Champions League Dinamo Zagreb V Celtic Tuesday December 10th kick off 5:45 TNT sports 2

No getting away from the fact we were poor but I still don't see us at a level were we go to a place like Zagreb and expect to win, preform better yes..

I'm sure BR looked at this and thought a draw here will leave us needing a win at home against YBB who are infact the worst team in the competition as a decent result. I don't think we played for a draw but certainly not losing would of been top priority.

 

To put into perspective, Feyenoord could win tonight, Juve and Man City draw and I think we could end up sitting 22nd after all results tonight come in.

That I feel mentality wise goes against how this campaign has felt its gone. That puts so much pressure on the remaining two games that I don't think should have been there given the results we had up to Leipzig game. To draw against Brugge and Zagreb, personally I feel, has really dragged us in to a little play off fight

 

When the draw was made I would think people would of taken a 0-0 at Zagreb however, they had key players missing and to be quite honest they were poor. It's a massive 2 points missed. Yes we controlled the game but they had a few chances they could of put away. It was slow and far too negative. We could of taken a lot of pressure off if we had won that. The lack of urgency was concerning especially going into Sunday.

It's like people on here are scared to be negative about Celtic. it doesn't make you any less of a fan if you were disappointed with the result.

 

Leaving Zagreb with a draw wasnt the worst result, especially with no injuries.. we are sitting a point away from getting through. Lets move on to Sunday hh

 

It may have been the Dortmund trauma still haunting BR hence the defensive approach to the game.
On the other hand - the fact than european domestic champions opt to sit deep when playing us at home, means that we might be regaining reputation of being tough opponents also away from home.

 

We're still in a very strong position. Some of the teams we're competing with have 2 tough games left - Brugge have Juve and Man City and Zagreb have Arsenal and Milan for instance.

 

I have the worst feeling we’ll Celtic it for ourselves. Lose to young boys in a disaster class and then play out our skins against Villa and lose 1-0

 

Even with that, we've still a chance to qaulify mon the other teams being more * than us!

 

I was saying to folk last night, I would definitely have taken our current position before the CL started but looking at the table again last night and today, it does feel more and more to me like we should have gone for it in that game. I was over the moon with the draw away at Atalanta, then against Brugges considering how well organised they were I was content with a draw in that game, but I don't think Zagreb were in the same league as them, not last night anyway. Think we could have gone for the kill if we'd played with a bit more belief. At the end when we were passing it about we were obviously settling for the draw. Hopefully doesn't come back to bite us.

 

I’d go as far to say that was pitiful last night.

 

I am feeling a bit like this too, I know Club Brugge were a good side, but come the end of the game we could have edged it and Zagreb was worse last night for me as we were very timid in our approach.

I actually feel a bit better about it all now, having looked in detail at everyone’s remaining fixtures. I had it in my head say we got a win in one of those games we would be two points better off and a win against Young Boys and sneak a point at Villa you never know we could have made top 8 on 15. The reality is even if we had won both those games been on 13 and beat Young Boys we will still probably need to beat Villa away to make top 8 as 16 or 17 points looks set to miss out.

All of Liverpool, Dortmund, Arsenal, Inter, Atletico Madrid, Milan, Barcelona, and Bayern are well on track to get 18 or more points given the fixtures they have left. Villa could exceed that too with two wins.

Even 9th to 16th it looks like you would need 14 points to come 16th. To put that in perspective if Atalanta beat Sturm Graz at home which but get beat by Barcelona away they will only finish on 14 points and they were getting talked about as being one of the hottest teams in Europe until last night.

Make no doubt about it last night was poor and an opportunity missed. However come January 22nd we still have a very good chance of finishing between 18th to 21st with a home win against one of the bottom two sides in the league, with a game to spare.

The reality is good draw or not, based on seeding Celtic shouldn’t qualify so if we do it has to be viewed as good progress.

Plus if we win that one game it could worth as much as £7m to the club and 3.5 coefficient points taking our total for the season to 16.5, which is only been bettered by the season they got to a Europa league final with 19. However, that was across 19 games not 8.

Win that one game and we will likely have made around £38.2 from CL income and a further £13.8m in ticket sales, so brought in around £52m from CL alone, which would be £12-13m more than last year.

Putting that into context that is more than 1.5x what you would get for reaching a Europa League final including ticket sales.

 

I totally agree. That fact that we have gone there and they have sat off us and defended as if this was a regular spfl game shows just how much progress we have made from a reputation standpoint. Now from our own standpoint I think your right as well that for all the progress we have made and we clearly have done so significantly we still have some trauma to get over away from home not just from the Dortmund game but with away results in the Champions League over a fair number of years. So clearly work to be done in that regard away from home but at the same time it looks like we are indeed making progress.

 

We were all disappointed with last nite in the way we.played, I know I was. But.we got a point where we would lost that game last couple years. We could have.played better and got something from the game but we didn't, and so it goes. We have been terrible away from home in recent years and I believe we were gonna settle for a draw last nite so we got a point and that sets us up for a good game against young boys and we will get 3 points from that and qualify.

 

Was as if we were conserving energy for the weekend, quite bizarre really how we never really tried to do anything and looked like we were just running down the clock in possession for an entire game.