Ugh. CCV with one of the worst own goals you’ll see. Gift wrapped a goal for Club Brugge. A backpass gone awry. Not 100% his fault but he’ll get the bulk of the name. Schmeichel was in no-man’s land and in an awkward position as well. I don’t know why he didn’t slide left for the pass.
Lucky Bhoys! Celtic got bailed out by VAR on the 68th min as Brugge were inches offsides on a would-be goal. The right call though. Clear on the replay.
A bad day at the office for CCV but a job well done for Celtic. They're just 2 points off the elimination round and with Zagreb and rock-bottom Young Boys at home to come, it's hard to see them not qualifying. If everything comes together - beat Zagreb and Young Boys, draw with Villa - they could sneak 8th place and a direct route to the last 16. It's a remarkable turnaround from October 2nd when everyone was printing obituaries on yet another season of CL failure
Own goal aside - which does bring down his player rating - CCV was otherwise stellar. All that will be remembered is that own goal. I bet he successfully completed over 130 passes. He also made a couple of key inceptions / clearances and won anything in the air. Take away the own goal, CCV would have been among the best on the pitch. But….. that’s the way football rolls sometimes. That one play can skew everything. Luckily, the Bhoys earned a point and CCV was saved.
Let's just say that I can see a situation where the Celtic-Villa tie on the last day decides which one of them goes through to the Top 8 and CCV is one of the standout performers, even MOTM, in a defensive performance for the ages. He's a very good CB who had his one-every-18-months howler. Nothing more. If he's fit, he'll start this weekend, next weekend and every CL tie.
For sure. What’s funny…. he has lambasted for the howler by way more Americans than Celtic faithful. I assume because most Americans just saw the clip and not the match. Celtic faithful…. weren’t happy with the OG and maybe even more so if they didn’t equalize but like you said…. the sentiment was well…. It’s rarity from CCV.
A constant refrain is that he's the best CB they've had since Van Dijk. Only Krisstofer Ajer comes close and if the fans were picking a XXI century Celtic XI, the vast majority would plump for him and Van Dijk as the CB partnership. One fan I know slightly but who really knows his football compares him to Scott Sinclair: far, far too good for the English Championship but a tiny bit short of EPL standard, which makes him someone Celtic are lucky to have. He has a hell of a lot of credit in the bank there.
Even player is going to make mistakes but it's the numbers that decide whether you are mistake prone or it was an anomaly.
Agreed. As my Glaswegian cousins have told me… One side of town he’ll never have to pay for meal again. On the other side of town, they’d spit in his food. That’s legend status.
Ended 5-0. CCV 100% on his duels, but this one went to sleep early. Cletic have finally pulled away from Aberdeen a bit.
Crucial 1-0 win over Aberdeen, who have been the best challengers this season so far. CCV gets a FotMob 8.0 in the win, second highest on the squad. Started alongside Trusty and against Polvara after the 83rd minute. Extends their lead to 7 points with a match in hand.
That's the end of Aberdeen's title challenge. A pity because just about everyone would love a side from outside the Old Firm to finally make serious run at the championship (half of Glasgow want Rangers to do that too, but I digress ) Looks like we'll have to wait until the summer when Tony Bloom's guys start working their transfer market magic at Hearts for that to emerge.
I haven't followed SPL that closely in a while. Do Hearts finally have competent ownership and management?
Not exactly, but Brighton's owner, Tony Bloom, has just invested an undisclosed amount to take a minority stake in Hearts and will surely bring his data analytics modelling approach there. He did the same with Union Saint-Gilloise in Belgium. A big deal in the 1930s. their last D1 season was in 1971-72 and they dropped as low as D4 in 1980, not returning to D2 until 2004 when the D3 winner and runners-up voluntarily chose not to apply for licenses in the higher division. Bloom invested in the summer of 2018. After their 2019-20 promotion drive was derailed by COVID cancellations, they returned to D1 in 2021. Since then, they've won the Cup - their first trophy since 1935 - and the regular season twice, qualifying for EL football every season. Hearts are a much bigger club than USG are now, never mind back in 2018. If Bloom has anything like the same impact as he had there, a real title challenge is in the offing and soon
May have picked up a knock but it could be a rotation to rest him and/or keep Scales sharp ahead of Tuesday's crunch match in Zagreb. A win there guarantees progression to the knockouts and would position them for a late charge at the Top 8 finish and a bye to the last 16. They need everyone fresh for that.
CCV does indeed make his way into the starting lineup, alongside Trusty, for this big match against Dinamo Zagreb.
They're on 9 points, just one short of the 10 points that almost guarantees the elimination round and next up are rock-bottom Young Boys (P6 W0 D0 L6; GF 3 GA 22; GD -19) at home. A win guarantees them progression, which is why, being Scottish, they're likely to lose embarrassingly and follow that with a completely improbable away win at Villa on the final day
This week's results leaves them level on points with Real and ahead of PSV, Citeh and PSG as well as already-eliminated Girona, Bologna and Leipzig. Nobody would have believed that possible after BVB took them to the cleaners in September.