Celtic v HJK Helsinki - Wed, 1 Aug K/O 19.45 - Live on Premier Sports.

I'll put my two cents in even though everything has probably already been said.

- No relevance in pointing out HJK's success last season (the Schalke win and unprecendented league success). It was a top squad, but all the top players were sold. Three to Bundesliga (Pukki, Ring, Dawda Bah), Rafinha to Belgium's Gent and Juhani Ojala to BSC Young Boys. This year's team is completely different.

- No relevance in pointing out HJK's poor record in this season's Veikkausliiga. The results have been rather poor. The big weaknesses in the early season were in defense and midfield. However, the midfield issue is now in the past as HJK signed Mika Väyrynen, who is easily one of the most top-profile players that has ever played in the Finnish league. Almost 60 matches in the Finnish national team, almost 200 matches in Eredivisie. Mika Väyrynen makes such a huge difference, that HJK now is not the same as HJK say three weeks ago.

- HJK will probably play 4-4-2, as this has been the formation for as long as I can remember and I don't see Antti "Mourinho" Muurinen changing his recipe now.

- Celtic was considered the second best choice from the possible opponents. Only Zilina was considered easier and Partizan, Zagreb and especially Basel were considered much more difficult than Celtic. Many people have pointed out poor results of Scottish teams in the European cups (for example Malmö - Rangers last season), the on-going crisis of Scottish football, the hugely fallen quality of Scottish football (both Celtic's and Scotland's UEFA ranking has fallen dramatically over the years), the huge pressure faced by Celtic, the poor pre-season results of them etc. HJK is in the middle of their season and the artificial turf on their home stadium is the key to HJK's home advantage, which has been claimed is one of the strongest in Europe. All in all, in Finland it's widely thought that this is the best chance for a Finnish team to make it to the group stage of either competition in a very long time, perhaps ever... (HJK made it to the 1998-99 Champions League group stage by miraculously winning Metz, but that's a different story).

- Defense is HJK's Achilles' heel. Especially the right-back position is a huge problem and something that Celtic should try to utilize. Goalkeeping has also been criticized as Ville Wallén is a quality keeper in Finland but has been struggling in euro games.

Some players to watch out for besides Väyrynen:

- Demba Savage. A Gambian international, who was unusually purchased by HJK earlier this year from another Finnish club. There have only been a few cases in the history of the Finnish league, where a Finnish club has paid money to another Finnish club for a player. Savage is a powerful player and easily one of the league's top players. Six games for the Gambian national team and is a regular there now.

- Joel Pohjanpalo. Has been mentioned a million times, but one thing I'd like to point out is his skill to score goals from very difficult positions. Especially his heading and the way he is able to use force behind his heading is something you're more used to seeing in the Champions League quarterfinals than in the Finnish league. Pohjanpalo allegedly already had a chance to join Liverpool, but wanted to finish the season in Finland.

- Juho Mäkelä. A top striker in the Finnish league (3x top scorer) but hasn't really been able to keep it up on a higher level. His stints abroad or in the national team haven't been succesful and rarely has he been particularly good in the CL and EL qualifiers either. However, right now things are going very well for Mäkelä, he is full of confidence and if everything goes well, he will be able to cause a lot of problems for the Celtic defense.

- Berat Sadik. "A poor man's Zlatan", who was heavily linked to Israeli giants Maccabi Haifa before his injury in the spring. The away leg in Rekjavik was his first full match in months, and he scored a goal. Sometimes a bit selfish, which might be a problem.

- Coach Antti "Sexy Football" Muurinen likes to play attacking football and he is not afraid to do so against big opponents like Schalke, Zagreb, Celtic or Partizan. Sometimes it might be risky, but when Muurinen gets his "* carousel" up and running, there's no way to stop it.

I would say Celtic is a 70-30 favorite. 0,1,2-0,1 in the first leg and HJK has every chance to send Celtic out.

 

I love how they keep mentioning there astro turf stuff as an advantage, yet the only away ground we've done good on was astro turf and as for Celtic being one of the teams they wanted to play as we would be "easy" i think we should smash them a new hole.

 

kiefer

Welcome to this forum and thanks for stating your opinion, much appreciated I assure you.

I understand why you would see us as one of the weaker teams, as sad as that is for us Celtic fans, but I still believe that with the right signings...I won't bore you with that. From our point of view, I'd say that you should be wary of set piece deliveries from a defender of ours called Charlie Mulgrew, the skill and direct play of a winger called James Forrest, the inconsistent but always dangerous Georgios Samaras linking between midfield and attack and finally our top scorer and most dangerous striker Gary Hooper.

