2017/18 CL GRP B Bayern München x PSG x Anderlecht x Celtic

[bjkman1903]

Matches

12 September 2017

Celtic v PSG
Bayern v Anderlecht

27 September 2017

Anderlecht v Celtic
PSG v Bayern

18 October 2017

Bayern v Celtic
Anderlecht v PSG

31 October 2017

Celtic v Bayern
PSG v Anderlecht

22 November 2017

PSG v Celtic
Anderlecht v Bayern

05 December 2017

Celtic v Anderlecht
Bayern v PSG

[og2002gr]

Bayern is a title contender, so Group Stage shouldn’t be of much interest. But this time they have an opponent who wants to become “title contender” too, so their fight will be interesting. Bayern lost first place last season but they didn’t pay for it, drawing Arsenal. Can they risk it again?

Paris Saint-Germain was nowhere until they entered “money era”. Since then, they have 5 CL participations with 4 QF. They want to be considered as giants/title contenders, but they don’t have any significant campaign, nor any big win against other giants. They won only the groups where the opponents were the Portuguese teams, while they finished behind Barcelona-Real-Arsenal. This season they spent an ridiculously huge amount of money. Will this help them, for start, beat Bayern?

Anderlecht is an EL team, as there, they always advance, while in CL they always fail.
They are improving their status and they are climbing ranking but qualification through this group is out of reach. Still they have to win 3rd place and continue in spring. If they do good enough there, they may even take a “fraud” place in the next CL editions.

Celtic had another successful Summer campaign, reaching CL GS for another season (4th in the last 6 seasons). Not bad for a team coming from a league out of top 20.
But their name is bigger than Scotland’s position and finishing bottom of their EL Group (2015) and CL Group (2016) harm their reputation. Another 4th place would validate their low competitiveness that is restricted in eliminating Astana.

Prediction:

1. Bayern Munich 80%
2. Paris Saint-Germain 75%
3. Anderlecht 25%
4. Celtic 20%

[bugylibicska]

Finally a PSG - Bayern tie. Good year this was, my 3 wishes PSG - Bayern, Arsenal to the EL and Qarabag to the CL were heard above. I don`t like either of them, but more dislike Bayern.

[xavier_]

Not so great earlier prediction

Bayern München
PSG
Celtic
Anderlecht

In the last 5 years
Bayern München
QF-SF-SF-SF-W

PSG
L16-QF-QF-QF-QF

Celtic
4thGS-X-X-4thGS-L16

Anderlecht
X-X-3rdGS-4thGS-4thGS


Bayern München, the German giants always seem to go through the group stages with little trouble. Let's see if they can hold off PSG and top the group.
PSG, money money money. Not rooting for them, Emery has very little room to fail but with such great players they should advance conformable.
Celtic, even though Scotland has fallen so much in the rankings they have managed to be more or less regulars here. And even qualifying to the L16 recently which is even more impressive. At home they will be a nut to crack but 3rd place it will be their prize unfortunately.
Anderlecht, I have seem them fail so many times here it's hard no to predict them last (plus the last Belgium champion had a 0-0-6 in very accessible group). I know their results have been improving in the last few years in Europe but I'll believe when I see it.

[Lyonnais]

it's not very important but just a (little) reaction for that comment

Paris Saint-Germain was nowhere until they entered “money era”.

they had a couple of achievements in the 90s, 5 European semi-finals in a row, including a Cup Winners' Cup, French title, etc.

I don't say that this is a huge history but I wouldn't say that they come from nowhere.

[Malko]

My prediction :
1) paris SG
2) Bayern Munich
3) Anderlecht
4) Celtic

[Dragonite]

Bayern will play the CL for the 21st time, 10th in a row.
In these 20 participations, they’ve only been eliminated in the group stages once, in 2002/2003 (bottom of a group with AC Milan, Deportivo and Lens, without a single win, 0-2-4, the two draws being against the smallest team Lens). So I guess we can say the probability of Bayern being eliminated in a CL group stage is 5%.
Their coach Carlo Ancelotti is also nearly flawless in his CL record; he failed in his first two attempts (Parma 1997/1998 and Juventus 2000/2001), but nobody even remembers that anymore, what people will remember is that he won the CL thrice.
Bayern fans aren’t really interested in his accomplishments in charge of anyone else if he is unable to repeat them in charge of Bayern though.
For now I guess we can say that he “failed” for Bayern, having arrived to a team that reached the CL semifinals for five seasons in a row, and failing to do so in his first attempt.
But I think that he was forgiven, with excuses like “meeting Real Madrid too early” or the always popular “evil referee”. But even these excuses won’t always save him.
Club legend Lahm retired at the end of last season, Xabi Alonso too, and Douglas Costa and Renato Sanches also left, but the arrivals of Sule, Rudy, Tolisso, and above all James suggest that Bayern will keep a very high level. If it will be enough to return to the CL semis, we’ll have to wait and see, but it’s definitely more than enough to win this group.


