"Champions League Quality Players"

One thing that has been really irritating me lately is the use of the phrase “Champions League Quality Player”; it’s a phrase that I don’t really understand when it comes to Celtic. In general terms when I hear that phrase I think of Lionel Messi, Andres Iniesta, Arjen Robben, Bastian Schweinstieger, Thiago Silva, Ibrahimovic, Edinson Cavani, Robin Van Persie and so on and so forth. It’s not going to be something that is ever achievable for us, even if we were the richest team in the world these players still wouldn’t come to Scotland.

Celtic, in general, have never bought a “Champions League Quality” player. If you look at our team just now; I would say our best players in the Champions League last season was Georgios Samaras, Joe Ledley, Victor Wanyama, Scott Brown, Kelvin Wilson, Kris Commons, Fraser Forster and Gary Hooper. They were the standouts last season, along with the likes of Lustig, Matthews and Izzy. All of these players when we signed them weren’t considered Champions League class, not by a long shot. We have a loan signing from Man City signed for just over a million, a loan from Newcastle around £2m, a couple of bosmans from Cardiff, a bosman from Sweden, a bosman from Nottingham Forrest, a player signed for a pittance from Honduras, a player from the Belgium leagues for under a million and Scott Brown our only big outlay at £4.4m which is still absolute nothing when it comes to the Champions League.

Even at that, the best performers I have ever seen in the Champions League for us has been Henrik Larsson who was a £650k signing; Lubo, Didier Agathe and co. That team did have Chris Sutton, Neil Lennon and John Hartson but these were players who never had made and impact in the Champions League before as well.

I’ve seen Stephen Pearson running riot against Barcelona; I’ve seen Paul Hartley playing out of his skin against Spartak Moscow to get us to the group stages; I’ve seen Shaun Maloney and Kenny Miller rip Benfica a new one. The likes of Nakamura terrorising (the then best defence in the world) Manchester United. Nakamura was about £2m from a mid-league Italian team.

Signing established Champions League quality players is beyond us; what Celtic need to do is sign regular, normal players who will improve us as a team; if we improve as a team; we improve in the Champions League. The more times we qualify for the Champions League the stronger our budget gets; to sign that player who is a little bit better than the one who previously occupied that position. With the previous player either being relegated to a squad place or sold for a hefty profit.

That is the way forward; that is the way we will gradually become established as one of the better teams in the world. Right now, under Neil Lennon, we have had one very good Champions League campaign. We need to keep that up, we have qualified for the last 16 three times in 6 years. What we need to do is actually be in the Champions League group stages; 6 times in the next 6 years. That’s how we will end up vying for higher quality players in the long run but we will never, ever be competing for the players who are true Champions League players; the ones that have the quality to make us go all the way. That just won’t happen. Improve the team, in general, none of this the SPL is a scoosh pish so there is no point improving for that. If you make us a better team in general; we will be a better team in Europe as well.

 

I agree about always trying to improve the sqaud. But I do think that our signings, especially this year, were mainly to try and help us improve in Europe predominantly. I think they both go hand in hand, we shouldn't be looking to sign anyone that isn't going to improve the current team in my opnion. I think when the term "Champions League Quality" gets used, I think it probably means somebody that is going to come in and improve our current sqaud we have. That is what it means when I use it to be fair. Of course I'm not talking about signing Champions League regulars, but ones that will come in and dislodge a current member of the team. And by doing this, it will also improve us domestically. So I know what you are saying by improving our squad will automaticlly mean we improve in Europe. But I think we should be signing players specifically for Europe, and we will improve domestically also.

 

For the reasons given from yourself Dev, I completely see us as a clone of Ajax now.

Our remit is, as you say, to dominate domestically and continually advance/better ourselves year after year by continuing to qualify for the group stages of CL and bank the cash.

We are also aiming to develop the players we pick up, and - as with the case of the likes of Ki and Wanyama - sell them on for a ridiculously high profit.

As for "Champions League Quality Players" - we're not at a stage yet (far from it) where we will be able to go out and sign players like your Robbens, Messi's etc. Wanyama - imo - has all the capabilities of becoming the next MArcel DEsailly. If he fuliflls this at one point with another major European club, then we've contributed, and had plenty of financial contribution back.

What I would say is, I think the signing of van * has been a more "continental" style signing for us in terms of defence - he appears to be a defender who is vry capabe of playing the ball out from defence and picks out a good pass - unlike the majority of the way our defenders have been - ala punt it ta *. Hopefuly this is a sign that we are signing payers more for European competion, as opposed to players that are already established CL type players.

Happy days.

 

I totally agree, we are signing players with a view to how they will do in Europe and that is the way forward, however we won't know if we can make them Champions Leagu quality until we are there and they are doing the business.

The Ajax comparison is a good one, with one crucial difference, we have a free run at the Champions League just now. That's never been the case with Ajax.

 

Jesus, I don't know how yous can sit and type out posts that long. I'd be * by the end.

Agree with all of that, but it's something I'm guilty of to an extent too. I think of how potential signings could help us in Europe, rather than the impact they could make domestically. With us being next year's champions all but in name, it's easy to look beyond the SPL.

 

I know mate, I think everyone overlooks that the squad getting improved in general will improve us on all fronts.

 

The Ajax comparison is a good one. We do similar things to them but on a slightly smaller scale. Ajax have the advantage of being a bigger club in a bigger country and therefor can still attract better players than we can.

 

Also easier on work permits and the favt they established their youth football about 30 years ago!

