Champions League Playoffs

A quick word on the Champions League qualifiers today before the big draw.

May as well get this bit over with, as a Celtic fan my hopes of us qualifying weren't exactly sky high, If we could get a goal in the first 20-25 minutes we might have had a chance for at least penalties, and after losing 2 very soft goals at Celtic Park, I was hoping maybe a little bit of luck may go our way, when Eduardo failed to score with an open goal in front of him, my hopes grew a little maybe we have a chance.

How wrong I was, Eduardo played a nice 1-2 got in the box, Boruc ran out realised he wouldn't get the ball, tried to pull out, and Eduardo went down as if there had been full contact, brushed himself off, and placed the penalty past Boruc, I was outraged, it was never a penalty, no contact was made, it was a blatant dive, and an act of cheating.

Why do players of that quality, in a team with World Class players, they don't need to cheat, playing high quality football, they would have probably won in the end, so why cheat, the 3 to 5 thousand Celtic fans who had made the journey down to the Emirates must have felt sick, any chance of progressing taken away by a cheat, I used to have alot of respect for Eduardo from his International record to his horrific leg break against Birmingham, now all that's gone.

Yes Arsenal did win the game 3-1 in the end 5-1 over both games, however everything after Eduardo's dive is irrelevant, hearts were crushed spirits broken.

All the calls for Eduardo to be banned seem a little over the top, however maybe there needs to be a change, an extra 30 secs for the ref to look at the incident would it still have been a penalty, it wouldn't slow the game down at all, in this HD age, con artists are still given an advantage in ways how to con the referee.

Everyone knows the gulf between the EPL and SPL is huge, noone would argue that, the transfer fee's for Arshavin and Vermaelen would be Celtic's transfer budget for 6 or 7 years, the SPL teams are restricted to buying players from their own league or unknown players and trying to sell them off for a profit, however he are expected to reach the last 16 of the Champions League group stage.

If a team like Everton or Aston Villa reached the Champions League I don't think the same pressures would be put on them, although they have alot more resources available to them.
In UEFA's coefficients system Scotland are placed behind Russia but ahead of countries like Ukraine, Turkey and Greece, these countries can all attract players of a high quality, Djibril Cisse, Elano, Kader Keita these players would never come to the SPL in a million years.

So this shows the SPL punches way above it's weight, so in this sense I am proud of Celtic's performance against Arsenal, and being a Celtic fan it's hard to say but I wish Rangers all the best in carrying on the countries participation.

Also going through to the group stage with Arsenal are: Olympiacos, APOEL FC, VfB Stuttgart, Fiorentina, Atletico Madrid, Debreceni, Lyon, Maccabi Haifa and FC Zurich, well done to all of them.

APOEL and Debreceni were the upsets of the round, Copenhagen and Levski Sofia losing out.

Atletico looked very impressive in the 5-2 win over Panathinaikos, the highly rated Sergio Aguero looking very dangerous.

Lyon seemed to use the Play-off games against Anderlecht to find their form, struggling in the league until their 5-1 victory in the first leg, and then finished it off win a 3-1 win, fans will be saying Karim who?