Celtic Diary Thursday August 29: Your Cheatin’ Starts

Celtic have pulled out of the race to sign Matteus Bogusz, as the selling club wanted more money than the hoops were prepared to pay, and have renewed interest in Alvyn Sanchez, who is cheaper.

Some will see this as another example of the biscuit tin mentality, others will see it as the club being held to ransom due to the swollen bank account, but in reality, what has happened is whoever went to negotiate the deal had been given a ceiling price to pay according to the manager’s valuation, and couldn’t go above it, because that’s what the manager had told him the player was worth.

With just a couple of days left of the window, one would imagine there’s a lot of frantic activity going on behind closed doors, which again may point to a freshening up of the team employed to secure these deals. Rodgers identifies the players, the board sanction the deal, but somewhere in between are the guys who do the deal, and when the window shuts, the three parties will sit down and discuss how to do it better.

You can tell the board are expecting flak, as the PR department are telling us a £10m offer for Reo Hatate has been turned down , they’re not telling us who made that offer, presumably so no one can deny it, although you won’t be surprised to learn that there may be similar statements from the PR guys if there are no more signings.

Today sees the Champions League draw, where four teams will be boosted by the prospect of ticking off “A night under the lights at Celtic Park ” on their bucket lists, whilst another four will see a boost to the licensing trade in their local area.

The new set up is quite complex, where teams are divided into four pots that make no difference to the standard of teams they play, as they will face two from each. After a lengthy process, some of them will be eliminated and some, the majority, won’t.

The draw itself has other little rules, such as Celtic can’t play another team from Scotland, because there isn’t one, nor can they face more than two from any other single country.

If We’ve played a team on a Tuesday in the last five years, we have to play them on a Wednesday this time round, and vice versa, and an opponent has the same strip, they have to toss a coin to decide who takes their tops off in a shirts v skins clash.

Or something like that.

Moravcik 67 on twitter, who clearly understands the process better than I do, explains….

The 32 team ‘group stage’ has been replaced by a new 36 team ‘league phase’. Gone are groups of 4 teams. Now everyone is thrown into one big 36 team table. 

Every team will now play 8 CL league matches against 8 different opponents, 4 at home, 4 away. For the draw, the 36 teams are split into 4x pots of 9. – The CL title holder automatically goes into Pot 1 – the other 35 teams are ranked by their coefficient to create the pots 

How it works: – Each club is drawn against 2 teams from each of the 4 pots. Everyone has their own set of 8 opponents. If we play Team A and Team B, it doesn’t mean that they’ll play each other. – You play 1 team from each pot at home and the other away 

– You cannot be drawn against another team from the same country (*smirk*) – You shouldn’t play 2 consecutive home or away matches. – You can play a maximum of 2 teams from the same country All of this means that what pot you are in doesn’t matter. 

UEFA explains how the draw works: – A team from pot 1 is manually picked at random. – The computer picks the 8 opponents for that team and displays them. – This is repeated for all pot 1 teams, then Pot 2, Pot 3 and Pot 4 in order, until everyone knows who they’ll play. 

Celtic are in pot 3, so we’ll know at least 4 of our opponents (from pot 1 & 2) before it’s time to reveal who we’ll play. If other pot 3 teams have their turn before us then we might known 6 of our opponents by the time our turn comes, with only pot 4 opponents unknown. 

At least we won’t be sitting waiting ages for the draw to be relevant to us. It could happen at any time. Once the draw is done we’ll know who we play, but we won’t know in what order. UEFA have said that fixtures will be released on Saturday. 

Matches start on 17th September and finish 29th January. UEFA has given each of the 3 tournaments an ‘exclusive’ week where only games in that tournament are played. For the CL it’s matchday one. Games that week could be on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday. Dates attached. 

Once the league phase is done, all 36 teams are bunged into one table and ranked by points, goal difference, etc. – the top 8 progress to the last 16. – the 12 teams from 25th to 36th are eliminated from Europe. There’s no dropdown to the Europa. Tiebreakers attached. 

Teams ranked 9th to 16th will play the teams ranked 17th to 24th in a knockout playoff. – the winners progress to the last 16 – the losers are eliminated from Europe. Again, there’s no dropdown. The teams who finished 9th to 16th are seeded and play the 2nd leg at home. 

UEFA have introduced a seeded bracket system to the knockouts, as shown. It’s similar to what you see in other sports where they’re trying to keep the highest seeds separate until the final. Here, seeding is dependent on your final position in the league phase table 

For example. In the knockout round for teams who finished 9th-24th – Teams who finished 9th or 10th can only play a team who finished either 23rd or 24th – 11th/12th will play 21st/22nd, etc A draw determines whether 9th/10th player either 23rd or 24th. 

