Celtic in the UEFA Champions League 2024-25

A big part of it also is probably just the travelling and the time spent "on the road" away from your family.

Like since the hun game it would be interesting to know how many times players have actually slept in their own bed, especially the guys on International duty.

Like Bernardo might only have been in his own house about 5 times in a month and then over the next couple of weeks might only be once or twice again.

That isn't even including days off either, might only have 2/3 actual free days off training over a 6 week period in this current spell.

Our players are mostly used to this type of schedule though but for Kilmarnock and Hearts or that a pre-season rolling over into full mid week and weekend games and travelling they're not usually used to it.

Engels for example he'll feel like he's been caught up in a whirlwind since he joined.

 

Bayern should be down to 10 men here. Watkins was through and he meant to take him down, not even a foul gave.

 

Its hard to adapt to European football when we play in the SPL every week. Have we adapted since PSG give us the same result? We've been successful in our own bubble but we'll get brought back to earth every time.
There is always opportunity when you take a loss like this and we have to be honest about where we are at compared to our opponents. This isn't too hard to take with that considered.
Do we need to change our approach and try to defend? Personally I don't think so because we have not got the players or the practice every week.

 

If that was us 1 v 1 like Upamecano was there and Trusty/Scales/CCV had a "coming together" with Watkins you can 100% be certain we'd get a red card. Big teams get the decisions.

 

Our hymn sheet at Villa could be fun, especially if William is there..

 

Celtic team’s of the past with far less ability have performed and got better results in Europe than the current squad has under Ange and now Rodgers.

It all comes to game plan. Yes we set up to play high pressing, attacking football domestically and that works for us but that simply won’t cut it at the highest level when you’re playing teams like Dortmund, Real and Atletico.

I can’t accept that we NEED to play that way because that’s how we train and play every week. It’s complete naivety and I wouldn’t argue with anyone who calls it stupidity or arrogance. The manager and players have enough knowledge and ability to be tactically versatile and they have plenty time on the training ground to drill shape and structure.

I really hope that McGregor has a word with Rodgers. He was completely exposed last night playing that system as were his team mates. He’s a leader and needs to speak up. He must feel strongly that we can’t go into future games with the mindset of going toe to toe with elite teams.

I’d like to see us set up something like this for Atalanta away…

Schmeichel

Trusty CCV Scales

Johnston McGregor Engels Valle
Hatate

Maeda Idah ​

Johnston and Valle tucking in when defending and being really compact across 18 yard box.

Idah and Maeda would give us two great out ball options - physicality and pace. Kyogo is great but never touched the ball last night.

Trusty was terrible last night but I’ll give him the benefit of doubt and hope he gets better.

 

Also players looking forward to Europe, and playing within themselves, maybe not fully committing to a 50/50 on Saturday incase they can’t have that European experience which is something that’s going to be rare in a career for guys playing for teams not quite used to Europe year in, year out. Hearts team should be getting used to it now, they also had a shockingly naive inexperienced manager overly relying on a star player, which worked for a good while to keep him in a job.

 

1 nil Villa. We're getting horsed against them.

VAR decision offside

 

nae luck villa , have bayern on my coupon

 

Realistically, we need to be targeting the home game against Club Brugge, the away game against Zagreb and the home game against Young Boys.

Young Boys have been awful in every competition they've played in this season. Club Brugge are more than beatable at Celtic Park. Zagreb don't look particularly great against Monaco, passing the ball out of play under no pressure.

Those teams are more our level and we should be going for three points in all of them. They will be as well.

 

It’s unpopular to praise him on here but Neil Lennon’s approach to Europe for me is the way to go, there’s a level of pragmatism that’s needed to attack and be dangerous going forward as well. And it’s just acknowledgment of not even the gap in quality between us and the likes of Dortmund, it’s just adapting that they aren’t like the team we faced on the weekend. What did we do different between St Johnstone on the weekend, to Dortmund midweek? * nothing.

 

Very interesting game so far. Bayern should be down to 10 men here. Ollie Watkins is a * terror btw.

 

Lennon does speak a lot of sense, but he needs to go and remember his own history as a Celtic manager in Europe.

Some of the most disgraceful performances and results from us on the continent came under him. Against lesser opponents too, I should add.

 

The knockout tie against Copenhagen is one we all have scar tissue from.

 

Leipzig beating Juve too

 

Lesser opponents on the continent was his bigger issue, but his approach when he had good players he could trust to use properly, and results that were had against the teams that it was unexpected from our first away win in the CL against Spartak, Barca inbetween and him coming back beating Lazio home and away. That sort of approach is what I mean. It’s the respecting of an opponent that by most standards we can’t oppose our game on them like we do every week domestically, adapt to that and use the qualities we have to punish teams.

But, I will point out the best adapted CL team we had, 2012 under Lenny… that team was poor domestically by our standards, it was more suited to the European stage. More physical, defensive, counter attacking and built to punish teams clinically rather than dominate. We had the time to play that week in week out in the league as well so we’d be natural at it in Europe. It didn’t make good viewing but.

Right now though, we make no attempt at changing for Europe. If we’re a better team I think we will win, like Young Boys and Club Brugge I think that’ll happen. But it’s the punching up as underdogs, we don’t alter it to acknowledge that we’re underdogs, and try to do what we’ll do against domestic opponents.

We need a balance.

 

Sion.
Legia.
Cluj
Ferencvaros
Sparta Prague

* it, no even gonna think about the rest, I'm starting to hate Lennon again...

 

Barca and Lazio were magnificent and will live long in my memory, no question about it.

Thems is the highlights though, the rest are * boke-inducing even at the thought.

 

Be lucky to get a point over next two games to be honest. I remember the last time we played Leipzig at home thinking we could get points and they swatted us aside.

Need to hope for Leipzig at home we have a full strength team to pick from if we are to have any chance of picking up points.

I think we need a point from next two games too. In the four games after we are hanging our hats on the 3 games before Villa and there’s another performance like last night in us. We need to try and pick up points early on to reduce the pressure on the games we can compete in.

 

The way Villa are containing Bayern and trying to hit them on the counter is what we need to do in Europe against the better teams.