Celtic alter Champions League squad

Samaras & Robson might play some part in Barca games but think Mizuno will just be there for experience. Hope the killie game was a return to form from here on in. We will need all players on best form to beat barca.

Clearly playing the second leg at home would have been far easier, but all we can do is go for it. I can't imagine Strachan would use Koki for this game, unless he really wants to throw caution to the wind. Don't think we'll see much from him this season, to be honest.

The Barca game will come too soon for Koki,but Barca got there hands full in La Liga with Madrid,and they might just under estimate us.I think its not a bad time to be playing them,espically with Puyol being injured.Vital we get at least a draw at Parkhead,but if we are to have a solid chance to go through we need to bring a lead to the camp nou

Barca are toiling just now. They're not on the sort of form we've come to expect. Ronaldinho has lost a yard of pace since we last played them and Rijkaard is struggling to maintain harmony in the dressing room. The defence is dodgy too, with Puyol missing even more so. We must have a go at Celtic Park. ATTACK! ATTACK ATTACK!

xavi, zambrotta the list is endless but as said they are just 11 men too & we can beat anyone at parkhead so anything is possible. It certainly won't be 'anti-football' played anyway :)

Slightly off topic but still related in a way. Was just wondering how many other teams in the world signed 5 players in the transfer window and secured one of the most sought after keepers in the world on a long term deal. Apologies for the happy clapping, that damn pesky plc board - they're out to ruin us.

Yeah bazzabhoy :) think they can fool us with lennoxtowns,leagues & last 16 CL games with barca. They'll ruin us right enough. We should all refuse to back the team out of protest.

If we had hinkel then 442 but i don't see why we never play our old 352 seeing as we have the players for it. boruc/mcmanus,o'dea,balde/mcgeady,donatti,hartley,nakamura,wilson/mcdonald,hesselink. That would be an attacking team & would be more so if brown wasn't suspended. Never going to happen though.

The key is to stop the central midfield 3 at Barca picking out passes. We did this at home to Milan when we pinned down Pirlo and didn't give him the time he usually relishes. Deco and Iniesta are the two main passers for Barca from near our goal. I would have Hartley and Donati man mark them. Xavi is the holding midfielder and will probably drop back to pick up possession as he nromally drops deep to get the ball and start attacks. McDonald should be the man to chase him down and stop him getting on the ball as he's great at being a nuisance. It will be tough but I believe we can beat them at CP.

Think best to not only snuff their midfield but also play to our strengths. Mainly getting mcgeady & naka as much space as possible. We need to take the few chances we get at that level so hopefully mcdonald & mainly jvoh are sharp. Good to see jvoh getting a goal for holland mid-week, can only help confidence. But as said, at CP we can beat anyone so i am confident we can give ourselves a chance in 2nd leg.

Rather we just ignored that weirdo.

Its a real blow that we dont have Brown for this one. I actaully think its a double blow because should Celtic win, lets say 1-0 or 2-0 at CP. Then with Brown fit and ready for the next game does Strachan go with the same MF that helped him defeat Barca at home or does he add Brown in over there in the NC just to have him in the team.

It would but do you think it would still give the manager a headache?

Yeah bazzabhoy :) think they can fool us with lennoxtowns,leagues & last 16 CL games with barca. They'll ruin us right enough. We should all refuse to back the team out of protest. LARSSON*7*CFC....................Would that be the same magnificent Lennoxtown which myself and thousands of other Celtic supporters contributed to by virtue of the share-issue which bought and paid for it? Forgive me, but apart from Dermot Desmond who underwrote the said share-issue I don't recall the board of Celtic PLC contributing one thin dime. And Mr Desmond was hardly taking a financial gamble when Celtic share issues have been the most successful and over-subscribed in football. I would also just like to point out the pesky fact that Celtic PLC did not procure champions league monies for our club. The players on the park in our home games at Celtic park procured that income, but be in no doubt that without the magnificent backing of the Celtic support on those nights the balance sheet would certainly not be bulging! I will always fully support and back any Celtic team, regardless of the standard of player or manager at any given time, and I have been doing so since long, long before Celtic PLC arrived on the scene. I will give the PLC credit when merited, but I refuse to fawn over them and give false praise for achievements which are not theirs to claim. In fact, no more so than I would fawn over minty moonbeam like an inmate from follow follow for blowing bubbles up the huns but-holes for years(sorry, terrible mental image that...yuk!) Big useless Feckless took the huns to the last 16 with a team full of the ugliest and most talentless players ever to pull on a pair of boots. Who benefited from the huns money? Always an easy question to answer when the huns come into money, it used to be moonbeam directly, but for a long while(and for the foreseeable future!) it is HBOS who benefits. I am still trying to determine who exactly benefits when we come into money?, well apart from our balance sheet of course.

