With champions League football not on the agenda for this season now, the support are wondering what happens next. Well, that’s easy. We go into the Europa League.<\/p>\n
But as to who will be in the side when that campaign kicks off, that’s another argument.<\/p>\n
Celtic’s policy, well, we think it’s the policy. We’ve not qualified for the UCL recently to see if it was a policy, was to wait and see if we got there, and spend money accordingly. Although in reality that usually meant that the one’s we wanted turned us down and we got some out of favour duds instead.<\/p>\n
With Virgil van Dijk now saying he’s open to offers, we may have a bit of a problem on our hands. Last seasons defence, Matthews, van dijk, Denaayer Izaguirre will have all but gone.<\/p>\n
There’s less than a week of the transfer window to go, and we need a defence.<\/p>\n
The club may argue that the whole pre season was geared to getting into the champions league, although you could argue in return \u00a0that the players stopped that particular crusade after about half an hour of the first leg.<\/p>\n
We may also see one or two other players begin to get itchy feet, and there will be others whose feet will not touch the ground as Deila begins his clear out.<\/p>\n
He does have a bot of work to do here, and thats why it would be a mistake to even consider letting him go at this stage. He has started the job, and there is progress, whatever you might think about the drama on Tuesday. There is a lot of young talent at the club, which he has shown he can develop, and whilst Scottish domination is almost assured, the team have a long way to go in Europe.<\/p>\n
The Europa League will be their learning experience. We are in there now, and we will have to get on with it.<\/p>\n
The money’s not as good, the crowds won’t be as good, and the opposition won’t be as good.<\/p>\n
But then, neither are we.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Looking through the comments of the good and the wise in the media, and after having a wee think about it myself, it’s curious that no-one has mentioned the playing of the reserves against Dundee United as a possible factor for the bumbling ineptitude of the Malmo return.<\/p>\n
Looking back, it appears to have unsettled the players, broken the rhythym and interrupted the gradual upward curve of fitness and form.<\/p>\n
Maybe thats why the players looked lost on Tuesday night. They were used to playing twice a week, were getting into that groove and then had to kick their heels over the weekend. I can understand why Ronny did it, but it never turns out well when so many changes are made.<\/p>\n
It wasn’t the only reason, or perhaps even the main reason, but combined with all the other little factors, it sure didn’t help.<\/p>\n
But, although mistakes were made, you cannot take anything away from Malmo. They knew how to deal with Celtic this time, and what worked in the first leg wasn’t allowed to work in the second. For all those who reckon that Stefan Johansens miss which would have made it 3-0 in glasgow would have killed the tie, I’m not so sure. The swedes would have just had longer to fight back.<\/p>\n
If anything should be taken from this tie, and one would hope lesons are being learned, it’s that you strike while the iron is hot, and do not give the opposition a chance to come back into the game. Until Celtic are adept at closong games down, we will have to continue with the Celtic Way, which usually ends in tears, but it’s a lot more fun.<\/p>\n
So, whatever view you may have of the board, the team, or the players, Celtic will be in tomorrows Europa draw.<\/p>\n
Along with these guys;<\/p>\n
![\"Embedded](\"https:\/\/pbs.twimg.com\/media\/CNU5VPMWsAAQZg5.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
We could end up with Ajax, Legia Warsaw and Rapid Vienna. Or Dortmund, Monaco and Southampton.<\/p>\n
At the moment, of course, it’s difficult to engineer much enthusiasm for the tournament, given it’s Thursday night football , followed by Sunday games again. Ridiculous six o’clock kick offs and so on. And the money, whilst still welcome, is nothing like the Champions League;<\/p>\n
UEFA<\/span><\/b><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/b><\/span>Europa League Prize Fund<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Group Stage fee \u20ac2.4m<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n Group Stage performance \u20ac360k win and \u20ac120k per draw<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n Group winners get bonus of \u20ac500k<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n Group Runners Up get bonus of \u20ac250k<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n Round of 32 bonus of \u20ac500k<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n Round of 16 bonus of \u20ac750k<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n Quarter-Finals bonus of \u20ac1m<\/em><\/p>\n Semi-Finals bonus of \u20ac1.5m<\/em><\/p>\n Winners get \u20ac6.5m bonus<\/em><\/p>\n Runners Up get \u20ac3.5m bonus<\/em><\/p>\n *All of this excludes home tickets revenue\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Still not to be sniffed at, though, and it will keep the liquidators from the door.<\/p>\n \u00a0But at least only two home games will be affected, against the Dundee clubs, so that’s something, and anyway, there’s nothing else to do on a Thursday.<\/p>\n Nope, it’s not working. It’s a horrible competition to be in, and unless we win the bloody thing, we’ll be in the qualifiers again next year, where the pressure will be even greater.<\/p>\n So let’s dust ourselves down, and get on with it.<\/p>\n The shitstorm the media are throwing in our direction won’t abate until we are back on track. They smell blood, and are sharpening their knives.<\/p>\n At the risk of sounding like the Celtic View here, on Saturday we need to get behind the players, and show that we will still be there, and we do have faith in them.<\/p>\n A good Europa run will wipe away the memory of Tuesday to some extent, and by taking out our frustrations on St. johnstone with the mythical 7-0 win would help the players and fans alike.<\/p>\n In times of adversity, real character begins to show through.<\/p>\n Management and senior players need to show they have it.<\/p>\n Starting now.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" With champions League football not on the agenda for this season now, the support are wondering what happens next. Well, that’s easy. We go into…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":7691,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/etims.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/tupac.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2J7If-1ZZ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7687"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7687"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7687\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7692,"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7687\/revisions\/7692"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}