 

what does everyone reckon the attendance will be like?

 

52k ish

 

If this mob underestimate us, as well as come to Paradise and play 4-4-2, then we're laughing.

 

As it's free on the season ticket, we should aim for atleast 50,000.

 

Yeh Frank.

Lenny said they are good on the wings so i went for Wanyama over Forrest.

Commons behind Hooper has worked well when we have played that system before, also with Sammy coming in when he can.

 

Thanks, I know all these players and have seen maybe five matches from Celtic in the last few years, as I've been following Finnish players in Scotland (Peter Enckelman in St. Johnstone, Lauri Dalla Valle in Dundee United, Mäkelä etc.).

And for the other folks, I never said Celtic would be "easy". Certainly you are huge favorites here, but those sneaky Eastern Europeans would've been much more difficult for us. And Basel currently simply has much more quality than Celtic and would've been the impossible one in the lot for us.

Sonera Stadium in Helsinki will be sold out. Looks like around 70% of the tickets will be sold already before Friday for the season ticket holders, and the rest will probably go within minutes on Friday when they go on sale for us normal folks. One thing you can be proud of, Celtic was certainly the most media sexy of our possible opponents.

Now I'm off to Turku to see FC Inter play against Twente in a few hours in the Europa League. First fixture in the Netherlands ended in a 1-1 draw, so with a 0-0 result Inter will send the Dutch out. HJK is not the only team from Finland with quality.

edit: Also, as you should now, the 4-4-2 stratege has many variations. In the end it is just a number. The kind that HJK usually applies is not entirely the same "old-school" 4-4-2 that you are used to in Scotland and lower levels of English football.

 

I just worked out from the ticket site that 44341 people have tickets for the game (including season tickets) so i reckon we'll get about 50k probably

 

kiefer

About as much chance as Finland qualifying for the 2014 World Cup

[Wait a second, I'm Scottish! Oh well, I have lost credibility here haha]

 

Didn't know that. Full house so

 

Hehe, I like your confidence, but I think HJK has "slightly" higher chances than Finland in this case. Outplaying Celtic in two fixtures sounds a bit easier, to be honest, than topping a qualifying group with Spain, France, Belarus and Georgia.

 

I was joking my friend but indeed our respective nations have a lot of work to do for the future altho the expansion of European championships from 16 teams to 24 teams will help.

 

Think yous are all over estimating the attendance id guess about 35-38,000. A lot of fans from further away might not travel for it since its midweek, a lot of others, probably several thousand will be on holiday, I know atleast 11 season ticket holders who are going to miss it as they wont be back for it.

 

Sure, just wasn't sure if you were aware of Finland's qualifying group. Talk about bad luck... Scotland seems to have a decent group, at least no big fish in there but very tough smaller countries. Finland's official goal is to make it to the mentioned 2016 EC, this is only build-up for that one.

So it wouldn't be complete off-topic, Bet at home has these odds for the first match: 1,35 - 4,50 - 7,25

 

We have a tough group for qualification for 2014 World Cup. Croatia, Serbia and Belgium are all teams I'd say are tough to beat and even our bottom seeds Wales have improved majorly with players like Gareth Bale, Craig Bellamy and Aaron Ramsey in the team.

Are you behind Mixu as Finland national manager?

 

This going to be on TV?

 

TV coverage has not been confirmed either way mate so for all that can make it, head along to Paradise and cheer on the bhoys.

 

That's true, Croatia is always tough, Belgium will be huge in five years and Serbia wants to save their face after their horrible 2012 campaign in which they even lost to our dear neighbours in Estonia.

Mixu has been doing good work with the generation change and has brought many promising players to the national team (for example he took Alexander Ring to squad when he still played in Finland, and soon after he went to Mönchengladbach), and leaving some of the veterans out at last (*cough* Mikael Forssell *cough*).

Then again he is desperately fixated on the 4-3-2-1 formation (called "the christmas tree" in Finland) which is a bit problematic since it requires a lot from the full-backs. Right now we have one quality full-back, Jukka Raitala who just joined Heerenveen and one * promising one, Jere Uronen who just turned 18 but already plays in the Swedish champions Helsingborg. Still I'm not sure if this is the best formation for us. Also, Mixu likes to include players from his ex-squad TPS in the national team and usually they have been *.

Then again, some good results (we beat Turkey 3-2 in May) recently and I'm quite positive about our future!