This 'board neglect' issue has been raised before. WGS has stated already that he was disappointed at not being able to bring more players in last summer. He pointed out though that it was the quality he was looking for that was lacking or that the price tags were unrealistic. We've signed almost a full team since last June. From that evidence I cannot see where the board have failed to back Strachan or have neglected the side. Watched Barca last night, they're very average looking just now. Fingers crossed they get worse!

Suppose when we win 3 in a row after another great performance today there's going to be a lot of upset 'fans' on here. Do you have the brass neck to celebrate it after criticising the team & manager from day 1 ?! RK1690 & Wishaw 'wannabe' boy will probably still talk mince about the club as they are just 'internet fans' & have spent so much time on the forum they have lost all sense of reality. Get yourselves off the site for a day lads & get some fresh air thn maybe you might start enjoy life & supporting celtic a bit more :)

see your still slevering down your hun top ,, ya retard ! only one "fan"on here has been exposed to be a fake on here and every single person now realises the truth about you HUN *7* ,,I rest my case ,, retard !!!!!!!

gloryhunter boy, the reason we didn't buy those players you talk of in summer is because we were being out-priced at ridiculously huge transfer fees. If you followed the facts instead of daily record then you would understand things a bit better. Regardless of when they are bought the goal is to win the league. Anyway its ridiculous for a constant critic of celtic (you) to call a constant supporter of the team (me) a 'hun'. Your logic doesn't add up, my posts show to anyone with adequate intelligence that i backed wgs & team to come good from the start. You the opposite. & I need a brain you say ? Will you still celebrate a team & manager you have heavily criticised from the out-set when they win the league ? I suspect a gloryhunter would, it'd also make you a hypocrite & look a complete fool :) Hail Hail

Have to point this out wishawbhoy, we started with 10 players who were at the club in the summer and have played most of this season. Only Hinkel was a new recruit and he was pretty average to be honest. So, did the team who started today look to be in a desperate state? Or can you accept that we suffered a periodic loss of form, like most teams do, and are now finding the form that will win us a historic 3 in a row.

Whoo, such a bitter & nauseating post. Never before have i came across such a fud who claims to be a great fan but at the same time would have been happy for the club to lose their much accrued financial position after years of playing catch up with the arch rivals by gambling on players who would have cost well over their real valuation. Never before has a pre-season seen so much activity for players with hugely inflated value. Any decent european player was also snapped up by EPL team with sky money burning a hole in their pocket, MON himself has been quoted as saying that it is increasingly difficult to compete for good players when everyone else is doing the same & he has a much bigger budget. You however seem obviously more qualified than everyone else on the transfer market, finances & contract negotiations at celtic, one being a former executive director of the bank of england. Doubt it though. The board could have relented to idiots like you who have the financial nous of robert mugabe & thrown millions at players who might or might not have proved succesful. Your chum rk had a plethora of posts on buying joey barton for example. WGS is his own man & will live or die by his decisions on transfers & he is quoted as saying the ones available were no better than what he had. This might have been wrong but so far is looking a good call with the team now hitting top gear, a competitive squad, young talent signed for future years & 3 in a row very much a probability. He took an old team championship losing team & re-built a young winning one & again taken us to last 16 of CL. So for you to criticise this & me for showing faith & support for my club is not really a credible case. Its the non-thinking loud mouths like your self who swallowed the tabloid crap about everything they could print to dis-mantle a progressively stronger Celtic whilst spinning what they could on a dis-integrating hun team who have rode their luck & now are selling their best players & replacing them with lesser quality if even replacing at all when getting bids laughed at or for us to gazump them. I don't really know what world you live in, apart from a constant cyber one:) , but i am happy with supporting a winning team despite a bad slump of form in december i am very confident of 3 in a row & looking forward to a much anticipated Barca game. I question whether the club really needs 'fans' like you when all you do is be critical & try to create dis-harmony among a club that has a great future. You actually sound like the hun. Hail Hail