Paris Saint-Germain will play the CL for the 10th time, 6th in a row.
In less than half of Bayern’s participations, they were eliminated in the group stages twice (1997/1998 and 2004/2005), while Bayern was only eliminated once. But who doesn’t lose in comparison to Bayern? Only a handful of teams… Plus they don’t even have to win the comparison to Bayern, as long as they prevail against Anderlecht and Celtic.
Just like Carlo Ancelotti, Unai Emery is also famous for winning three European trophies. But unlike Carlo Ancelotti, his trophies are “just” EL’s, less valuable than CL’s.
Unai Emery’s record in the CL is actually quite poor. In 33 matches, 12 wins, 8 draws and 13 defeats. His most usual result is defeat!
He failed to advance from CL group stages three times in five attempts (Valencia 2011/2012, Spartak 2012/2013, and Sevilla 2015/2016).
And even when he succeeded, like for Paris Saint-Germain last season, it was still a failure, because not only he lost the group’s first place by being unable to defeat Ludogorets at home in round 6, he then crashed in the CL last 16 (the infamous 1-6 defeat against Barcelona), in a club that before he arrived had been reaching the CL quarter finals for four seasons in a row (another similarity with Carlo Ancelotti).
So, for people who like to criticize clubs for building reputations in EL, isn’t this also extendible to coaches?
I’d say that Unai Emery is a “poor man’s Ancelotti”, which probably, concerning Paris Saint-Germain, is one of the worst insults they can get.
I don’t want to spend much time discussing transfer fees, I’ll just say that just because they got a player for 222M€, it doesn’t make him any better than players that other teams get for “only” 22M€, or even for free. The price tag fortunately means absolutely nothing. So don’t expect to see a huge improvement just because now they have an alleged “superhero” up front.


Anderlecht will play the CL for the 12th time, and is back after an absence of two seasons.
They could have returned last season, but were eliminated by Rostov in the qualifiers. This time they were directly qualified so having the same outcome was not possible.
The CL was never a comfortable place for Anderlecht. They’re the opposite of Bayern, who only failed to advance from the group stages once. In their case, they only advanced once, in 2000/2001. That was a magical season for them, they won as many games there (6 in 12 matches) as in all the other 10 seasons combined (6 in 60 matches).
Even ignoring older results, and looking only at the last half-decade, their CL record is still 2-6-10.
Their current coach, René Weiler, wasn’t responsible for any of that though (only for the Rostov defeat that isn’t even included in these numbers because is pre-group stage).
Last season he took them to the EL quarterfinals, their best result of the last two decades. If he went further than everybody else in such a long period of time, perhaps he can also improve the club’s weak CL record. 8 points would be already enough for the second best ever CL campaign (or even 7 points with a -1 or better goal difference).
If they can eliminate teams like Monaco and Zenit in the EL, getting 7 or 8 points here may not be impossible.


Celtic will play the CL for the 10th time, 2nd in a row.
They were the only team in Group B without direct qualification, and had to eliminate Linfield, Rosenborg and Astana to be here.
But eliminating this kind of teams tells me nothing about their capacity to compete with teams like Bayern, Paris Saint-Germain and Anderlecht.
What gives me a better idea of their real strength is their CL winless streak of 9 matches, for instance. Their last win was in October 2013 against Ajax. And even combining CL and EL, it may be helpful in Anderlecht’s case, but not really in Celtic’s case. The winless streak just grows to 17, their last win was against Astra Giurgiu in October 2014.
Their coach isn’t exactly much better, his CL winless streak is even bigger than Celtic’s, 11 CL games without a win ever since he defeated Ludogorets in September 2014 in charge of Liverpool.
So, is Celtic doomed to finish last, without a single win? Not necessarily. In their previous 9 campaigns, they even advanced thrice, way better than Anderlecht’s record.
The problem is that they advance if and only if Benfica is in their group, this time they aren’t, plus when Celtic doesn’t advance, they don’t even finish third, there are either second (thrice) or last placed (four times). They were only third placed in their first two campaigns in 2001/2002 and 2003/2004.
So this may actually end up being Celtic’s worst ever CL campaign, last season they were already winless for the first time ever, and this time it may be even worse, again winless and possibly not even getting 3 points, which was the best they could do in their last two campaigns (1-0-5 in 2013/2014, and 0-3-3 in 2016/2017)

