I don't think this changes anything.

Cant agree with the OP.

I appreciate the sentiment, and might even agree with some of it, but this was HUGE kick in the teeth.

It was basically an absolute slap back to the unsavoury reality, for me at least, that Rodgers is severely lacking in Europe. His record in the CL with all three of his sides speaks for itself.

Additionally, despite the apparent love in for Scales, more than a minority on here were justifiably fearful of going into CL games against elite opposition with Liam Scales, Greg Taylor et al.
Those fears were realised too. With again, no investment made in the LB position which has been a constant and neverending farcical issue in Europe.

Money was spent in the summer, but after such a trouncing at the hands of, lets be honest, a sub par Dortmund side, its looking like it was another short change job; STILL no permanent LB solution, Trusty looks suspect, and amazingly no actual * DM to put a * stop to these teams bending over our midfield and pulling our pants down.

It was the usual European * show. Taylor exposed, Cal shoehorned into a role he cant play, defence humiliated, scoreline embarrassing.
As for Rodgers; he simply erased the growing confidence I had in him to be the manager to restore a bit of European pride to this club. He was just as much an embarrassment as the players on the pitch.

Who knows, maybe after a few domestic wins O feel better, but as far as Im concerned Im done with Europe. I wont be looking at any Euro games with any sort of optimism for a long time... Again.

 

It changes a lot. It’s a hammer blow to our confidence and shows everyone else how easily we can be exposed.

We have a manager who thinks that was acceptable and won’t change his tactics. That’s a concern.

 

We have the 2 men capable of playing the outball when we counter , but we don't have the defence to sit and soak up the opposition attack to do that , defence still needs 2 starting quality players.

 

Silver lining

psychologically speaking this is healthy for us. We can’t expect to improve by winning all the time and being thrown in the deep end is an eye opener. This is how each individual player can expose their own weaknesses, sure it would be nice to do this gradually but we don’t have that luxury.
We need this and I’m not even embarrassed by it. I’m more embarrassed by how triumphant I feel after beating Rangers and the teams in our league, let’s embrace the higher level and feel good in the knowledge that no matter what this new format will take us closer to being the best we can be.

 

It's our own fault. Pumping a team 5-1 probably made them take us really seriously. Hopefully that'll dampen the next few teams feelings

 

A "sub par" Dortmund side? 6 of the 11 that started on Wednesday started in the CL final a few months ago. They're a top level side.

 

We have no interest at all in trying to close the huge gap between us and the better European teams. Think we may get out this group, but a humbling against the better sides is becoming way too common. Get no enjoyment whatsoever watching us play Europes bigger sides.

 

I agree with you. I think a lot of the confusion is coming in because defensively they are possibly sub par for an otherwise top team (i.e. UCL finalists, as you say).

From our point of view their defensive inefficiencies aren't relevant because if a team can score 5-going-on-10 against you in the first half it doesn't matter what problems they have in defence. You must become solid against a team like that before you can worry about how you might score, which I think is what ultimately has led to most people's frustration about the other night.

If we had drilled the team on a robust 4-5-1 defensive shell out of possession and limited Dortmund to around 2 goals (a big ask, for sure) I think we would've had a decent chance at getting something because we are more than good enough to get a couple of goals against them.

We really needed Rodgers to show he can do something different in these games. I really despair that we didn't even try.

 

Personally, I really look forward to the next time we play EL. We could go far there with this team.

Skickat från min SM-F926B via Tapatalk

 

I get folk are still hurting/reeling from the result on Tuesday, but utter nonsense like this has been far to regular on here since. Complete bullshit.

Do folk HONESTLY believe that those in charge, the management team and the players go out into CL games for example NOT giving a *?

Have a word with yourselves and leave the moronic ramblings to the shower of mutants along the road...

 

rodgers attitude towards that level of opposition is * ridiculous ,its like he has already decided we have no chance and will just use them as a training excercise .its absurd that instead of coming up with a different gameplan for champions league finalists to try and get something from the game we just batter on the same way as we did against st johnstone .

 

Mate, we could have had prime Maldini and Roberto Carlos in defence and we would still have got pumped. Our defence was horribly exposed against quality players due to our over attacking set up. To blame individual players is harsh imo. I do agree though that we need a quality CDM for games like this.

 

Mate you have become a tiresome happy clapper. How much did we actually spend this summer? How much do we have in the bank? Can you see the disparity? Do you think we are maximising our potential? If you do you want to be having a word with yourself. Actually don’t because you talk pish

 

Oh go on then, I'll play...how exactly have I become a "happy clapper"? Is it because I've highlighted the utter pish you spouted earlier by any chance. Did I hit a nerve?