We'd been registering 3, 4 and 5 goal victories up until Christmas as well as qualifying from a tough CL group so I can't see how it's been a half season of poor form. Perhaps you're referring to December, which if I'm not mistaken represents one month of the season.

Thought so. Check mate dip sh@t. Can't argue with what i've said cause you are either doubting your own string of pish or you don't have the mental capacity to say anything other than cyber gimp chat like 'GIRFUY'. Looks like you are more of a hun than me. Here's to 3 in a row . HAIL HAIL

Its not just that tdbhoy but whenever you invite them to have a proper discussion to explain their criticism of the club apart from soundbites & their usual rhetoric they can't actually do it. We are among few on here who were 'faithful through & through' the rest will no doubt celebrate 3 in row by having a cyber party & then plotting more ways to criticise the team & manager. Hypocrites the lot of them but we can celebrate with complete satisfaction unlike them but we knew this anyway. Here's to real fans. Hail Hail

Because it proves their point and opinion wrong of him. They've been led down some ridiculous path by the press in this country and have stuck to that opinion. This opinion is not based on facts but pure fantasy. How they come to the conclusion that the board are out to ruin the club deliberately is just beyond comprehension. If it's not the board it's the all conquering manager. It's a bizarre affliction that affects a good few Celtic supporters who can't enjoy success for worrying about when it'll go tits up. When presented with facts they put their fingers in their ears and go off at a tangent instead of arguing the main issue. This site is full of such fans, they all back one another's nonsense but go round in circles never ever arguing with anything close to the truth as an answer. Individuals like myself and a couple of others then have to put up with being called "huns" or read the ramblings of a lone brain celled man mental who barks about pumping people's parents.

Fair point but the standard in question was never worthy of the level of criticism levelled at board,manager & team by some on here. It was as though the board were selling our best players & replacing them with diddies, we were under-performing in europe & our rivals were getting stronger as we got weaker. Hold on, thats not us but actually the rankers ! Maybe people will get behind the team & manager for 3 in a row now.

Did we. i don't see how ? Which best players did we replace with weaker ?

Miller-McDonald, Lennon(left of his own accord)-Scott Brown. Marshall? What the ****? He was about 20 stone! More please. This should be good.

Are you saying that miller is better striker than mcdonald ??? Lennon essentially retired to the lower leagues of england for coaching experience so wasn't sold and 1st team goalie was boruc so marshall leaving to get games wasn't a 'weakening' sale.

Never heard such a ridiculous argument. Change the facts all you want to make a good story. As proved by the number of games played McDonald was the replacement. I really do struggle to bother with any discussion with anyone who thinks Kenny Miller is a player. In any case McDonald was the replacement, not Killen. Killen a squad player, but considering his record at Hibs we may have expected more of him by now. Does anyone want to swap Miller for McDonald? Lennon basically retired (we didn't "cash in" on him), he was moving away from a first pick anyway and the midfield with Hartley, Brown, Robson, Donati is arguably stronger. We also still had Jarosik for a while. As for Marshall, I can't recall a Celtic GK losing more goals than he did. Couldn't keep a clean sheet and never a Celtic GK. As I said above I can't think of anyone who objected to signing Brown but like Killen he hasn't coped with being a Celtic player. So we're still waiting - where has the plc weakened the team by selling the first picks and bringing in weaker players. In fact one glance at Sunday's bench shows the strongest Celtic squad we have had in years. It keeps getting alluded to. Someone please substantiate rationally the problem they have with the board. Humour me, would you rather we went back to the days of McGinn et all or do the fantasists want a fan voice on the board cos that aint and should never happen. Another thing that amazes me - people who rate Kenny Miller - did anyone ever watch him. Out of all the divisions in the country he probably has the worst strike rate for any striker. Add to that his lack of a first touch and no brain, that leaves you with effort. Yes, he ran about like a headless chicken but effort is the bare minimum expected of any footballer, especially one at Celtic so that doesn't make him stand out. I'm sure even RK would get out there and run about daft was he given the chance to wear the hoops.

