Celtic v Benfica - Wednesday 7.45pm on Sky Sports 3

bbc report is * awful as well. since when was not firing on all cylinders and getting a draw to an established CL side ever due any stick??? we're got such a young team and this was their first CL match, big respect is sue surely!

 

It's no harm that expectations remain high. Celtic have a great home record in the CL and have a lot to live up to. The draw was acceptable given that it was first time out in the CL for some of the team and that important players were missing or not fully fit.

Still if Celtic were hoping to qualify from the Group they really needed to win last night. Celtic will be up against it now to get 2nd place.

A point in Moscow will be a great result, that will keep us in the mix for qualification. We need to remain competitive in the Group throughout the campaign, in order to get the full benefit from the CL experience.

 

not trying to be a doom monger but we werent very good

we had some terrific defensive performances but way that up against a team who were impotent up front

technically they bullied us by their technique and passing it was clear to all who watched the game that they Benfica were the better footballing side

to the positives

we were defensively solid

wanyama first half till he was booked anyway was like 2 men in 1
brown seemed to be doing more of a marking job on aimar (i'm not a fan of browns due to his poor use of the ball) but they'res no denying it without the ball last night he was a warrior especially in the last 15 minutes
commons and forrest were largely missing for most of the match forrest more so
miku never got any service he must be wondering what he's signed up for

i think 3 of the back 4 were superb, answers on a postcard what happened to izzy player of the year ???
mulgrew was a surprisingly good on the left as a makeshift left midfielder but we can do better in that position

where we went wrong

i thought after our excellent 10 minute start it showed that the continental players are much more flexible and intelligent on the field of play

they started out numbering our 2 central midfielders playing 1-2's and 3rd man running moves

i also thought benfica were excellent at closing down our players they suffocated us by their pressing

over all there's not a lot we could do with the injuries we had in the team we put out

but i would have liked forrest commons and mulgrew to realise we were being outnumbered centrally and to tuck in to help brown and wanyama which they never done

therefore they never matched their counterparts in game intelligence

has these players tucked in and help brown and wanyama we probably would have got more possession and possibley the win

 

No wonder Forrest played * if he was trying to play goalkeeper as well as be creative down the right. :icon_mrgreen:

 

Benfica are a WORLD CLASS team. And considering we were without Ledley, Samaras, Kayal and a 100% Hooper I really don't think 0-0 is the end of the world haha. We definitely gave a good account of ourselves and I'm glad we earned a point.

 

i wouldnt say they are world class but i agree with the rest

 

Not world class but for sure a team that is of a last 16/quarter final standard. Technically they are very good and we saw that last night, aimar's touch and awareness is mesmerizing at times.

 

really proud of the guys. there are some very deluded people among our support who think we should of been steam rolling benfica and could do nothing but hurl abuse at our players. benfica are a top class team and we competed with them with a number of key players missing a point is a good start.

 

Not an emotional person at all but after 4 years of waiting and so many disappointments along the way, I must say I had a lump in my throat during YNWA last night looking across at the Jock Stein stand etc.

Being saying since we qualified that we should get rid of this 'we're just happy to be here' nonsense... but I really am just happy to be back.

Well capable of winning in Moscow.

 

We had more possesion and more passes than Benfica.....

 

oh come on!!!

where in the pitch did we have more passes and more possession ?

 

Wonder if Al Lamont has read that?

 

All over it. It's a fact.

We didn't do enough with that possesion or the amount of corners we had but we did have more possesion and more passes than them.

We just didn't have as much of the ball as we are used to in the SPL or the ability to attack them as much as we do in the SPL. Which is to be expected. Especially with Ledley, Kayal and Sammy out.

It was a cagey performance but I was impressed with our possession play, it's a good sign for the future. We were careful about were we were playing it, we were waiting for people to get into the box before trying to lump the ball in, which usually doesn't happen with us in Europe.

With 10 Champions League debutants, 3 players who can be argued as the best in our team out and playing a team that reached the Quarter Finals last season, almost beating the eventual winners to get to the Semis I am quite pleased with that performance.

 

This,pretty much.

Thought the Referee was terrible,really bad,but maybe that's just my green tinted specs.

 

I am content with the draw as we are missing 5 first team players, I think we missed Samaras and James Forrest did not live up to expectations, he is still young though and learning at this level.

I thought Emilio put in some good tackles but misplaced to many simple passes although he is not the only one at fault in that department.

Now we must go away from home and pick up some points to prove that this monkey is well and truely off our backs.

 

I dont remember having a problem with the referee to be honest, thought he generally made the right decisions.

 

The only problem I had with the ref was his reluctance to really stamp out the time-wasting. Which, may I add, I remember starting around the hour mark ffs .

Aside from that I don't think he was that bad.

 

The referee was great for us imo, a lot of referees would have given a penalty for the Forster challenge, tbh he got absolutely everything spot on.

 

Firstly I would`ve loved to win the game but really we should be struggling to compete with the a large number of sides in the Champions League.

Onto the game, I think we can play better. Would it have got us the win, I`m not sure. Despite what various media sources believe that we should be beating the likes of Benfica; a team as some media sources seem to forget are no mugs and played some good stuff in flashes last night. I also think the ref played a big part in the game; chunt liked the sound of his own whistle and disrupted the game time after time for even the slightest contact. However I agree that neither alleged penalty incidents were penalties.

I thought Benfica and Spartak at Home were our best chances of getting 3 points in the group. While we didn`t achieve a win, we competed with a good Benfica side.

No shame in last nights performance.

 

A little underwhelmed last night TBH. The team never gave the fans anything to cheer about so the atmosphere didn't reach it's potential, I'm disappointed with the lack of chances we created.

4 European cleansheets in a row now though, which is positive.