| Match Pictures | Matches: 2009 – 2010 | 2009-2010 Pictures |
Trivia
- First leg of two.
- Rangers are in auto we have to go through qualifiers.
- Tony Mowbray's first competitive fixture since taking over as manager.
Review
Celtic dealt a big blow in Mowbray's first competitive game. Mirroring Gordon Strachan's reign, Mowbray has lost his first game in Europe and has dented what was an otherwise fair start to his managerial honeymoon. An early goal due to some poor defending meant we had our backs against he wall and despite plenty of chances we couldn't convert this. Some poor finishing from our players didn't help and it wasn't only just a new season thing. Changes may be drastically needed.
We have to win the second leg. Vital we win the away game now.
Teams
CELTIC:
Boruc;
Hinkel, Caldwell, Loovens, Naylor;
McGeady, N'Guemo, Donati (Fox 67), Maloney;
Fortune (Samaras 60), McDonald (Killen 60).
Subs not used:Zaluska, Crosas, Flood, O’Dea.
Referee:Nicola Rizzoli (Italy).
Articles
Pictures
- Match Pictures
KStreet
MOTM
Stats
CELTIC v DINAMO MOSCOW
Possession
| 47% | 53% |
Shots on target
| 6 | 7 |
Shots off target
| 8 | 4 |
Corners
| 7 | 1 |
Fouls
| 10 | 18 |
Articles
Dinamo Moskva 0-1 Celtic (a match report from a fan's angle, Ricky Swann of KStreet)
Collecting my match ticket the night before the game was both a milestone occasion for me and yet also very unsettling. Sitting on my mate Michael’s couch, I was distracted from looking at the precious Champions League ticket by constantly fidgeting and struggling with my seating position.
This was truly a milestone occasion as this would be my 1st match back at Paradise in over a season! Forget about the Credit Crunch understandably killing off season ticket renewals for many fans, the arrival of our 2nd child swallowed up every piece of spare time in our lives to the point that neither my wife or I could make a single match last season. Nappies, teething, crawling and feeding ensured that our affiliation with Celtic was confined to Setanta (remember them?), Sky Sports, a 2nd half grabbed in a nearby pub, or a 1st half listened to eagerly on a car radio. So to finally get a chance of a holiday from work, combining with my mate heading to Italy for a wedding and his ticket becoming available, and my wife being able to deal with the kids while she’s waiting to start her new job, it was truly an alignment of miracle proportions. And yet, this moment of synchronisity was being ruined by the most annoying and uncomfortable feeling underneath.
The couch, indeed both couches I now realised, were covered with a mass of new green scatter cushions! I hate cushions! It’s one of those mental feminine hobbies that I find both illogical and unnecessary, and has led to many a ‘debate’ with my wife at home. I therefore began to cheekily berate Michael’s wife for this textile invasion, while she sat having her glamorous hair sculpted by her personal hairdresser – I kid you not; this is the kind of upper-class friends I have to aspire to, don’t you know! She gave a cheeky smile in reply and gladly announced that it was Michael himself who had purchased and installed the cushions.
If you’ve ever had one of those awkward moments with a good mate that you’ve long thought of as a kindred, masculine soulmate with a healthy interest in alcohol, fitba and the feminine form, and who suddenly tells you that he’s coming out of a certain closet or is retiring as an oil rigger to become a florist, you’ll appreciate the tension that I suddenly felt in the room. I made my excuses, paid my thanks for the ticket without actually making eye contact, and promptly headed for the door. Celtic after all, awaited my return.
The brethern of the Carluke Shamrock C.S.C. milled around outside The Crown in the evening sunshine awaiting for the first home bus of the season. A trip down under and a Wembley Cup (won of course!) had been the only recent distraction. Now it was down to business, back at home, and straight into a European match against Russian visitors! So bring on the victory bus to Paradise was the cry…
Twenty minutes later, the coach finally arrived to a chorus of discontent from the mildly liquored guests, much to the amusement of a broadly grinning Well-fan – our long trusted “Watty” – trusted that is, to be late, always.
I may have missed an entire season of travelling with the club but certain things had obviously not changed during my absence. The arrival of the fashionably-late driver easily laid the foundation of the banter heading along the M74 into the traffic-coned avenues of London Road.
“Aye very good Watty ya nugget! That’ll be a breach of contract I think” mocked a seated guest.
“Shut it, you’ve only ever been to two games anyway ya clown”, replied our unruffled driver.
“Aye, but you’ve got a 100% record of being late to both those games ya Hun!” came the retort.
