Best years well and truly behind us?

Good European nights will come back. But we all have to learn to be patient and let Lenny do his job and develop a consistent team not chopping and changing every transfer window

 

* me the pessimism! If we win the league this season, this time next year were in the Group Stages of the Champions League.

Scottish Football was at no great high during either MON or GS European Adventures. Most of best players were also foriegn

But SPL going the way of Welsh or Irish Leagues!!! Could you imagine just 1,000 turing up at Paradise!?

Keep the Faith! Hail! Hail!

 

If we win the league this season we are now not automatically in the Champions League. The winner will have to play a play off and the team that finishes 2nd cannot qualify for the Champions League at all.

 

I'm not so sure of that.

I get the impression that most folk's view of Celtic's history is extremely selective. They pick the period of five years or so under Stein when we really were one of the top clubs in world football, maybe add in the two years under Strachan when we were a Champions League knockout stage club, and the one year under MON when we had an exceptional UEFA Cup run. Then they look at us now and say "what has happened to us?"

But in doing that we forget most of the rest of our history. We forget the periods in the 80s and 90s when we were * awful in Europe - really woeful. We forget seasons like 77-78, when we finished 5th in the SPL. We forget the period between 1938 and 1965 when we won the domestic league only once.

In fact, the present period in Celtic's history - i.e. the start of the 21st century - is something of a golden era in the club's history. Best to appreciate it while you can.

 

no chance, we'll be back. dont know when but we'll be back

 

people said the same when i started following celtic 12 years ago. nobody could have seen the treble or seville coming. we'll be back. we'll always be back. the club is too big, too special and too important to go quietly into the night

 

Lets say we are a sleeping giant.

 

Stein had a lot more than 5 years, but I would take another of his 5 years and any of his players, this lot couldn't lace any of their boots

 

Agree with this assessment. I don't think in the next few years we will be able to build a team to rival how utterly fantastic the legendary squads of the past were, but I certainly don't believe it's impossible for us to reach that level again, at some point in the future. Some day. :icon_mrgreen:

 

I think they are it's been boring since 2004, it will only get good again if we got into the English League or another new European League thing. Until then we'll just be a * team from Scotland without the money to be as good as most teams in the best Leagues.

 

Even under Strachan when we beat Man Utd and AC Milan it wasn't as good as it was with O'Neill beating Barcelona, Liverpool, Juventus and them because under Strachan we were lucky to win and werent a good team but with O'Neill's team it felt good to know we were a good team and expected to beat anyone we played and knew we could.

 

Yes, but we weren't one of the world's best clubs straight away he took over. As I said, that period lasted about five years.

The point I was making is that, if you take the best five years of ANY club's history, the present team is always going to pale by comparison. Stands to reason.

In fact - for Celtic - the last ten years has been the second best period in the club's entire history. If anyone is not happy with it, then they'll likely be a long time waiting to be happy.

 

Winning isnt everything though. I would rather be going to the games and enjoying them every week seeing good teams. Than the way it is now, just pure boring and we might win the League because the other teams done a bit worse than us.

In the 80's we won the League 4 times or something but it was a great decade as there was a few good teams challenging. We won more this decade but only half of it was good.

 

Oh sure - no arguments there. The SPL is not as competitive as it was, so less fun.

But as far as our team goes, it wasn't a case of being pretty good but being in a competitive league. Our usual European adventure in the 80s was a first round exit. We were getting beat off teams like Partisan Tirana. In a European context, we've been a far better team in the last ten years than we were then.

 

In terms of playing quality, I think we could be looking at some bleaker years ahead. I hope I'm wrong. I can't see us doing much in Europe just now although the current team has potential to do fairly well.

 

we had an incredibly passionate and all the players had a burning desire in their gut to win

nakamura was quality, couldve been a premier league player but didnt make the move west soon enough

 

theres ups and doons, we must be on our way up at this point in time.

we have to be realistic,CL is up for grabs, it was there last season and now
we did not take it so we move on hopefully we stop buying 69 players a few days before we play qualifiers

a strong,stable team can go forward, lets hope so

 

Strachan's side "lucky to win" It's funny how people recall certain periods that's all I'm going to say....

On topic though, this is perhaps the most pessimistic thread ever. I mean if there was the internet capability to do it, we could've had this thread at the start of every season since 1968, what a hoot that would be as a support.

The reality is that we STILL have the squad, resources and potential to reach beyond the last 16 of the CL. I firmly believe that. However it's whether we get the manager to enable this potential and Lennon might just be the man.

But not achieving that is by no means utter failure. A good run in the UEFA Cup is more than possible as Rangers proved a few seasons ago. The players in question were far from world beaters but a good manager brought out the results.

I reckon what we need more than anything is stability. The past 2 seasons have been merry-go-rounds and it's about time we settled on an 11.

So yeah, the days of winning the CL may be behind us but that means * all.