This continues into the last 16, where the teams who finished top 8 in the league will play against winners of the knockout playoff round. For example, the teams who finished 7th or 8th in the league phase can only play the winners of our 9th/10th v 23rd/24th Knockout ties. 

Because this type of seeding system has been introduced for the knockout phase, there’s no need to have a draw for the QF or SF. Once the draw for the L16 is made everyone will know what side of the draw they’re on and what teams they might face on their route to the final.  

Celtic must register our squad for the league phase by 3rd September. If we make the knockout stage we could add 3 new players. However, despite the last games taking place in January, we couldn’t use any new January signings until after the league phase is done. 

Overall, initial impressions are that the changes are positive, and freshen up what had become an incredibly stale tournament. But I reserve the right to change my mind on that once I see it in action. Let’s be honest. It’s the next step towards some kind of super league. 

Finally, it’s a really important season for Celtic in Europe. With Scotland having lost it’s automatic CL place we’ll have to qualify next season. That means our 5 year coefficient will determine if we’re seeded or unseeded in qualifying rounds next year. 

Currently, we’re all the way back in 64th place on 28pts. That includes the 6 bonus points we’re guaranteed from our CL participation. Every point could matter. We’d have been unseeded for the champions route playoff round this season.

And we’d have been unseeded for both the 3rd qualifier and playoff of the non-champions route. Our coefficient is also now more of a factor in determining the money we get from UEFA. We need to improve it. But more importantly. More points just means we’re doing well.  

A more detailed summary than mine, but more or less the same.

It dies seem like we’re heading towards some sort of european super league, and it probably won’t be long before UCL teams play in a straight knockout Cup tournament running alongside their “league “…..

This weekend, Celtic face “rangers ” in the first derby game of the season.

Given the current perilous state of their finances, Sunday’s game could actually be two games…the first and last derby game of the season.

As you know, all sorts of drunks tell us all sorts of things about all sorts of things, and we recently heard that the Elite court case is far from being the only outstanding bill at Ibrox…that’s bill, not billy, although there are quite a few of them as well.

There’s one unhappy architect down about £300,000, amongst others, it seems, and that is probably one of a number of reasons they’re looking for investment, though I think we can dismiss the story about American investment, unless the reason that Ibrox is closed is that they’ve found oil underneath it, and even if that is the case, it would be warships on the Clyde as opposed to money in the bank.

As a result, it would compound things a tad should Celtic win convincingly and move five points ahead of the plucky newcomers, and if Aberdeen were to win as well, the Clement Clusterfuck would be five points adrift in third after just four games.

I do believe that their support would self combust, and let’s be honest, there’s enough toxic fumes in tha air before such a climate catastrophe taking place.

This time, when they die, they might take us all with them.

However, despite losing influential midfielder Todd Cantwell, who to be fair looked lost at the best of times, they’ve retained the services of Scotland’s most influential man in the middle, John Beaton.

Assisting him in the VAR control room , under armed guard at a secret location, will be Andrew Dallas, another who can alter the outcome of a match with just subtle interpretation of the rules.

When they fuck it up , we will moan about it afterwards, but the controversy will deflect from the fact that the Ibrox basket case will yet again be handed a lifeline that they desperately need, and Sky and the SFA won;t be fretting over their four old firm games contract, though technically it’s not the old firm and anyone who has paid for the channel on that pretext is surely entitled to a refund.

Sometimes it can all be a bit frustrating, it’s gone on for so long now there’s a sort of grudging acceptance that this is Scottish football and we have to put up with it.

That’s not to say we do, however, and there is something we can do.

Bookmakers offer all sorts of novelty bets on any particular game, such as the amount of corners, bookings and red cards.

Here’s what we should do.

Bet on three or four Celtic yellow cards in the first half. It is a tactic used by Beaton to slow the game down and inhibit Celtic’s style.

Bet on three or four yellow cards for “rangers ” after 70 minutes. It’s how he evens up the stats.

Bet on a high number of free kicks to “rangers” in the first half, it’s how he breaks up the tempo.

Bet on the inevitable “rangers ” penalty, as they haven’t had one in fourteen years at Celtic Park, and when they do get one on Sunday, they can point to this. The media are already running with this….

If you do this, bookies will suspend the betting, as it is an irregular pattern. share it far and wide.

We can’t stop them, but we can let them know we’re onto them.

They think they can get away with it as our support is seemingly more concerned with the lack of activity in the transfer window, but we need to focus on this, as it’s far more important.

Anywhere else , this is how it’s done….

Conflict of interest ?

Not entirely convinced by the third one, but the other two show clearly he should not be involved on Sunday

Last time out we had this…

Today….