It hasn’t been a great few days for Scottish football. The national team once again failed to qualify for a major finals, so the debate about the quality over their league will rage on for a few more years until they are invited to one of the big parties.
The mood might not be helped by Celtic travelling to take on European powerhouses Bayern Munich on Wednesday night in the Champions League. It has to be said that we fear a terrible beating for the Bhoys.
In domestic action they are a good team. Indeed, they are romping to another league title. Good for them. The problem is they don’t transfer to European competition at all well. Not that it’s their fault.
Week in and week out they are fed on a cheap, easy meat. So when they come up against something which, pound for pound, gives them something to chew over, they often choke and are then quartered. It means players who look like world beaters against the likes of Ross County suddenly don’t look so hot against Europe’s elite. Funny that.
And that is the crux of the problem with Scottish football and the malaise affecting the national team. The players are not testing themselves against the best and the perverse gulf between the haves (Celtic, and, at a push Rangers) and the have-nots creates a competition which is just not, well, competitive. At all.
Bayern Munich should be licking their lips. They are no better than 1.1250 on BMR’s green-listed bookmakers and those odds tell you all you need to know what people think of Scotland’s finest. For us it’s a question of working out how many Bayern will win by and trying to pick the correct score.
We’ve had a look at Celtic’s record in Europe when they come up against the cream. It’s not pretty. They conceded seven versus Barcelona last season, six in 2013. There were 2-0 and 3-0 defeats vs. Juventus in 2013 and 2-0 and 3-0 losses to Milan the same year. Then, of course, there was the 5-0 humiliation against PSG at Parkhead this season.
Bayern are freescoring. They’ve notched 20 times in their last seven, including a 5-0 stroll versus Freiburg last time out in the Bundesliga.
So we are going to get 3-0 and 4-0 on our side – we do not expect Celtic to score – at 8.0000 (BetStars) and 10.0000 (Betfair). And just in case we have been too pessimistic about Celtic, the best we can think they will do is keep pride intact with a 2-0 loss. That is 9.5000 (William Hill).
Calculators
