29 Jul 2021 14:57:03
First time post but been reading and following for a long time. Obviously this is a community all about opinions but some of the things written on here really surprises me. With the exception of the initial BR era we have been in gradual decline since the end of the MON tenure. The expectancy every year is far too high. Celtic through their own business model are underprepared every year for the challenge that Europe brings. We are a mid rate EL team and are too often over excited by domestic success that means nothing in the wider scale of football. Football is a business plain and simple. Our fans will not enforce the change needed as we won't take action in the numbers required to do so. Celtic hold all the aces and they know it. Time to just accept the peaks and troughs that come our way. Anyone who is expecting huge changes this season are living on another planet.
29 Jul 2021 15:17:36
Celtic have qualified for the last 16 of the Champions League on 3 occasions, in your timeline.
So it can be done.
Celtic are still a massive club with over 50,000 season ticket holders.
The 12 seeded clubs who qualified to the 3rd round in this weeks CL qualifiers, are lucky to have half that amount of backing from their supporters.
Celtic do need a new business model because the current model clearly isn’t working.
But Celtic fans will never settle for being a mid rate Club and to suggest winning a Quadruple Treble doesn’t mean anything is baffling.
29 Jul 2021 15:50:22
Absolutely Buzz. No one said it can't be done. It definitely can. The way we are currently operating though makes it extremely difficult.
Not sure what fans have to do with it but if a teams ability was measured by fans we'd be hard to beat. Sadly it isn't. Ferencvaros who easily dispatched us last year have a capacity 1/ 3 of ours yet found no problem making the CL. Nothing to do with their fans whatsoever.
And I need to disagree with you there. Celtic fans ARE settling for a mid rate EL club and have been doing so for a number of years.
The Quad Treble was a tremendous achievement to go unbeaten for that length of time in cups and to win all the league. All I am saying is we have to take our domestic success in context. The gap in quality is vast between SPL and playing in Europe.
29 Jul 2021 15:53:36
Aye ok peekay so winning everything put in front of you for 4 years is a club in decline.
29 Jul 2021 15:58:24
We may be a massive club in Scotland or in the eyes of Celtic fans but in reality in terms of finance and the level of player we can attract we are minnows. It's an achievement in itself just to qualify for the Champions Lge.
Lets be honest we were never getting past PSV anyway. We wanted to win last night to guarentee Europa Lge group stages avoiding the play off.
Even if we qualify for the Europa lge group stages we haven't a hope of winning the thing either.
You are right though expectations are unrealistic however the club should be giving the team half a chance by not going into qualifiers with the squad we have at the minute.
29 Jul 2021 16:08:59
You mentioned in your original post that Celtic are a mid rate club.
Although Celtic don’t currently have a good squad but we have the resources to be back competing in the CL group stages.
I admit we need to get our act together with a better business model.
It’s possible that your settling, that Celtic are a mid rate club because I’m certainly not.
29 Jul 2021 16:16:54
@kevpatrick why don't you refer to our most recent domestic events? A league and 2 cups. Dispatched without a whimper. That outcome whether it was last season or this was coming for many who were prepared to take the green tinted specs off. And yes that's a decline and it came exactly from complacency. We have the finances to dominate for years domestically. Through complete complacency we have allowed the tides to be turned when it should have been goodnight Vienna. We should be so far in the distance in terms of domestic dominance.
What I think is important though is the realisation that its 2 different teams needed for SPL and ECL. The club aren't prepared to gamble with the finances. They won't spend the money on the players (and perhaps some won't come) till they know we are there. That's why I find it hard to read folk getting excited about a domestic win and heading into a ECL or EL game as though the former is a marker for the latter success.
29 Jul 2021 16:32:52
@Buzz - I don't want to settle for anything but the best for the club I love. That said what choice do I have? What choice do you or any of us really have? Like I said earlier the only way to enforce change in a business is to hit what is most important to it but our fans won't do that. We'll renew season books, we'll buy merchandise and we'll invest money that many don't truly have all for the love of their club. As I said the club are all too aware of that. We are taken for granted and used when it suits them.
You want any evidence of us being mid rate EL? 8-2 on agg last year with Sparta Prague. Watching the 2 legs this last week reminded me how even with JK in temp charge then AP since NL departure how very little had actually changed in 12 months.
Any Celtic fan wondering how they are regarded and valued by the club please consider the last 12 months and beyond.
29 Jul 2021 16:59:12
I don’t think anyone can deny we are on a massive decline in quality and standard . I was hoping ange and McKay could reverse the trend, but I have my doubts on McKay .
I have a feeling he could be another “slippy used car salesman†like lawell before him. Fans keep referring to “the old board†when in fact only McKay has changed. We still have the same self appreciating, smug, arrogant board that we have had before, and as long as lawell is the sounding board I presume it’s going to stay the same.
We all watched last nights game, and if we are being honest we all knew what would unfold, even after we took the lead. What is so frustrating though as buzz alluded to was, we don’t have to be like this . If the board backed a manager early and made decisions earlier we could progress. We are still potentially a big club, and the champions league isn’t beyond our reach regularly . Cluj, ferencvaros etc are all organised teams which could be another failing, where we go for this certain type of football where we plainly don’t have enough technically proficient players to play it. The Sevconians aren’t this world bearing team but they are organised and tend to have lucky draws and consequently I can see them making it. The results they have had in Europe prove that being in the spfl doesn’t mean we can’t compete better than what we have recently. As most are calling for, and Brian quinn said at anges press conference, we need to be more forward thinking. I hope they start soon as it’s like watching a car crash unfold in front of us at the minute .
29 Jul 2021 17:32:13
Think that's rubbish that two different teams are required for Europe and domestically, one team, that is well competent, playing a system that suits the players available, is all that is required, play this team as much as possible, at home and in Europe, let the players get used to each other and the systems, none of this chopping and changing for the sake of squad rotation, a team good enough for Europe, is good enough for the SPl . get that team settled and play it.
29 Jul 2021 20:33:03
Yes we lost 8-2 last season because we currently have a poor squad of players but that doesn’t mean the fans will settle for Celtic being a mid rate club.
Celtic are big enough to compete at the top again in the future, once we get our house in order.
30 Jul 2021 00:40:37
Peekay, you said we have been in decline since the MON era so I said what about the quadruple treble then you say why don’t I look at last season ……, I was replying to your nonsense statement that we’ve been in decline since MON left …… I know we competed better in Europe in O’Neill’s day but you can’t say we were in decline when we were winning treble after treble.