It’s fair to say Celtic have had a fair few inaccurate scouting reports on them over the last week.
As Celtic get set to face Cluj tonight in Romania, it’s set up to be an exciting contest to see who will face Slavia Prague in the playoff round.
The build-up to this one, however, has seen all sorts of nonsense flying about. Celtic can consider themselves disrespected by most of it too. Whether it be Ionut Rada calling us “not very good” and “weak” (Scottish Sun), or be it Dorin Goian stating that Celtic are long ball merchants (Daily Record) – we’ve certainly been harshly reviewed by some.
There was then the absolute nonsense from Csaba Laszlo yesterday (Daily Record). He says our defence can be got at (despite the talent we have). He also claims that our number one is Craig Gordon, and that Scott Sinclair will be our danger-man. It was almost as if someone had programmed him to try and give Cluj poor information.
But as Petrescu spoke to the media yesterday, you can clearly see he’s not listening to any of the garbage. Speaking via the BBC, here’s what he had to say on Celtic.
“They have something like the style of Ajax, they don’t play long balls, play only short balls, pass all the time.
“They try to play good football and they have very good speed in midfield and attack – not only for goals but also to think. We have to make our best game ever and be fantastic in both games”
Petrescu is spot on – clearly hasn’t listened to the other scouting reports
So it seems as though Cluj truly do have a handle on how we like to play. Whilst we don’t totally avoid the long ball, it’s not in this team’s DNA to look for it often. We do try to break teams forward with short, quick passes combined with clever movement.
He’s also accurately highlighted the pace we have in the final third. This seems to have gone up a notch from last season, and is clearly something that could cause Cluj huge problems. He’ll, therefore, know all about Mikey Johnston and Ryan Christie, for example.
He’s subsequently totally dismissing Doian’s claims about Celtic playing the long-ball often. Petrescu will also know that just about everything Laszlo said was nonsense.
He seems to have a good grip of our style. He’ll be targeting the flair players that make us tick tonight. Expect the likes of Christie, Johnston, and James Forrest not to have much room to operate in.
Any hope of Cluj being misinformed about our style of play doesn’t look likely. They’ve managed to gain a good grasp on our style by likely seeing footage of their own and sending representatives to Parkhead last weekend.
If we’re going to overcome Cluj tonight, we’re going to have to beat a manager who’s clearly been studying us well.
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