Champions League Qualifiers | Vital Football

Champions League Qualifiers

wee_od_88

wee_od_88

Vital Football Hero
We have been drawn against KR Reykjavik in our first qualifier for the Champions League.

The first leg will be played at Murrayfield on Tuesday 15th or Wednesday 16th July with the second leg to be played the following week.

They have a striker who joined us while Martin O'Neill was in charge, he was 17 at the time but he never managed to break through under Martin or Gordon Strachan and after a stint in Norway, where he also went on loan to Falkirk, he returned to Reykjavik and is one of their top players along with English striker Gary Martin who was released by Middlesbrough when Gordon Strachan was in charge.
No doubt both will be determined to try and beat us.

KR are 9 games into their season and are only 4th; suggesting they may have lost some of their better players after winning the league last year.

There wouldn't appear to be much to worry us about this team. Although, most of the good young Icelandic players who do make it big, will likely have come through KR as they are the most successful club in Iceland.
The one thing that could cause problems is that it's probably going to be a difficult second leg. Score plenty at Murrayfield and put the game to bed in the first leg and we should be fine. KR could play indoor on an artificial pitch which could cause a few issues. It is almost certainly going to be artificial pitch.
 
UEFA have revealed how much we made from participating in the Champions League last season.......just under £16m!

No wonder qualifying for the group stages is such a big deal! If we keep making the group stages for a few years, we will be able to soon start upping our budgets! Think long term and it's pretty good!
 
No welch it doesn't.......that's purely money received from UEFA but does include TV revenue because the TV revenue comes direct from UEFA.
 
Yeah, so the return on signing some quality to get through is pretty damned good! I hear it's £1 million a game from tickets.

In other news, I'm watching Greece and Samaras appears a bit lazy. Sigh.
 
30 players away in Austria for pre-season training and games. I'm trying to think who is all away, I've seen some on twitter already, clearly a number of younger players are with us though.

Zaluska, Forster (to join later)
Matthews, Lustig, Fisher, VVD, Ambrose (to join later), O'Connell, Fraser, Findlay, Izzy (to join later)
Forrest, Brown, Biton, Mulgrew, Johansen, Kayal, McGeouch, MacGregor, Twardzik, Boerrigter, Herron, Henderson, George, Rogic
Stokes, Commons, Griffiths, Pukki, Balde, Fridjonsson, Atajic, Watt

I think that's everyone. It's 30 players at the moment but we have our 3 World Cup players still to join as well.

That's a pretty good, strong team and plenty of youth in there. I think it does show that as well as the already identified wing areas requiring strengthening, our LB position is also weak! Until Izzy joins us, we have no LB. We have Fisher, Mulgrew and Matthews who can all cover the position in his absence but long term it's not good.
 
Mulgrew came in as a left back and it was his main position for many years. Under Lenny he went to central defense when needed and later moved to midfield. He is fine there for friendlies until Izzy returns. I can't believe Kayal is still with us.

What's the word on Boeriggter? Is he the real deal or a headcase?
 
Nobody has left yet other than those who's contract's expired. There is plenty of time yet for clubs to come in for some of our players. The thing is, Deila will want to see them all in action before making a decision on who he is willing to let go, who he will let go for the right money and who he wants to actively get rid of.

Boerrigter......who knows! We can only hope he's over his injuries and can have the sort of impact we saw from his first few games in a Celtic shirt last season! Deila has confirmed that he's looking at adding wingers to the squad as he feels we are weak there though, that doesn't mean Boerrigter is out, it's just that with his injuries last season, we need to at least cover for him and Forrest being out.
 
I've been keeping track of the photos of our pre-season tour, I'm yet to see James Forrest anywhere.....I think he might still be injured!

I also forgot about Jackson Irvine, I'm not sure if the talented young Aussie is still with us or not. I haven't heard about him being released anyway. Again, he's not one I've seen in photos or read about at all.
 
Forrest has suffered another injury in training. He will be out for a number of weeks and therefore will miss the Champions League qualifiers.
Deila is determined to get to the bottom of the problems he has had and is not going to rush him back. Instead, he wants Forrest to take as much time out as he needs and then ease him back into the team. He feels it could be a case of Forrest pushing himself too hard because he has been in and out of the team so much.

Craig Gordon is set to fly out and join the squad today. Zaluska and young keeper Leo Fasan are the only 2 keepers out in Austria at the moment.
 
Forrest is one fragile bloke. We really can't rely on him. I imagine we'd go with Brown right, Johansson and Kayal middle and Commons left with Griffiths and Stokes up front to start. Or Watt on the right!

Or a 4-3-3 with a trio of neds--Stokes, Griff and Watt--up front! :emoticon:03
 
#Celtic team to play Krasnodar: Zaluska; Lustig, van Dijk, Mulgrew, F. Twardzik; Brown, Johansen, Commons; McGeouch, Stokes, Boerrigter
 
Second half kicks off. Celtic Subs: Leonardo Fasan, Adam Matthews, Eoghan O'Connell, Calum Waters, Stuart Findlay......Biram Kayal, Callum McGregor, Liam Henderson, Teemu Pukki, Leigh Griffiths and Bahrudin Atajic
 
The game finished 3-1 to Celtic with goals from Stokes after just 3 minutes and then Johansen on 42 minutes before McGregor scored in the 2nd half.

There was clear intent to play the ball out from the defence. However, when the opposition started to push higher up the pitch and press our young 2nd half defence, we struggled a little. Perhaps the midfield had to do a bit more to help make themselves available.
It's certainly something for Deila to think about, how do we combat opposition temas pressing us high up the pitch if that's the way he wants us to play.

It also seems that in the 1st half, we were the ones doing a lot of pressing high up the pitch but in the 2nd (from what I saw) we seemed to sit back a little too deep.
 
I missed the game. Were the second half struggled due to the formation or the fact that it was an inexperienced crew out there? How did Atajic look?
 
I didn't see much of it either welch. What I did see, I don't think there was too much wrong with the performance. The young players did well. Deila said there were things from the whole game where we needed to improve, play with a bit more pressure to get the ball back and a little bit of positional work.

I think the Russians caught on to how we were playing as well and rather than change it up a bit, we stuck to what we were trying to do with playing it out from the back.

Deila did give special praise to Leo Fasan for his good performance in goal in the 2nd half.

I've also noticed that on the official website, 13 players previously listed under the U20s squad, have all been moved into the first team squad. How much should we read into that?
 
At this point I doubt you can read anything into it. Deila needs to evaluate everything he has and given his experience of training young players, he wants to see if he has any gems in the garden. The only thing I can fault Lenny for doing is playing the same starters when we were running away with the SPL and winning games 6-1. He could have tried more youngsters. I suspect Deila will use some easier SPL fixtures to rest top players for Europe and give younger players a run out.
 
I think part of it is Deila's thinking is, why spend money when I have someone talented enough already.....and it's true. The attitude at Celtic for far too long has been that we need to buy quality because not enough of it comes through our youth ranks, but how can you tell if you don't play them?

As Tic says, the cream always rises to the top.....and while that is true, unless you give them the chance to rise to the top, it will take longer, by which point we will have offloaded them.

I think the big advantage for the young lads right now is that we pretty much have a whole team coming through at once. They've all played together and some of them have obviously had some experience in the first team.
 
I get a little worried that it will only be youth and that Lawwell won't spend on experience. That's why Deila was hired. You get a young coach who is trying to make his way, so he will take a job with slim transfer budgets. Other coaches may have passed without more cash to spend.
 
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