What we learn from tonight

I thought Erik had a great first half, Toure was iffy all night, and I thought that may have been Lustig's worst game in a Celtic shirt, at least when I've seen him play. The rest is spot on. Can't judge Gamboa off that, Sinclair proved he's capable against the best team in the world, and Barca make me laugh and cry at the same time.

 

Lustig was covering that boy all night, considering he has * all pace now he done well I thought. A lot of the time that back 3 were 1 on 1 with either Messi, Suarez or Neymar. It was non stop for them.

 

Very un-Celtic like setup for mine.

Celtic is for courage, daring and adventure, not for playing 5 at the back and parking the bus.

If we've learnt anything from tonight it should be that there is no point pretending we can scrape a point with a defensive lineup away from home.

Weak as *.

 

No to sink 6 cans and a bottle of red on a school night

 

Don't know why anybody bothered with this forum last night/this morning. I feared a brutal match against this lot and we got it. They are so far away from us in terms of quality it's unreal, don't even start to think "what if this" or "he's pish". As a team, man for man they are just 10x better than us so let's not get disheartened as we've been superb (by our own standards) so far this season and are still progressing. Our home games are our chance to show what we're about in this group.

 

You could see the fear in Gamboa's eyes when they lined up. Might be a goodun but he wasn't at the races last night.

Bitton hasn't got the bottle and keeper is as limited as Gordon.

 

Nothing.

We are punching above our weight and have done well to even get to the group stages.

Playing in a * league will from now on , always leave us vulnerable.

 

Barca are fitter and more athletic as well as being more brutal in the ball. That we know.
Midfield not steely enough to break up there wee one twos in the middle oif the park.
Our defence line was too stand offish. I am guesing Brendan said to them all don't get sent off for a wreckless challeng.
Anyway put it out of your mind- remember this is a team that f*cked Real Madrid 5-0 not long ago if I remember rightly.
We are still on course for my prediction of 4 points.

 

We should have signed a midfielder

 

if you are carrying even 1 player never mind 3 or 4 you will be found out very quickly against the best teams .we should hav been trying to think 3 steps ahead and get tighter to were the ball could go ,our back line was way to straight easy to pass through ,tried to play the offside trap did not work .

 

Spending around £5m in a transfer window and a few freebies won't cut it at this level

 

Bitton looks like he couldn't GAF. But like that for some time, never convinced by the bloke, so inconsistent.

Maybe the wrong night to experiment with De Vries and Gamboa.

But Barca are class, we wont be the last to cop a hiding at Camp Nou this season.

We are a work in progress.

 

We need to replace Bitton in January. Its already too late.

Yes, Tierney had a rough night, but it was right to play him. He will learn from a drubbing like that.

Shouldn't have debuted Gamboa against Barca and wont judge him on that game.

De Vries needs to be more vocal with his defence. Not blaming him for any of the goals really, but there needs to be more communication.

 

Barca away is the worst first game in the CL.

Atletico Madrid must have some defence.

 

Parking the bus against a team specifically set up to break that down is never going to work. Switch the DMs out for some midfielders more capable at retaining possession and suddenly the waves of attack ease and the defenders get a chance to regroup.

I'm not going to claim that this'll result in a win, but I also don't believe it'd be as bad a result.

BR shouldn't have backed down from the more attacking style of play.

 

What we're seeing is a young team being taught what it takes to live at the top of the game. That will make or break them. We know we can rely on Toure, Lustig, Brown and Sinclair.

What last night, and the next 5 matches, will show the manager is how many of his players he can rely on at the top level. The SPFL can't teach you that.

 

Last season they scored -

4 against ; Levante, Real Madrid, Real Sociedad, Real Betis, Grenada, Eibar, Espanyol

5 against ; Rayo Valecano (2), Espanyol, Sevilla

6 against ; Athletic Bilbao, Celta Vigo, Getafe, Sporting Gijon, Roma

7 against Valencia

8 against Deportivo

Last night was tough to take but looking at that, you can see that even teams with far better players than us are struggling to cope with with will probably go down as one of the best strike forces to grace the game. They were unbelievable last night. Could honestly have scored 10-15 if they really had to.

We need to add a bit of steel to midfield. Bitton was absolutely woeful. I'm not Browns biggest fan but the first half he was good, think it got too much in the end but with a better player beside him, we could have kept it down a bit. Sinclair and Roberts done well at times to get us out of our half and Tierney and Gamboa, who was badly exposed all night, did overlap at times. The second half I think everything caught up with our players. A lot of Barcelona players didn't play at the weekend, we 9(?) of our starting 11 play a full 90 minutes on top of the travelling.

We badly need a goalkeeper who inspires confidence in our defence. De Vries & Gordon don't.

Tactically BR got it wrong. As good as they were, we left far too much space for them to get into. Hopefully in the remaining group games we see a better shape.

 

Barcelona don't need space.

They are * awesome.

 

It wasn't a big shock tbh. I thought it would be 4 or 5 but 7 is obviously worse. We struggled to get to the CL and never signed a good player after that. We knew what we were in for.

Sometimes, you need to spend to compete and we didn't.

Main thing is, we're still on the way to 10 in a row.

 

Realistically who could we buy for say £7m that would have gotten us a couple of goals last night? We certainly couldn't get anyone that could help create 7.

I agree, we should have pushed the boat out and we probably will next season once Brendan has found his feet. But Barca is Barca, they're on another level. They make teams with better players than us look *.