Champions League Atalanta V Celtic Wednesday October 23 kick off 5:45 TNT Sports 4

I have watched most of their games and what scares me is that while they may be off to a slow start compared to the last couple of seasons their strength is going forward. Lookman and Retegui are a really scary duo up top in particular. Pasalic in midfield is very good as well. On the positive side they tend to have a very strong left wing culture among their support so supporter wise our fans who go over their should get on well with the locals.

 

Excellent everything shaping up nicely so. * me their forward line against us probably without CCV and no holding mid is bad enough without this guy as ref.

 

Trusty and Scales have played together in our last four games and conceded 10 goals, *

 

I’ll only catch the 1st half. Something tells me neither of us will be gutted about not getting to see the full match!

 

Champions League III: Atalanta BC

Match Preview: https://www.talkceltic.net/forums/threads/champions-league-iii-atalanta-bc.157115/

 

Fully expecting us to be horsed rotten. We are nowhere near CL level and this team can be elite on their day. The Europa final last season was a complete masterclass against the form team in World football. I'll honestly take anything 5 or under.

 

It's a sad indictment everyone was is dreading this one.. we should be relishing this type of challenge..

Down to Rodgers and the players to change that by putting in a credible, competitive performance.

 

What do you class as CL level? Just curious because this phrase gets brought up a lot, but when you look at the teams in the competition, I’d say we are on par if not better than roughly a quarter of them.

 

I think what's really interesting about this game is that it's an immediate chance to see if Rodgers has genuinely learned anything.

I feel like when you only have one or two games like these every year it can be easy to get caught up in the "we've improved so we can give it a good go" mentality.

This game comes just several weeks after Dortmund and we evidently haven't improved within those 3 weeks. If anything we've gotten worse. So it's about seeing how the manager changes things tactically, which I think he will even if he's saying he won't.

Absolutely no way, I would like to think, he makes the exact same mistakes in Italy that he made in Dortmund. If he does, there's major questions to ask about his sanity never mind his tactical awareness

 

3-1 to the home side. Stats back this up unfortunately and the stats are horrendous from our perspective

Their injury list and domestic record this season can be exploited but we said that about Dortmund.

 

Can’t see a positive result in Europe without vickers at the back tbh, it’s plainly obvious even at SPFL level never mind away in Europe. Big man breeds confidence through the full team… hope I’m wrong of course

 

I think we will only know this after the league format is finished.

 

I hope the bhoys packed their lube.

 

It is hard to define, but I mean a team that has the experience, physicality, technicality and tactical nous to not be overwhelmed against the top teams.

That list of teams is probably quite small, but an overall word I would use to describe CL level is Intensity. You have to be able to match your opponents physicality and even more importantly mental intensity (toughness). We switch off in defence constantly - even domestically, so in the CL we are literally cannon fodder against the more switched on teams.