With the witty dialogue dealt with, bus fees collected, and football cards completed, scratched and won, the bus jolted to a halt close to Paradise. The entire Commonwealth Games preparation area of the East End had been transformed beyond all recognition for me. Flats and apartments filled every piece of space from ground to sky. Lane changes, road adjustments and traffic signals appeared from every angle. Thank goodness for some recognisable sights to keep me acclimatised: the tatty exterior of the Association club; back-turned fans relieving themselves against hoardings and fences; and the dodgy ‘car park assistants’ who seemed to jump out from every pavement crack to collect pound coins for fans’ cars parked on pavements, grass and factory space. And finally, the salubrious entrance of rot iron fencing of The Belvidere Bowling Club. Pennies in the box, autographs scribbled in the visitors book, endless queues to the bar, bottles of beer grabbed quickly from the overworked bar, then outside into the ‘garden’ for some drinks and chat.
The time came for the march to the temple and I was feeling in good spirits. The miserable end of last season ripped a lot of passion out of football for me. I was, and remain, absolutely convinced that we had faced a lifetime opportunity to destroy our city rivals for a generation. Everything had come into alignment – the Murray Moonbeams had been extinguished; the false dawns of PLG and the Watty Sequel were being exposed as distateful football; the rampaging Orcs were being hounded by Police, UEFA and media like no time before; every inch of the financial disaster the club was in, was being investigated and ridiculed in detail; and before us lay one of the oldest, most miserable and pathetic Rangers teams we have EVER seen. So, like our poor Celtic team and club had been destroyed for 9 seasons in the 90’s, we now had our chance with a Hun club lying on its deathbed. But as history shows, instead of pulling the plug, we meekly knelt down beside their deathbed and gave them CPS.
Every single level of our club had blown it – directors tightening purse strings when a single purchase could have made all the difference; a manager consistently tinkering with squads and tactics, seemingly unaware of his own thoughts and plans; and players unable to easily quash such a pathetic Rangers team and instead blowing 7-point leads on more than one occasion.
That abject failure had ripped out most of the passion and wartime psychology I had following Celtic. It was now much more diluted, reduced to a simple appreciation of the game and our place within it. I feared that my spirit had been so destroyed that I wouldn’t feel ANYTHING anymore with the hoops. I needn’t have worried.
The banter was good, the company was enjoyed, and I had a much more relaxed calm approach to the match ahead. But as I turned that last corner under the “405″ sign inside the north stand to the final chorus of You’ll Never Walk Alone, I was stopped dead in my tracks with emotion. I had started to unconsciously whistle along to the tune as I heard it sang on my long hike upstairs within the bowels of the stadium. However, on that last turn I then saw the majesty of the hooped support revealed to me. A sea of scarves swept from left to right covering every line of sight in front of me. The chorus of voices now hammered my senses in front, and also swept around behind me like some enormous cinema surround sound that Mr Dolby could only dream of. I literaly stopped dead at the mouth of the tunnel, much to the annoyance of the over-eager steward on duty, and gazed at the army of fans in front of me. Young, tiny boys with no idea of the painful years of support ahead of them; teenaged boys flirting between Celtic and girls for their devotion; married men and couples standing side by side; and elderly father figures stood and grasping their scarves aloft with tight, aged hands that could tell of decades of support. It was a timely and reassuring moment that convinced me that my support and connection with the club had some immovable core that would never be fully eradicated no matter how many times the club might let me down, or events would conspire to bring me heartache or reality-checks.
The moment over and the game quickly ensued with hooped and blue shirts swarming over the pitch far below. A tiny pocket of Russian fans occupied the south-east stand beyond, chanting on their team but easily drowned out by the incessant chants and prayers to Tully, Murdoch, Auld and Hay. Not too many instances took up the first few minutes as both teams poked and prodded.
I was eager to view the new recruits N’Guemo and Fortune but it was the blue-shirted No.10 – Alexander Kerzhakov – who was starting to catch the eye. A few twist and turns by Maloney on the left flank and some fairly strong runs by Fortune brought the crowd to its feet, while the wandering positions of our full-backs started to raise blood pressures and concerns in equal measure.
And then it happened, like a lot of Celtic European mishaps take shape – early on, quite surreal, very painful, and almost without anyone really noticing. The ball had bundled around very innocently over on the far right wing and then somehow, somehow, managed to get pushed goalwards, nutmeg Gary Caldwell and then get poked under Artur Boruc by a Moskovite wearing the ridiculously high number 99 on his back. Most of the crowd took a double-take, as did the Celtic players realising they were now a goal down somehow, and the realisation was then finished by the Russians, who suddenly realised their luck. It was a real non-event and quite bizzare.
