What we learn from tonight

We could invest 100 million and we still would have got beat last night.

The only way we can grow as a club is to qualify for the CL year after year.

If that means some short term pain like last night for long term gain of posting healthier balance sheets and investing more in the playing side* then so be it.

Rome wasn't built in a day.

*nae sniggering at the back...

 

The £30m that allows us to invest in the team is a very big point.

Balls in Pedro's court with that.

 

Talking of fouls, Barca aren't shy when it comes to preventing a counter. At least 4 times they stopped us like that. Broony nearly had a square go with Rakitic when he did it.

Not that it affected the result. Just never noticed it before.

Btw Broony needs to stay away from Neymar in the home tie ffs :smiley-laughing002:

 

Problem is when we qualified under Lenny and did well we just sold our best players and attempted to replace them with cheaper ones. We didn't exactly see the benefit of qualifying and raking in the cash two years in a row.

We could get humped this season and lose Roberts and Toure going into next seasons qualifiers, so I think we really need to push on in January or Brendan really has his work cut out in terms of European football next season.

 

Absolutely no point? I could tell you 35 million points to us qualifying even if it means we are going to get embarrassed.

 

I think a proper DM in there last night would have made a huge difference, rather than practically surrendering the midfield and playing three centre halves. I could see the logic behind the team but in hindsight it was all over the shop. Hope we don't set up like that again. If we're going to play 3 central defenders then we need actual wingers playing out wide in a five man midfield.

 

We NEED to qualify regardless of getting pumped. It may be torture to watch, but consistently qualifying year after year is our only path to becoming as good as a Seville or a Benfica.

 

But that's the point about money being invested into the Club. Whenever I've heard or read anything from PL on investment from either Europe or transfers, he is quite specific. If we take transfers as an example, year after year he has said that any money made from transfers goes "back into Celtic Football Club." Initially I thought that was transfers, but now I question whether it is. I think when he answers such questions he is answering truthfully but really means that the money goes to anything to do with Celtic FC, eg, bricks & mortar, non-playing staff, players, paying off debt etc. When it comes to players, if we make £10m on sales and all of it went towards new signings, that £10m would cover all aspects of the sale, eg Transfer fee, signing on fee, Agents Fee etc. So while £30m seems a lot if I'm correct, potentially a much smaller amount would be available for transfer fees alone.

What PL should be asked is, "typically out of every £10m profit we make from transfers, how much goes specifically to transfer fees - not any add ons. Think we'll be surprised.

 

New double jeopardy rule, if the player tries to win the ball giving away a penalty can't be a red card.

 

We need to use that pumping and make sure nothing like that happens again, that's the management and teams motivation. Can start by going out and putting 7 past Inverness.

 

Never gived a * what those biased * say, can hardly base the level of Scottish football off of Inverness who have already conceded 12 in 5 with only 4 points.

I know, already said it's down to Barca turning up to prove a point but we now have to move on and use it as our motivation and how much we need to improve. We're no where near Barca but we are better than getting humped 7-0.

 

I think people are over reacting just a tad.

We are merely at the door step of Brendan's tenure and what he is building.

We have some really good players in our team and yes some weakness but all that cannot be corrected in one window.

The key is continued qualification of the champions league proper and allowing as to get that little bit better each season.

The Barca result is redundant , we could go out and spend 50 million and still get that result last night

 

We can hum and haw and dissect every incident in last night's game but
still nothing will change until or unless Brendan addresses the elephant in the room. The Midfield.

We are too weak and insipid in midfield to contend or even hold a lead against a decent team. Needs sorted asap or this will continue to happen.
Brendan quickly saw the limitations of Johansen and acted accordingly.
He needs to have a similar epiphany with Bitton or we can completely forget about competing in the rest of our Champions League games.

 

I hope this is a joke, of course we wouldn't have got humped 7-0 with a £50 million transfer spend.

Gamboa was a substandard panic buy.
DDV also a sub standard panic buy.

Did not rate either before they came, nor do I still. The board has taken in £30 Million-not one iota of which has been spent investing in the squad.

Would we have bet Barca last night from even a £50 Million transfer spend? no. We could however have built a remarkable team to build off of for the future. £50 Million transfer would have built an incredible spine to the team that could push it to be a world class squad in a few years.

The thing is Barcelona are in massive debt, the brand though is worth over a billion, as long as the brand is as strong it doesn't matter. Celtic is one of the few CL teams operating at a profit downside of this is that no one outside of Scotland and maybe Ireland care about the brand, 10 years ago it was far stronger and more valuable. Everyone here is happy with mediocrity now when we used to be so much more competitive in Europe. "The bank balance is good" doesn't mean anything really, nothing but paper work. Goes into Desmond's pocket and PL (who is one of the highest paid chief executives in the SPL And the EPL) when it comes to paying himself one of the highest wages or building safe standing to sell more tickets there isn't an issue. Last night was embarrassing didn't expect us to win but we became a laughing stock.

 

Where are all these posters coming from? :smiley-laughing002:

Only takes a 7-0 defeat for them to come crawling out the woodwork.

 

They've smashed teams that have cost more than the £400m odd that it took to assemble Barca. We could spend £200m, * £300m/£400m and still get absolutely raped off of Messi and co. It's why he's the greatest player ever, backed up with world class players.

 

A world class squad....... And what world class players are coming to Scotland?

Leverkusen , Valencia etc etc have all been done like a kipper from Barca

We are not mediocre we are heading in the right direction, Brendan has been here 2 mins

And Gamboa has had one game against the greatest team ever seen