"we were under-performing in europe & our rivals were getting stronger as we got weaker" we were underperofrming in europe the performances showed that. and yes we did get weaker as rangers got stronger our positon in the league points to that FACT. case closed.

If you think the last 16 is such a great ahivement then you are very close to having the menatily of a rangers fan. they the previous year made it into the last 16 with 7 points and with the worst rangers team ever. not really world cup status in my book but whatever suits you. if you are putting being behind by 4 points down to december then you are sadly mistaken. did we play the huns in december? what was the score when we did play them? never in all my years have i seen such a drab performance from a celtic side. it might be ok for you to dimiss that as a one off but for fans like me who have to work hard all week actaully travel to these games its very dissapointg wouldnt you agree? are you telling me that going frmo 17 points ahead to 4 points behind is actaully making us stronger. also i was talking to larsson7 when i said that, he says he deals with facts. Well that is a fact. 17 ahead to 4 behind. as i said, i actaully go to these games i have to work for my season ticket i dont just get the package on the tellie. try to understand it from the working class fans points of view and not your pub opinion.

Well put Breen. Id agree with everything you have said, I still find it ridiculous that some people are happy with that stat, well not so much happy, but more acceptant. I don't really put everything down to Strachan though. The players, the manager, the board, the coached and everyone concerned with Celtic take the blame when something goes wrong, it would be unfair to blame it on one person. I do feel that the board should have pushed the boat out for players like Robson, Samaras etc. in the summer. Would have gave them more time to settle and whatnot. Anyway, the most important thing is that we now have a squad that is strong in depth. How we were allowed to go through half a season without a right back will always remain a mystery to me. I still feel that the most vulnerable part of the team, the defence, needs a hell of a lot of work. If Naylor gets injured then we don't have a natural replacement. Sorry if you don't have the same opinions guys, but I was brought up to believe that Celtic were one of the biggest clubs in football and i still believe that. So surely 2 players for every position seems feasible for a club our size. Breen I empathise completely with your situation, i grew up in a background like that. My father worked 8-6, 5 days a week in the most treacherous conditions and his only escape was the football Saturday/Sunday. For me the performances have not been great, fair enough we most certainly can not be expected to win every game 5-1 etc. because griding out results is also very important, perhaps most particularly at this stage of the season, "squeaky bum time" but I feel we have been playing too poorly for too long. Football is an entertainment business as well, people go to be entertained. Celtic Park has not been a great venue for entertainment over the last 12 months im afraid. Some great results in Europe, great moments in the league but on the way some very dire draining performances.

sorry but this has been a red button issue, its not the spl getting better, its the old firm getting worse

