DMAA

Buzzing for the start of a new season. There are many warnings from history of teams dramatically falling away after a hugely successful season, we don’t have to look past ourselves for those. But I just don’t see that happening here. Our squad still looks very strong, and they still look in total disarray. In 2000, Celtic appointed Martin O’Neill who had been very successful in England. He spent £20m on players who had proven themselves in a much stronger league than ours, and players who were tailor made for Scottish football in terms of their physicality. In 2021, they have appointed a guy who has no experience of British (or even European) football and appears to play a style of football which is known to be very risky in Scotland. His two main signings so far are 5 ft 7 and 5 ft 5 and have no experience of British football and questionable pedigree. A couple of Sheffield Wednesday youths barely merit a mention at this stage. Their latest signing Starfelt is the only signing they’ve made so far that I think will notably improve them, and even then from the stats I’ve seen he is nowhere near as physical and commanding as Helander. All that to say it’s great to be starting a new season filled with confidence and just looking forward to watching us play competitive games again.

Yes

Good luck to George. I always liked him for how comfortable he was on the ball, but he lacked something defensively. A few years ago we were letting go starting 11 players for peanuts, or nothing at all. It is testament to the recruitment team that we are now selling a 5th choice centre back for reportedly upwards of a million plus add ons. I think they have got good value for money too.

They don’t, very unlikely IMO.

Real still put out a team of talented players and it was the manner of the win which was pleasing, not just the result. I’m feeling better about the beginning of the season now. It has been strange having so many first teamers missing in preseason. And even yesterday we started the game without arguably 3/4 starting players in Aribo, Jack, Roofe and Morelos. And some of those who did start haven’t had a run of games, so it was pleasing to see that they handled a more demanding fixture just fine. I’m just anxious to get the close of the transfer window now. We have some excellent players who, if we keep, we will surely win the league again. But we look strong enough to cope with the loss of one big player.

These things aren’t really in our hands. If Kamara was the one we had bids coming in for then he would be the one to go because we aren’t going to deny people the chance to triple their wages and play in a big league, it’s purely a matter of making sure the fee is acceptable to us and then finding a replacement.

I think the biggest question for us over the next 6 weeks is who we have to sell. If the Veerman rumours are true, that would suggest we are selling Kamara. I dread the thought of selling Kamara, but Veerman looks outstanding. If we can retain our main men though it’s all about staying focused, avoiding complacency and getting fit fast because we have recruited smartly so far and already have a strong squad.

From a 5 minute look at Malmo, they don't seem very strong at all. In the transfer market they wheel and deal, they obviously don't have much money. They are top of their league but they concede a lot of goals for a team top of the league. Bizarrely, they are 11th out of 16 in their league for goals conceded. And only scraped past Riga in the previous qualifier, 2-1 on aggregate. Despite that, they are well into their season so it's a potential banana skin for us.

PSV or Galatasaray for Midtjylland.

I’ll settle for that draw. A much better draw than Ferencvaros I think.

It’s been a strange preseason so far due to so many first-teamers missing games. Assuming they are fit, hopefully Kent, Morelos, Barisic and Helander will play in the next game.

I'd rather have Patterson than Liam Palmer who is mediocre and qualifies only via a grandparent born in Scotland.

This isn't a Scottish election. The highest standards are maintained for Gersnet polls.

This for me, and recency bias is working against Tavernier. For me, when they performed at their best has to come into it. Tavernier was the best player in the league when we were in a real battle for the title. Celtic only dropped 2 points in their first 9 games before we beat them. That loss caused them to briefly fall away but then they rallied in December before, yet again, a loss to Rangers killed their momentum. Only at that point did many Rangers fans allow themselves to believe we were going to win the league. Tavernier's performances were a huge part in pushing us ahead of Celtic when they were still very much in the title race. Good form in recent months is great but of less value than when the pressure was really on, in my opinion. Of course, I don't begrudge votes for any member of this squad and believe there is strong case for many of them.

Pretty depressing what has happened in this country since Saturday. The faux outrage is off the scale. 2014 has changed this country for good.

My favourite stat is Celtic have conceded more league goals at Ibrox than Rangers this season. In this season of all seasons. Absolutely glorious stuff.

I was hoping this would be the case when he joined RC at the beginning of the season but I'm afraid it looks very unlikely now that he'll make the cut with us. He has only played more than half an hour 14 out of 36 league games with them, and many (if not all) of those appearances were due to injuries to others. It has been a similar story with McCrorie, I had hoped he was ready to step up but his season with Livingston hasn't gone to plan at all.

Kamara would definitely be one of the hardest to replace.

Every starting player we sell introduces risk, and it will be very difficult to decide how much risk to take ahead of absolutely massive Champions League qualifiers. These qualifiers are arguably the most important in our club’s history. Progressing to the groups this season would make us massive favourites to win the league and therefore attain the big prize at the end of next season, automatic qualification to the groups. It would be far easier for the board to re-invest prize money from this season when there is an enormous cash prize guaranteed to the winners of next season’s title. That was a bit of a digression to say the least.

Saw this, an excellent analysis. Seems he could be someone who could play a Sadio Mane type role as a wide forward. He doesn’t look particularly suited to being a central target man.

On the face of it, it's a great piece of business. He's an ideal age, just turned 24, isn't costing us anything and looks like he is improving every season. Very hard to judge from the limited footage of him though.

He's been injured. But I'm not expecting much from him at all to be honest, at least not next season. Even when he was fit he struggled to get game time in a very weak Wycombe side.

I do normally watch and listen after we beat them. I don’t expect much, but my word, last night was by far the worst coverage I have seen. Sportscene, most people have probably already heard about. The whole thing was discussed from Celtic’s point of view, our last two goals weren’t even shown. They could have talked about Defoe scoring in what could be his last game but no, it ends with a literal Scott Brown tribute reel showing him scoring goals against Rangers. You couldn’t make it up. Sportsound, I have to admit I was expecting at least some improvement on that but it was dire listening. They managed to talk about the transition at Celtic for about 40 minutes. All the ins and outs, will Lawwell still advise from afar? Literally nothing said about Rangers other than in the context of discussing what Celtic have to do because they have been surpassed. This is a disgrace from a national broadcaster. One journalist having his press privileges removed doesn’t come close to justification for the constant Celtic-centric analysis and coverage and shameless lack of praise/analysis/anything of us. Well, funnily enough they never tired of talking about us when we were in the doldrums.

A few candidates for this but Kent was superb. His confidence was at its peak yesterday and he reached another level.

This is pretty much what I saw. To be honest I’d be concerned if he was backup to Helander, who has an unfortunate habit of picking up injuries which can cause him to miss chunks of the season.