Prediction
1. Bayern
2. Paris Saint-Germain
3. Anderlecht
4. Celtic

[Dragonite]

Paris Saint-Germain was nowhere until they entered “money era”. Since then, they have 5 CL participations with 4 QF. They want to be considered as giants/title contenders, but they don’t have any significant campaign, nor any big win against other giants. They won only the groups where the opponents were the Portuguese teams, while they finished behind Barcelona-Real-Arsenal. This season they spent an ridiculously huge amount of money. Will this help them, for start, beat Bayern?

Paris Saint-Germain was a G14 founding member in 2000, so they couldn’t be that bad.

“Only won the groups where the opponents were the Portuguese teams”, what is that supposed to mean?
And which Portuguese teams, Paços Ferreira and Rio Ave?

Anderlecht is an EL team, as there, they always advance, while in CL they always fail.
They are improving their status and they are climbing ranking but qualification through this group is out of reach. Still they have to win 3rd place and continue in spring. If they do good enough there, they may even take a “fraud” place in the next CL editions.

What is a “fraud” place for Anderlecht?
If they collect enough points to be in Pot 2, that’s no fraud. The only fraud is collecting nothing “Spartak Moscow-style”, not good enough to even get past AEK Larnaca, but then somehow stealing the benefits that others worked hard to get.

But you probably love Spartak Moscow, don’t you? They have ZERO wins in EL over the last half-decade, and winning EL matches is an unforgivable sin apparently.

[Malko]

So the coming paris-Munich already could be a key gsme fto determinate the groupwinner

[bugylibicska]

Yeah, I definetely want to watch the next game: PSG - Bayern. Massive dickhead Brendan Rodgers breaking all old records with Celtic, he`ll be long remembered. Losing in Gibraltar, 0:7 in Barcelona and now 0:5 the worst ever home defeat for Celtic! And he said before the game that Celtic can compete with PSG and Bayern, but the players have to believe in it! Yeah, if you say so Brendan!

[matt]

Yeah, I definetely want to watch the next game: PSG - Bayern. Massive dickhead Brendan Rodgers breaking all old records with Celtic, he`ll be long remembered. Losing in Gibraltar, 0:7 in Barcelona and now 0:5 the worst ever home defeat for Celtic! And he said before the game that Celtic can compete with PSG and Bayern, but the players have to believe in it! Yeah, if you say so Brendan!

Brendan Rodgers is doing much better than his predecessor. Celtic qualified to the CLGS for the second time in a row. Last year they performed ok in a very tough group (two draws against Manc. City, one against Borussia Moenchengladbach away).

They dominated the league, even more than usual. They did the treble.
What he shoud have done with Celtic? Win the Champions League
It's obvious that Bayern and PSG are vastly superior teams with a vastly superior budget, but of course he doesn't say: "let's not even start the game, we are gonna lose".
Ok, this is the worst home defeat for Celtic, but i think they rarely faced a team like this PSG. If they finish third in the group i (and many others) would consider their campaign a success.

[bugylibicska]

Yeah, I definetely want to watch the next game: PSG - Bayern. Massive dickhead Brendan Rodgers breaking all old records with Celtic, he`ll be long remembered. Losing in Gibraltar, 0:7 in Barcelona and now 0:5 the worst ever home defeat for Celtic! And he said before the game that Celtic can compete with PSG and Bayern, but the players have to believe in it! Yeah, if you say so Brendan!

Brendan Rodgers is doing much better than his predecessor. Celtic qualified to the CLGS for the second time in a row. Last year they performed ok in a very tough group (two draws against Manc. City, one against Borussia Moenchengladbach away).

They dominated the league, even more than usual. They did the treble.
What he shoud have done with Celtic? Win the Champions League
It's obvious that Bayern and PSG are vastly superior teams with a vastly superior budget, but of course he doesn't say: "let's not even start the game, we are gonna lose".
Ok, this is the worst home defeat for Celtic, but i think they rarely faced a team like this PSG. If they finish third in the group i (and many others) would consider their campaign a success.