Breen - where is your basis that my opinion is a pub one? I have hardly missed a game in the last 20 years and in that I include games away from home in Europe. And, even though I don’t see class as relevant, since our club welcomes all, I’d class myself as a working class fan so I don’t see your point. From my 30 years experience following Celtic, I have seen our club in a far worse state than it is now. Perhaps because I have experienced the bad times I appreciate what we have now. I can’t even be bothered to check the stats because the point is such an obvious one. How many points did we drop in December? That’s why we are behind. As was proved last year, though important the games against the vermin aren’t as important as they once were. They took how may points off us last year yet we still managed to be so far ahead at the end. So that one game isn’t the reason we are 4 points behind – you only get 3 points for a win, even against them. In any case I didn’t realise the honours were handed out in February. If at the end of the season, as I expect we will be at least 5 points ahead I will be more than happy as they were always going to close the gap. As for your point about CL, it kindae misses the point. While you’re right, one of the worst Rangers team made it – they’re situation was far different. They were in a poor group, and what relevance do they have on our situation. Why do some Celtic fans always want to harpoon about them – I’m not at all interested. While our form away from home in Europe continues to be poor, the fact that we can beat anyone at Parkhead is a great achievement. In the last two years, we have beaten Man Utd, Shakter, Benfica, Copenhagen. In the last 16 match against Milan, it took extra time for them to put us out. As long as we continue to take 9 points from our 3 home games we will continue to qualify and I will be delighted. Have you been unhappy with our achievements in Europe? Incidentally, I don’t have a TV subscription either and I don’t phone Real Radio to slag Celtic. You didn’t answer the question Breen – have you always been a Celtic fan or did your working class money used to be spent following another Glasgow team?

In reply to LarssonCFC: I don't think the standard of the SPL has improved to be honest. If anything some teams have got worse. Even then it would not be a justifiable excuse for us to behind Rangers, as Rangers had to play the same teams. After the Inverness game it is understood that Peter Lawwell was making phone calls on the way home. So full credit to him for acting on this early, which was the 16th of December. Therefore it is believed our January business and targets were identified early. I think everyone would agree that is good management by Celtic. Although, this is just my personal opinion, I really do think that Peter Lawell will be a little bit disappointed that they didn't act to the same extent in August. It could very well have been that with the success of the previous season that they thought Rangers would still have been quite far behind and therefore was no real need for panic stations. That would be understandable to an extent. Yet at the same time, the performances to the latter part of last season and the 2 Old Firm defeats, suggested to me that we might have been in a wee spot of bother. Of course at the same time you could argue that it would be difficult to motivate ones self after being so far ahead. There are a number of ways you could look at it, but I still think that in the summer mistakes were definitely made. McDonald has been a good addition, as has Brown, Donati blows hot and cold and Killen has been quite poor to be honest. I think selling Miller was good business considering he could very well have had another dry spell, so to get £3-million for a player we paid nothing for was decent business in my books. Yet at the same time it did leave the squad a bit short. Obviously it was believed we had a decent enough front-line to deal with this. I think that was another misjudgement. Up until January i would rather have had Miller in the squad instead of the £3million in the bank which lay idle for months. But mainly, the most important thing is that these deficiencies have been recognised now and i am thankful for that, I'm pleased with our business in the transfer window yet i wholeheartley agree with those who suggest that this could and should have been done in the summer. I suppose the most important thing is that, the mistakes that were made were recognised and probably wont cost us the title.

This miller thing has become a joke. The eejit left us & i never cried a tear cause he couldn't score in a barrel of phannies & wouldn't have been 1st choice end of. Now that he has continued his pish scoring record down south he is flaunting himself back to huns & i hope they take him. If WGS decided the players he wanted in summer were not available or affordable then fair enough he takes the flak if its a mistake but he did get the targets for january as he said he would & its had the desired effect now that we are entering the business end. The december slump was due to some bad luck as well as refereeing, boruc out, 2 RB's out, naka out, pens being denied. Some people on here will complain about anything & even after 2 dazzling performances. Wilson incidently is a better LB in my opinion so we do have cover. We don't have a problem scoring goals now & our back 4 have only conceded 2 goals in last 7. I fully support the wee man's management even though i question some of it. Its result's that count & so far he has delivered & this team is good enough to win 3 in a row so lets get behind them.

Oh how interesting it is. MMmm very interesting indeed. Or maybe not. As you point out i never said it but is it possible that people have complained since it was posted ? don't care personally & think your post was a waste of time.

and jinky7 of all the things i wrote in my posts its interesting how you only pick up on this very minute & irrevelant detail, which as you said i never even said myself. I assume you must agree with everything else then ?

You aint going to go very far in this season in the champs league!