't have a settled team at all, quite the opposite - 9 new signings and half of them have barely featured. Jota leaving unexpectedly too. We won't have any qualifiers next season either.

 

Unfortunately yes, and just to rub a bucket of salt into that open, gaping, festering wound we have managed to bag ourselves a billionaire owner who actually takes money out the club every year by taking his pref share dividends in cash (and not shares as most others do).......

 

The following clubs in the CL have smaller or comparable revenues to Celtic (all are doing better than us - not hard), most will make Europa and one or two may make ast 16: Lens, Copenhagen, Young Boys, Union Berlin, PSV & Feyenoord.

A special mention to Braga (who also humped us in a CL qually years back - who hasn't I hear you say?) whose income at €25m is <20% of Celtic's are in a group with Real and Napoli but yet have a chance of last 16 and are more or less cerain of 3rd. Who on here thinks we'd beat Braga over a 2 legged tie? Not me.

Conclusion: you don't need to be PSG, City or Real to be competitive in the CL. We punch way below our weight and if our resources are efficiently deployed we do not need to be the habitual, perennial embarrassment we have become in this competition.

 

We had a team at the end of last season that was a settled team. We only get a 2/3 seasons out a team. We will undoubtedly lose players in the summer in my opinion. Our recruitment was also that poor in the summer, that we are going to need to bring in loads again between now and the end of next summer. We were in a great position at the start of the summer. A better position than we find ourselves now. Which is an incredible feat to accomplish for our board, but they have managed it.

 

Shakhtar are doing great as well.

 

I think our problem is we go for quantity rather than quality
Our squads are always too many
Of course the counter balance would be when we get loads of injuries what do we do then ? But we still play the many lower quality players which mean we still lose
Watching other teams in this years competition they seem to have the confidence to blood younger players much earlier and more regularly than we do

I’m a RB Salzburg ST holder and they never seem concerned blooding a raft of 19/20 year old players

But their model is get them in straight out to their “ feeder team” and then they all seem to be ready for the 1st team in one season
We all think the standard is poor during league games, but they do better in Europe than we seem to be able to do ( last home game there was under 8000 in the stadium) So money isn’t everything

 

I think you are spot on here. See in our league where we have resources so far beyond what our competition do should we really have a first team third choice right centre back or full back or right winger or should we have an academy/ b team player that we put in?

Like see this season how bad would it be when we can field a fairly normal starting line up having say a Frame in at left back or Vata/ one of them that want to be there on the right wing, or Kelly in at centre mid with McGregor and O’Riley. Would they be any worse than playing/ signing guys like Yang, Tilio or Kwon?

In time we should properly resource that youth team but at the moment surely it’s not beyond us to play just one of those in a game? It would bring on talented guys no ends.

 

Exactly. In a team of eleven, blooding a promising up and coming youngster in games that lets be honest, we are all surprised when we dont win, should be a priority.

It seems perfectly acceptable to some that when BR says we will learn from theses games, unfortunately the individual players learn, and take advantage of it elsewhere.

Its high time we treat our own up and coming youth players the same as the ones we dont seem to have a problem with buying from esewhere, and giving them the chances. Otherwise why have a youth set up in the first place.

The way we treated Ajer to me is the way forward.

By all means sign those players and immediately send them out on loan to trusted partner teams and have them first team ready on their return.

The standard I watch week in week out in the Bundesliga here in Austria isnt the best, so * knows what standard our loanees are playing at in our second tier. If they are even being monitored at all by Celtic.

100% Vata should have at least have been in and around our first team this season and getting game time. Other teams trust them, so why not ours. By the way the RB Salzburg average age in the game against Inter was 23, the so called youngest ever in the CL.

I read recently, that theyve made over 500million in transfer income over the last ten years.