CELTIC are in no man’s land to a certain degree with their Champions League fate up in the air. The uncertainty over our opponents, progress, ability to qualify and how we go about doing so is all under the spotlight.
It has been argued to death that Celtic should not have to play one qualifier let alone three in their pursuit of the ‘promise land’ – such is the beast, the club must jump through hoops to get there.
This leaves the club in a state of flux where the uncertainty has a knock on effect to everything Brendan Rodgers wants to do. The players he talks about bringing in might be hedging their bets and waiting to see where Celtic land before coming to the table for serious talks. In the same way, the club will be trepidatious about spending a large amount of cash on a ‘Champions League’ player when we might not even make it to the dance.
Even getting rid of players that the manager doesn’t necessarily want becomes tougher as they may be needed for backup should injury’s arise during qualifiers.
Celtic will be quietly confident of being in the Champions League but before last season we failed in our previous two attempts and that’s still fresh in the memory. The club managed to get their last season, even with Rodgers being relatively new to the role with a bunch of players he was still to assess properly.
A year on and Celtic are a more mature, well-oiled bunch and something has to be said for that. Thankfully, Celtic will be seeded throughout the qualifiers, if that’s any consolation to the fans who think we should go straight in.
If or when Celtic manage to book their place into the group stage there could be major movement, but with playoff qualifiers coming very late in the window it may be a race against time to get anyone else in.
We await our second round opponents, with a trip to Belfast looking the most likely. The journey begins in little over a week, and while it’s the time of year when we’re probably most anxious as a fanbase, we should enjoy the journey and in doing so will get to our destination without too many hiccups.
The problem of operating in this league is obvious.It is a millstone around our neck.. but we have a manager who can navigate us through these times.What we don’t need are some fans making hysterical and unfounded claims about individuals on the board .Let’s not fall into the traps that are set for us every day by the Ibrox mob and their Agentprovocateurs, the Scum Scottish. Press.
Stating the obvious but early knockouts for other Scottish clubs won’t improve our coefficient, thus more qualifiers. As much as we may like to see other teams not do so well in their respective competitions, early eliminations hurt us all. Until a total shake-up of the CL happens and it doesn’t look like its going in our direction we just have to get on with it and trust in BR and the board.
Celtic are a Scottish club and the league does handicap ambitions but we should stay and fight our corner.
Reality is as long the TV continues to pay big bucks to English teams that finished second third and fourth in the league and Uefa allowing them to qualify for the CL then CHAMPIONS like Celtic FC will be frozen out this is wrong in my book if this is what is going to keep happening then I believe it also to false advertising and the word Champion should be removed from the competition title.