Auld - We used to be big guns but now we're just cannon fodder.
Bertie Auld knows what it takes for a team to win Europe's premier football tournament and he thinks the present day Celtic side are sadly lacking the killer instinct that wins football's big prizes.
Auld launched his biography 'A Bhoy Called Bertie' yesterday and also launched a broadside at the money men of Celtic Park and urged them to invest in quality players to move the club forward. The ex-Celt and Lisbon Lion thinks that the Celtic fans deserve to see their team competing at the top level instead of merely making up the numbers and has called on the Celtic Park boardroom to bankroll boss Gordon Strachan in the quest for glory.
"The manager and fans deserve better than they are getting at the moment." said Auld "Celtic should be too big a club to be making up the numbers in any competition, but Gordon's been left short on the kind of quality he needs for the Champions League. Now the men who run the club have to provide the finance to take the club further."
Having said that, however, Bertie thinks any investment now will have no bearing on this season's Champions League campaign because progress in the top competition is now beyond this Celtic side. Auld said: "Celtic will be playing for a Uefa Cup place when they go to Aalborg. That's where they could get their first Champions League away win. It won't come against Manchester United at Old Trafford because the side lacks a Henrik Larsson or a Lubo Moravcik, the kind of player who demands to be the number one man on the park."
The former Celtic hero has a feeling that Govan old boy Sir Alex Ferguson will still be smarting from the result of his last visit to Celtic Park when a wonderful free kick from Shunsuke Nakamura gave Celtic the win and all three Champions League points "You can also rely on it that Sir Alex Ferguson hasn't recovered from the pain of losing to that Shunsuke Nakamura free-kick the last time the sides met in the Champions League. And the pain won't stop until he's taken his revenge on Celtic."
Auld doesn't envy the manager's task ahead of the tie at Old Trafford but he thinks Strachan's will be a thankless task because of the gulf between the sides "The manager can only encourage the players to believe they have the ability to beat Manchester United in their next group tie but the squad doesn't have the killer instinct to finish off a tie like that one at Old Trafford."
A lot of hope will be resting on the shoulders of Aiden McGeady, a player that many believe to be the greatest natural talent to emerge at Celtic Park since Jimmy Johnstone but Bertie thinks Aiden has a lot to learn before he can be mentioned in the same breath as the wee winger voted Celtic's greatest player ever.
Auld said: "Jimmy Johnstone wasn't called 'Jinky' for nothing. He beat feet all day long but became a better, more rounded player when he realised a pass is sometimes better than a dribble. Aiden demands the ball and commands the respect of his opponents so much that there are two or three players surrounding him every time he gets it. He'll need to learn what Jimmy understood in time, a telling pass can be more dangerous than anything."
In Auld's opinion Celtic will secure their UEFA cup slot in Denmark "The players must believe in themselves in Aalborg because that's the place where history can be rewritten for the good of keeping the club in Europe." he said