And so, in quite typical Celtic-European fashion, we began the chasing. The 1st half can only be remembered for the incredible misses. Looking back I took from the midfield the highlights of NGuemo’s passion, running and involvement in the game, and the lowlights were the hiding exploits of Mr Donati and his fancy white boots, that seemed to help him hide all the easier somehow.
At the back, the positional sense of Hinkel and Loovens was terrifyingly easy for the Russians to exploit. Caldwell’s long-range passing was bewildering, as was Boruc’s failure to kick or throw the ball out from goal without passing it to the opposition or make the passes look like assaults on the tiny figures of Maloney and McGeady. Naylor completed the untidy defence as usual, and was only replaced by new bhoy Fox late on in the match.
Up front is where it really showed in the 1st period. We had fought back from our shocking loss by eventually (and I really mean eventually after so many times just running right into defence) making some nice chances. But our front guys weren’t there to exploit. Skippy seemed to be ‘the hole’ rather than playing in the hole, he was so absent. McGeady got on the ball a few times but did nothing with it. And Fortune had a very inauspicous home debut where his misses would have had the Scottish football media salivating over the headline shockers they could write. It’s only one home match and we will undoubtedly give him time to settle and see if he can add deadliness to his running and holding skills, but the hacks would have been loving the easy comparison of the multi-million pound attacker’s lanky frame and profligacy in front of goal, easily being drawn to a certain Mr T Andre Flo. Come on Marc, prove them wrong this season!
The shocking misses continued for the 2nd half and we could easily have won 2 or 3 games if we had taken them all. Balls skying over the bar (Maloney), sitters bashed into the ground (Fortune), shots cracked off players instead of the net (Hinkel), and easy headers aimed straight at the keeper (Samaras) – we just kept blowing it time and again. Heads were being held in hands on many, many occasions.
Apart from the twisting and turning of Maloney, at least in the 1st half, there was not a single sign of invention from Celtic. The Russians were never going home with headaches from working out our cunning ploys. Rigid in position (or out of them if you’re looking at defenders) we barely moved, unless to move a few yards closer to collect a pass. No overlaps, no swaps, no decoys, no position changes, no harrying, no running. Endless routines of repeated failed passes and the most shocking crosses. Eventually, we even became bored with our own lack of creation and in the 2nd half we resorted to a full-on back-to-front high ball assualt – very worrying.
The Russians were no great shakes but they contained us very easily. It could all have been different if some of those early chances were taken of course. Their tempo and rhythm was a thousand times better than ours, but that’s to be expected from them being so far into their own season – we’re still on the beaches from close-season. They easily snuck in behind our full backs and weren’t afraid to crack shots from outside the box – unlike us. A more creative team could easily unravel them. The obstacle is we only have another week to work that one out. Our headlong rush into Europe before we’ve even finished our friendly schedules, highlights more consequences from our abject failure last season – we’ve brought it all on ourselves.
Can we do a Motherwell of being beaten by 1 and then scoring 8 in the next match? Can Mr Mowbray expedite his understanding of the personnel he has at his disposal? Can new guys Fox, NGuemo and Fortune get in and turn it on in record time? Only time will tell, and not much time at that.
Leaving the ground and eventually leaving the bus park – a new tactic we tried with our infamous coach driver taking personal slight at the bus park stewards on the way out and almost causing an incident before being cajoled into peace by his passengers – I reviewed my feelings after a game very much a ‘once in a blue moon’ affair for me these days. I was disappointed at the result and our performance and slightly worried for the return match. Yet at the same time I had found reassurance.
Yes, as feared the wild unbound passion and fighting spirit had definitely been diluted by last year’s fiasco. Yet in its place now remained a calm but very definite knowledge that Celtic still remain in my heart. In place of the wild, illogical, heart-thumping, do-or-die following to the death, is a much more peaceful, enjoyable certainty that Celtic hasn’t and can’t ever, leave me. Each match is much better prioritised, I have a reality sense of our position in world football and finances, and I have a healthy realisation of where my support stands in relation to family, friends, humour and life. A calm sense of unarguable certainty that Celtic will always be a part of me, that I couldn’t walk away from football, and that I certainly couldn’t support any other team. And it’s a really nice feeling to have during such uncertain times. Moscow awaits…..
Yours in Celtic,
Ricky Swan
Mowbray and Celtic left with mountain to climb.
Provided by: Irish Times