 

A Champions League quality player to me is players who teams sign for £5-15million. I think thats what fans mean when they say it, which is why its hilarious and annoying. For example this would be a team of "Champions League Quality" signings.

Stekelenburg
Debuchy Hangeland Distin Olsson
Parker
Allen Fer
Odemwingie Long Mirallas

Basically guys we know could come in and be good enough players to do decent in the Champions League. But their price tags and wages are well above what we can afford.

We operate at a much lower level than that. We can have Champions League quality players like Lustig, Izaguirre, Ledley, Wanyama, Samaras, Hooper etc but only really if we sign them before they are established as Champions League quality and only valued at 0-£2.5million on wages under £15k a week.
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You're right. It's nonsense. It means nothing. It's a phrase. Simple.

 

You don't have to have played in the CL to be CL quality, as we have seen

 

You also don't need a big price tag to be Champions League quality

 

Only guy I rate there is Stekelenburg...

As many have said - price is not everything. There are 'Champions League quality' players out there, they just have to be found.

Price tag means nothing - it just means he has been proven. Celtic cannot afford that nowadays.

 

For me the issue is this. We need to attract a certain calibre of player that will help get us into the CL group stages and with a bit of luck, into the last 16. Sadly that type of player is rare in Scotland, and as much as the Club talks up The Academy, we don't seem to be able to bring them through to a point where they are either regulars or at least pressing for 1st Team places, so we look elsewhere. Indeed look at what has happened in the last few weeks in Germany. NL has been saying 'we are stretched', so we don't have strength in depth and need to add.
So what happens if we don't reach the CL group stages if we bring in overseas players. Will this 'CL Player' be satisfied with only SPL for the year? ..probably not. I have come to the conclusion that the folks at the top, have budgeted for us winning the SPL for the next few years and if we get into the CL group stages, then that's a bonus. If we don't then we haven't over-stretched ourselves financially. Do I agree with this? No.
Without over-spending and with the CL in mind, given our current squad, in this transfer window we should already have brought in a creative midfielder, a defensive midfielder (someone should already be identified with Big Vic now gone) and a wide player. If we do mean what we say that we are a 'selling club' and bring players in then move them on, we should have a constant flow of back ups identified so that when someone goes we bring them in..if we don't look until they have gone, then we are not serious. The post Vic situation will tell us if we do plan ahead or wait for it to happen.
Finally, the other aspect the Club needs to consider is this. The SPL is our bread and butter Comp. The Club, from reading comments last year, needs around 40,000 Season Ticket holders. If they keep offering the same product as they did last year,i.e basically the same squad with few fresh faces, are they going to get this number or are many going to take the view that they can watch games on Sky for a lot less than the cost of a Season ticket and then pay for the CL games as 'one-offs'? Sadly I think that's the way some will go and once they find something else to do on match day, it will be so difficult to get them back.

 

I totally agree. The fans are being short changed with the league form. Almost every player in Scotland was available to us and we did nothing. I know people don't rate other players in the league, but if you want serious bargains you'll get them here. That's why the Championship teams now look to the SPL. You see a lot of players go to the premiership who weren't rated by us and they've done well.

We could be signing guys for free or for a few hundred grand and selling them on for 2million. What we're doing is going after guys we can sell for 10million. This is not an easy thing to do and it can compromise the style of football you want to play.

Me personally i'd have looked at this transfer window and picked up all the talent from our league. That would have been too easy though. Now we go all out on these bigger transfer fees and the quality isn't necessarily any better.

So yes, i think they'll struggle to shift the season tickets and that is mainly down to the poor performances in the league.

The season before last we finished 32 points ahead of Motherwell, last season we finished 16 points ahead. The level of football we played was difficult to get excited about. If we're winning games 5-0 we'd maybe have a full house every game.

We've just left it too late to accept that Wanyama was a massive part of our success. Take 3,4 or 5 injuries and we're rolling out guys who aren't better than players who play for Dundee United or Motherwell. It's an impossible task to explain to a Celtic fan that Ojamaa's a cracking player, or that we could get one good season from McFadden or that Billy MCKay might score goals for us. Absolutely impossible.

It's really about sticking to the guns of ultra bargain shopping first and foremost, basing it on talent and the entertainment value of winning convincingly.Ojamaa, Russell, Mackay-Steven and Billy McKay would cover any unforseen developments such as Hooper leaving or any of the guys that were out injured for long spells last season, picking up injuries again.

It would have given us more of an attacking threat too and a good pool of experienced SPL heads and that would take care of league business. Then you look for guys who can go big on transfer fees. The guys from the SPL, their deals could all have been sorted in a few days and we're in a right good position, whereaas now i can see us going into a bit of a panic should the friendly game tomorrow go * up.

 

Don't even think I'll read the rest of this, but.........Dev.....spot on. Does my * * right in.

We don't buy Champions League players....WE MAKE...Champions League players.

 

Top post

The bolded paragraph in particular is absolutely 100% spot on. Something I feel a lot of clubs down south forget is that each signing should be viewed as a small piece of a puzzle, towards building a better, more versatile side. That's why it infuriates me when people right us of against a team based solely on them having "big names". There are teams full of big name footballers who still make schoolboy errors and cant hold a defesive line, won't chase back and look disinterested most of the time.

The only thing I would disagree with is your defintion of CL quality players. The guys you listed fall into the world class bracket. IMO we do have a number of CL quality players although probably none of them were on that level when they signed.

 

Definitely.

Also, Roskopikachu, we've had this out a few times. We should aim better than the majority of players in the SPL and getting olayers like Wanyama in is better than getting dross like Tom Hately.