Champions League £40m+ ;-) | Vital Football

Champions League £40m+ ;-)

Been on holiday for the past 10 days, bhoys (Isle of Skye)

Seems we humped the newest wee diddy club in my absence...

Enough of that pish! It's Champions League time! :emoticon:32 :emoticon:04 :emoticon:43

First up is Barcelona away ... I hope we take it easy on them :emoticon:33

Nah, we're still very much a work in progress so I've curbed my expectations in terms of the three away fixtures. Tonight's especially.
 
CELTIC (5-4-1) De Vries; Gamboa, Lustig, Toure, Sviatchenko, Tierney; Roberts, Brown, Bitton, Sinclair; Dembele

Subs: Gordon, Izaguirre, Armstrong, Rogic, O’Connell, McGregor, Forrest
 
24 mins in and great play from Sinclair realeases Dembele who runs through on goal and is brought down by the keeper. Pen to Celtic.

Dembele tried to be too cute with the pen and made it an easy save.
 
Not awful, but I don't think the tactics are working. With two wide men, their passing ability is running it straight up the park. We need a dose of Strachanball, clogging up the middle of the park and hitting on the break.
 
Early days in BR's reign. We don't yet have the players (especially defensively) to cope with this Barca team. We look very good on the break though.

Yeah, the tactical formation seems to have hindered us more than barca. Our players looked very unsure in the opening minutes as if they were all waiting on someone else to put a tackle in, hence their early goal.

Gamboa was a big gamble and I'm surprised Roberts started ahead of Forrest - just for his added pace alone plus he tracks back, which Roberts doesn't.

Still it really should be 2-1 so we've not done that badly.
 
I know. But Lenny's team won at Celtic Park and gave a better run here. It shows what happens when you sell a great keeper and two really good CBs and replace them with what we have. Rodgers needs two more windows to get his team in place.
 
We gave acres of space and that's to do a lot with the tactics. We tried to play real football and gave them acres in midfield. Rodgers should have put nine behind the ball and played physical hard football. We tried to outpass the best attacking team in the world, perhaps drunk on raiding sevco.
 
A very disappointing performance in the end. We were up against one of the best teams in the world and they showed that but at the same time you would have preferred we keep the scoreline respectable!
We gave them too much space and just a few players turned off and didn't follow their man at the right times.

In the first half I don't think we got the setup correct. We played 5 at the back but the wing backs were sitting so deep they were generally marking Neymar and Messi, which then means our two wingers (who we need to have ready to attack and help Dembele) are pulled back to cover the Barcelona full backs. In the second half it changed a bit. Lustig was told to sit on Neymar, Toure sat with Suarez and Sviatchenko sat with Messi, then our wing backs could go out to their fullbacks.
It means leaving ourselves a lot more 1 on 1 with their attack but that's just kind of the risk that you have to take. They're so comfortable putting everyone into attack except their CBs that you need to make that sort of risk just to take the chance of leaving even 1 extra player up top to help Dembele.

The positives of the game, great experience for a lot of players who haven't played at this level before. O'Connell came on and while he was beaten a few times, he did well and made some good blocks and tackles and was good bringing the ball out from the back.
Gamboa was shaky at times but he's not played for a couple of seasons really so it was to be expected, made some good runs down the wing and you can see he could be a really good asset going forward. Struggled a few times with following the runner defensively though. It will take him a bit of time to get up to speed.

I think all fans go into this sort of game with very low expectations because we know we're simply not at that level.....that's just a fact! As the commentators last night were saying, it was verging on embarrassing but Barca could have done that to pretty much any team on their day!
 
Going into the Man City game with a bit of confidence again after the battering by Barca, then the draw at ICT and the struggle against Alloa. Finally we played at home against Kilmarnock at the weekend and after going a goal down against the run of play....we thumped them 6-1! A quickfire double from Dembele before HT to make it 2-1 and then goals from Forrest, Griffiths (unlucky not to be Simunovic's goal), Sinclair and finally Rogic.

Man City however also won and unless I'm mistaken are still unbeaten so far this season....Pep Guardiola has got them playing some fantastic football and has strengthened the team well. They can still be ropey in defence though!
There is no doubt that even with De Bruyne out injured, City's attack is potent! Aguero is a goal scoring machine, Silva is a genius with the ball and Sterling is back to the player we saw at Liverpool....he can be devastating!

We're going to have to be braver than we were against Barca....take a bit more in the way of risk. If we give them quick players to worry about then it can lead to chances for us. But in order to get our quick players in the right parts of the pitch....we need to push out! We can't have everyone except Dembele sitting back like we did against Barca, it's asking for another hiding!
 
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