Maybe I`ve a longer memory remembering him from his Liverpool days as well. And Celtic have a proud history with great coaches, he will never be one of them. Nobody expects Celtic to be champions, but they were a formidable opponent to any team on home soil. He just can`t stop talking garbage, you think they call him massive dickhead for nothing?

[Lorric]

Yeah, I definetely want to watch the next game: PSG - Bayern. Massive dickhead Brendan Rodgers breaking all old records with Celtic, he`ll be long remembered. Losing in Gibraltar, 0:7 in Barcelona and now 0:5 the worst ever home defeat for Celtic! And he said before the game that Celtic can compete with PSG and Bayern, but the players have to believe in it! Yeah, if you say so Brendan!

Brendan Rodgers is doing much better than his predecessor. Celtic qualified to the CLGS for the second time in a row. Last year they performed ok in a very tough group (two draws against Manc. City, one against Borussia Moenchengladbach away).

They dominated the league, even more than usual. They did the treble.
What he shoud have done with Celtic? Win the Champions League
It's obvious that Bayern and PSG are vastly superior teams with a vastly superior budget, but of course he doesn't say: "let's not even start the game, we are gonna lose".
Ok, this is the worst home defeat for Celtic, but i think they rarely faced a team like this PSG. If they finish third in the group i (and many others) would consider their campaign a success.

Maybe I`ve a longer memory remembering him from his Liverpool days as well. And Celtic have a proud history with great coaches, he will never be one of them. Nobody expects Celtic to be champions, but they were a formidable opponent to any team on home soil. He just can`t stop talking garbage, you think they call him massive dickhead for nothing?

Who says he won't be? He's already delivered a treble and two CL qualifications. The fans love him, really love him. You need to let go of this obsession with Brenden Rodgers when he's doing well. And who is they? The only one going on about him is you.

Btw, Klopp has almost the same record as Rodgers at Liverpool:

http://www.managerstats.co.uk/clubs/liverpool/

You should answer the question of what you expect Celtic to do for you to view Rodgers as a normal coach.

[bugylibicska]

Brendan Rodgers is doing much better than his predecessor. Celtic qualified to the CLGS for the second time in a row. Last year they performed ok in a very tough group (two draws against Manc. City, one against Borussia Moenchengladbach away).

They dominated the league, even more than usual. They did the treble.
What he shoud have done with Celtic? Win the Champions League
It's obvious that Bayern and PSG are vastly superior teams with a vastly superior budget, but of course he doesn't say: "let's not even start the game, we are gonna lose".
Ok, this is the worst home defeat for Celtic, but i think they rarely faced a team like this PSG. If they finish third in the group i (and many others) would consider their campaign a success.

Maybe I`ve a longer memory remembering him from his Liverpool days as well. And Celtic have a proud history with great coaches, he will never be one of them. Nobody expects Celtic to be champions, but they were a formidable opponent to any team on home soil. He just can`t stop talking garbage, you think they call him massive dickhead for nothing?

Who says he won't be? He's already delivered a treble and two CL qualifications. The fans love him, really love him. You need to let go of this obsession with Brenden Rodgers when he's doing well. And who is they? The only one going on about him is you.

Btw, Klopp has almost the same record as Rodgers at Liverpool:

http://www.managerstats.co.uk/clubs/liverpool/

You should answer the question of what you expect Celtic to do for you to view Rodgers as a normal coach.

You sent me the blog where I`ve read his nickname massive dickhead. Celtic were never been able to match the financial backing of the big clubs, not even close, but still could go toe to toe with them, even very recently. To call Rodgers a good coach - winning the treble in Scotland? - after these disastrous results unprecedented in Celtic`s history, well I rest my case. They`re people still fooled by Wenger, why Rodgers couldn`t do the same for as long and break his own records?
klopp had no Suarez. How is a coach normal when says the EPL takes preference to the CL? I don`t think I`ve written about Rodgers 2 lines since he was kicked out from Liverpool, like 2 years ago, that`s a pretty weak obsession. I expect Celtic to deliver decent results at home, no matter who`s the opponent (Barcelona?) and don`t get humiliated. And until now they`re pretty close to this expectation.

[EarlofBug]

My prediction:
1) paris SG
2) Bayern Munich
3) Anderlecht
4) Celtic

I agree with Malko on this one.