[Official TC Thread] PSG v CELTIC, UCL, Wed 22/11/17, 1945, BT Sport 3

I think if you care to read what others are saying no attention at all has been taken away from some of our bad defending, we are all well aware of that and have been mentioning it consistently.

Most fully agree with the lack of investment that you bring up, the key thing is quite how much is actually available to Brendan to strengthen, the point is that however much it is is only going to be a small fraction of what that mob last are spending and no matter how much you or I kid ourselves that is the reason why they will swat Celtic and 95% of teams in this tournament like flies, if we somehow got a 20 million CB from somewhere my hunch is the difference it would make would be minimal, a sad statement to make but Ive personally accepted the CL as it stands at the moment is as far from a level playing field its ever been and my hunch is that will only widen

 

if we spent £400 million on defenders and defended like that it would have been the same outcome.good players will play well and tear you to bits if you let them.playing a team with the players they have is always going to be difficult but being sloppy giving the ball away cheaply, not picking up men allowing them to * as many balls into box as they like, leaves it far too easy for the opposition regardless of what they spent

 

PSG will turn over better teams than us over the season.

We will learn from this. The experience gained for guys like tierney, McGregor and rogic will be invaluable. Dembeles added a couple mill to his price tag.

yeah, its a bit of a sore one to lose so emphatically, but that psg team will do that to better teams that us. *, arsenal lost, what was it, 10-2? on aggregate to Bayern last year.

some folk, like my dad, have really unrealistic expectations when it comes to us competing in europe nowadays.

the landscape of football has changed dramatically the last few seasons. We're lucky just to be in the group stages in my opinion. And punching above our weight considering our pot. If we somehow manage to get into pot 3 or have a bit of luck with regards to the group stage draw, we will def fare better.

when the draw was made, I would've bitten your hand off for 3rd place. We're in driving seat for that and as long as we don't lose by more than 3 goals vs Anderlecht we will be continuing our European education and hopefully progress at least one round after Christmas.

I don't see many teams winning 3 qualifying rounds, entering champs league group stage then continuing in Europa after Christmas. Is there any on course like we are? Not checked but not many teams need to play 3 qualifiers like us anyway.

hail hail

 

Uefa has ruined European football over the last 20 years and allowing the big clubs to get richer and this what happens now not just to Celtic but to other teams as well .
But also the problem is a manager who wont change his style when we come up against these kinds of super rich teams .

 

The problem is a manager about to take us into Europe after Christmas...

 

Qarabag and maribor played 3 qualifiers they're both outta Europe altogether and can't qualify for the Europa

 

Agree with most of this but I think we do actually need to learn how to get numbers behind the ball and keep the score down in games like that.
I really don’t see what the team would learn from that last night. We played that way against them at home, got a hammering, then played exactly the same way last night with a similar outcome.
Delighted with the progress Brendan is making domestically and Anderlecht away was impressive but we need more pragmatism against teams who are way better than us.

 

If you can’t see the bigger picture of what Rogers is trying to do then so be it but he is trying to install a confidence and self belief to play your own game no matter who the opponent is and believe you can compete. This doesn’t happen overnight but if you look at the best bits of our play last night (however scarce) we were superb in patches and that is progress.

We could have went all defensive and negative, get a doing and learn nothing. Last night they learned that offensively they can compete when they are on their A game so take the positives.

Bottom line is Brendan Rogers has loftier ambitions than a lot of you and he has his eyes on those goals so cut him some slack and let him him a foooookin good go at it.

 

....and their players make these types of error you mention far less frequently than ours, thats why PSG paid tens or hundreds of millions for them and ours only cost one or two million....quite simple really

When players who play for us get to a level where they barely make a mistake e.g Van Dijk...they are whisked off by the likes of PSG....its cruel but it regretably what football at this level is at right now

 

There is plenty to learn from playing defensive football don't know where this notion that we won't learn anything comes from does nobody of this opinion think we will need to set up defensively next year again if we get into the champions league or in the Europa league this season

We are playing at the pinicle of world football you have to get the basics right to have any chance ,track runners ,mark men ,anticipate what's gonna happen stop crosses etc and you don't have to be a £10 or £100 million player to do that. if the £100 million player does something truly amazing to affect the game then there is * all you can do about it you can't just gift chances to teams like that then say oh well they spent £x millions

 

Those two teams were nowhere near as relentless in an attacking sense as PSG. AC Milan were a world class unit but were never in danger of scoring more than three against anyone.

