Champions League Dortmund V Celtic Tuesday October 1st kick off 8PM TNT Sports

I actually don’t think we need a major inquisition for last night and I’m not going to start blaming any players.

The tactics last night left us woefully exposed. There’s refusing to sit back and absorb pressure, then there’s trying to press them all the way to their keeper.

Suicidal tactics.

To start the game like that is one thing but to persist with it after the first 5 minutes was inexplicable

For me it’s a total lack of respect. Lack of respect for Dortmund, lack of respect for our players limitations and lack of respect for us.

 

What we learned from this IMO is that we must try to keep our midfielders/attackers, and invest Heavily defensively in January/summer window. Heavily.

Its okey to lose, but this was embarrassing.

 

The last thing I said was the manager and players better be thinking about it.
I try to be positive. I think there was a perfect storm last night. They are a top CL team playing at home. They've had a few dodgy results recently and we have been spanking teams so they would have thought we could be dangerous opponents and were very much up for the game and out to prove a point. We have been scoring goals for fun and hammering teams and I think if anything we were complacent when we needed them to be. We have a lot of inexperienced players at this level.
This is hopefully a blip on a journey to better European performances that I think will happen this season.
Results like this will still happen even if we have improved because we'll never compete with the very best CL teams. As a comparison we beat Dundee 7-1 last year but they finished top 6 and thought they had a successful season. If we can win our home games and qualify for the knockout rounds this result will be forgotten.
I don't think the tactics mattered that much, it was the attitude of both sets of players and Rodgers himself (he was talking us up too much)and the gulf in quality. If we'd played defensively we'd still have lost heavily - maybe by more as we'd rarely have got out of our own half.

 

The manager bleats on about “mentality”. Last night it was missing in abundance. A lot of players who hid and gave up.

 

Never went in the Hun thread, you check can what people post in certain threads and your name popped up many tines in the Hun thread. Don't say you don't care about the Huns when you talk about them in "Hun chat"

 

I don’t think there are many in the team that didn’t totally panic and fail last night. First half possibly Scales, Kyogo (never got a kick so hard to blame him) and Maeda possibly for the first half an hour but then he was majorly at fault for their third and fifth goals.

It was just a really * performance is the best way I can put it, really lacking in character and all to familiar at that level againt top class opposition. There has been. A lot of talk recently about the number of leaders in our team but no one on that park showed any leadership last night in a green and white shirt.

I agree with people talking about the statements about learning, we don’t seem to do so. The most disappointing thing for me is the attitude shown to doing the basics, nothing world class the pure basics of defending.

- Goal 1 - Engels should bring the boy down on half way; then when McGregor goes to challenge Gittens if Trusty steps across to his right that ball rolls through to Schmeichel as he would have simply blocked him off.
- Goal 2 - Trusty is favourite for the ball make sure he isn’t getting round you as easy. There is a bit of bad fortune as if it doesn’t hit Trusty it is going miles wide.
- Goal 3 - Maeda is favourite but for some reason pulls out the challenge go and take the ball there.
- Goal 4 is a weak challenge from Engels, just stand up to the man.
- Goal 5 simply clear your lines Maeda or control the ball
- Goal 6 actually is probably the only one where their player does something skillful to make space for himself but still comes from simply giving the ball away.
- Goal 7 Trusty should block that shot but before that get the ball up the park don’t chip it just outside your box we are 6-1 down.

Some cracking finishes on 3 or 4 of the goals but literally only goal number 6 involved their player actually having to properly do something to go past a player. It’s not even as if any of them are great passing interplay or moves it is largely down to * poor application.

To contradict my last point on what’s the point of qualifying for the playoff round, to show any signs of progress they need to show they can get wins against the likes of Dinamo Zagreb and Young Boys as an absolute minimum as that would show they at least have the bottle to win a playoff level qualifier, as that will likely be the standard of opponent. Brugge will be the big test for me they are probably in European terms about the level we need to aspire to be as a next step.

The other three games I expect us to be competitive in not shipping 4-7 goals a game, we will likely struggle particularly in the two away fixtures but Leipzig are a team built very similar to that Dortmund side we just played, loaded up top with pace and top players like Sesko, Openda, Xavi Simmons, Nusa and Baumgartner backed up with physical talented players throughout the rest of their team. If we don’t adapt even just make ourselves a bit harder to play against we will get trounced again.

 

As I said in other thread he's refusing to change his style of play. Expecting at least another 8 goals shipped in the next two games. He's already traumatised some of those players and that sort of * sticks. Soon as they conceded one goal the trauma will kick in

 

I didn't mind so much us starting the game with our usual tactics however, even a blind man could see that our high press type game was getting ripped to shreds by Dortmund after the first 15 mins and our manager should have made the changes there and then. His first task should have been to stop our midget LB from getting caught up the fecking park so fecking often. Lost count the number of times Dortmund fired balls to that side of the pitch to their player as they had to much time and space there due to Taylor being so far up the park.

 

I don’t think Villa can or will do that to us. They are a bit more calculated in the way they play, Dortmund were just ruthless.

Villa will be hard but more of a chess match.

 

Nip in to see who is getting the blame