[El Car]

To be fair to Scottish teams lack of success in recent years has condemned them to enter European competitions at too early a stage with potentially embarrassing consequences. All of Scotland should still be out playing tennis, not playing away in Gib' or in the League Cup ....... Part of why Celtic's result is funny is that they will win through easily so we have license to laugh, and Brendan's reaction even outshone some of the crap he perpetrated at Liverpool, he's already in denial.

I'd love to see Scottish football flourish again. Okay it was always a balancing act of occasional brilliance, but Scotland once produced some wonderful players and teams of real ability. Is there a really good player now in the whole country? There's athletes, tennis players, swimmers, even a couple of rugby players, where are the footballers?

I think the 'too early' thing is just a convenient excuse used by Scottish football to justify poor performance. The reason we're in so early is because in previous years when we started in later rounds we went out straight away. If our teams always get knocked out the 2nd or 3rd round we probably deserve to have to play 1st round qualifiers.

Most teams in these rounds are in the same boat regarding timing too, so it's not really much of a disadvantage. Celtic had played 4 friendlies against decent enough opponents and had taken another week to prepare for their tie, so they should have been up to speed enough to do better. They lost because their manager set them up wrong and used the same players who looked like garbage last season instead of those who look more capable of doing a good job. By all accounts from anyone who watched their game, the Celtic players acted like they didn't expect to have to put much effort or intensity into the game, and they got out of it exactly what they deserved.

Same thing has happened to Rangers all too frequently in the early rounds. It was never really about being too early so much as not being properly prepared and getting the tactics wrong.