Barcelona were arguably the best team ever to play the game as an all round unit but preferred to keep the ball to tire teams out before punishing them.

PSG were far more direct than that last night, I’ve never seen anything like it. They were knocking the ball about like Barca of 2011, combined with the directness of Real Madrid at their best.

What people are struggling to understand is that the way Lennon and Strachan set their teams up, we were making no long term progression. Hump the ball up to Samaras and try and get a corner out of it. Then we play a team we should be beating like Sion or Copenhagen and we’re all out of ideas.

People also struggle to grasp how much football has changed in the last 10 years. You used to have world class players spread around several clubs. Now you have five or six teams in which every player is world class. Unfortunately for us, PSG are one of those teams.

 

Or more to the point how much the fortunes of certain teams have changed. Billions from Russia and the Middle East have changed the game completely

Ten years ago ( 2006-7) PSG and Man City were 15th and 14th in their respective Leagues. Then Qatari / Saudi Petro money started to pour in ( blatantly ignoring the Financial Fair Play rules ).

PSG have spent close to a billion euros and were fined 40 million ( with half of that suspended ! - suspended fines ? that's a good idea )

Great way to "wash" your dosh and in a safe "foreign" haven.

 

Like waking up with a fat bird after a night out....Never happened and move on!

 

Great post - Astana might qualify from europa league and we stuck 5 past them, we are a decent European team capable of beating other decent European teams on our day, I fully expect to go into europa league and compete and potentially reach the latter stages

PSG are the best football team in the world but we need to remember the progression we have made over the last few years (Molde, Maribor , Legia Warsaw) we are still on the way up and good times in Europe will come

 

Jesus you make playing football at the top level sound so easy and a doddle to fathom, Im starting to think that I wrote myself off to young and might make a comeback at 50, just get myself fit and stop the likes of Ronaldo and Daniel Alves getting in their crosses and generally "anticipate whats going to happen".... 100k a week here I come!

 

The Financial Fair Play rule seems to have just disappeared off the rule book the year after they suspended Man City from briefly making transfers, knowing UEFA its not hard to work out the probable reason they all of a sudden dropped the whole issue, just a question of what offshore account the money went into to make it all go away....UEFA Mafia....surely not

 

Don't mind losing to PSg mate, really enjoyed the Bayern game beaten by better team in end but matched them and played like a champions league team , we've got to champions league stages twice. Ow look like going for Europa league and could do ok, unbeaten domestic run is phenomenal, but as someone pointed out earlier, in last 16 not so long ago took teams like barca Man U Milan juventus beat them at home, we had always got a poor away record in champions league but lost by 1 or 2 3 at most., against barca, PSg twice both great teams but every single break away could have been a goal and we're lucky not to have lost by double figures so guys only human got so many redeeming qualities and a love Brendan but could be doing with a different approach to those matches and a few new signings to toughen up the defence

 

Thought it was a disgraceful performance in all honesty. Don’t care how much their team cost we shouldn’t be getting beat by 6 goals by anyone.

 

i know im a bit late to the party but for me our midfield, mainly brown got it all wrong. PSG kept dropping between the lines making it easier to expose our CBs or play one touch football around them.

also i have to save PSGs finishing was on point, every shot was in the corner. ive never seen a teams finishing that good but like i said we made it easy by exposing our CBs with no protection from midfield

 

iceland have a population of 335,000,

Iceland has 335,000 population 1 big name the lad who plays for Everton from Swansea and he's been pish, got to euros quarter finals, pumping the mighty England , kept Ronaldo out in euros, won their World Cup qualifying group with Croatia who have modric, rakatic, manzukic, Ukraine and Turkey cause they know they can't go toe to toe with these teams, so play to their strengths as a well drilled unit and get job done ,
Without any excuses