How much do we have in the bank? Don't actually recall off the top of my head, but what's your point?

Can I see the disparity? Erm, yeah....obviously. Seems like maybe you can't. According to Transfermarket - we spent £33.4m. If you also jump over to Dortmund's page on the same place, you'll see they spent £80m. That's a team who had 6 players from last year's Champions League FINAL starting (inc the £80m worth of signings), also a team who haven't lost in I think 11 or 12 home games in the CL, and a team 3 points off the top of the Bundesliga. Need I continue?????

Did we do ourselves any justice on Tuesday? Absolutely not. I've made plenty of references criticising our approach to the game and the individual performances that were completely disgraceful - strange route to go down if one is indeed a "happy clapper" eh?

 

We spent 33m but we received in more than that though. That’s where the problem lies.

If we keep spending consistently less than what we generate in player sales you won’t improve year on year. That summer window was perfect to spend another 17m or so to bring in 2/3 more first team players and we didn’t do it. Net spend would have only been around 10m as well so it’s not like it would have broken the bank.

A perm LB, winger and better quality CB in addition to the summer signings would have shown real ambition. I’m not saying that would have changed the result against Dortmund but we need to get over the notion he was backed. Rodgers wasn’t backed because we had a net income in transfers.

We can point to breaking our transfer record twice but if you still leave gaping holes in key areas of the team that’s not backing the manager.

 

I get that, but can't agree. Rodgers was definitely backed.

Regardless of whether we received x amount, we STILL spent £33m or thereabouts. That wasn't hinged on us receiving money to then go and spend it. And my self personally, whatever they make is of no concern to me, especially when we're receiving what we got (which bear in mind will most likely be in installements etc, which is the way the fitba world works now). Also got to remember the money we receive doesn't simply go straight into the transfer kitty. I've no idea the ENTIRE running costs of the club and whatnot, but certainly the income we receive from domestic income etc doesn't even cover our heating bills I reckon.

Anyway, yes we've still a fair bit to go to have squad capable of REGULARLY competing againt the big boys, but we've started. The transfer window we addressed KEY areas that were required, but granted yes we still have a few more to see to.

 

We could have spent as much as we could have capably done so and still got spanked on Tuesday, not because the quality of players but because of how we set up.

We can’t afford the level of players to go toe to toe with a Dortmund and we set up in a manner that was designed to say regardless of what our opponents do we will just beat them. It was insanity, I have said it before but we turned up as if we had never seen them play before.

We left ourselves exposed to better players strengths e.g. we gave their front 3 space to run in to on a man to man basis or better in their favour, we let their main playmaker walk around 10 to 20 yards beyond our defensive midfielder. As the inferior team we have to make tweaks to how we play and cannot just turn up and play how we do against domestic opposition.

Would I have liked to see us have spent more, of course but it wouldn’t have made a difference to Tuesday.

 

Exactly.

Hindsight shows the team set up and that suicidal highline had us * from the start.

It'll be interesting to see how Rodgers goes forward in the remaing group games in terms of approach.

Played 2. Won 1. Lost 1.

 

Yeah it really shocked me the way he set up as last year in the CL and in preseason he played more of a middle block and looked to launch the front 3 on counters which despite not having the most defensive minded centre midfielders we have got most of the other elements to do that.

Even more than the high defensive line where we had our midfield 3 was even more of a problem they were all far too high and effectively redundant marking no one and not even high enough to stop their ball players clipping it into Dortmunds front 4.

I genuinely believe we started to believe our own hype that we were a better team than we were and it was an arrogant approach to turn up away to last seasons CL runners up and play like that. It actually made it hard to judge how well Dortmund played as it was so easy for them, a bit like us beating Rangers 3-0 without probably being above a 6 or 7 out of 10.

 

I think the only difference this time round was the general optimism around most fans going into this one. Everything else was as 'normal' as it gets really.

I'm not sure if finally spending more at the summer led to a more ambitious outlook but realistically a striker on the bench from Norwich and a centre half from Shef utd aren't coming in to compete with Dortmund. Engels has looked class but Dortmund has a bench full of 'Engels'. I'm not saying we should spend to compete , it's just levels in the game.

The pretty unique problem celtic and celtic fans have is never quite finding a proper benchmark. From pumping St johnstone, who are probably lower half English league 2 level, to getting battered off champions league finalists, to playing Ross county who may be conference level. It's not really a natural sporting set up and it feels pretty unsatisfying. But it is what it is.