Malmo’s season started well. They were undefeated in their first eight games, recording wins against current league leaders, Gothenburg, and recent champions, Helsingborg, as well as a 2-2 draw at Elfsborg, but form soon slumped.
They’ve only recorded back to back wins in the league once since. Wednesday’s 3-0 over Salzburg is by some measure their best result of the season. Right now, there will be a lot of football fans in Austria wondering how on earth Salzburg are out of the Champions League. There’s a fair chance there’s just as many fans in Sweden wondering how Malmo remain in the competition, but there are clues.
Salzburg lost narrowly to Rapid Vienna days before the capitulation in Sweden, the second reversal in two league games this season. They beat a team from a regional league in the cup (0-7) but that and the 2-0 win over Malmo is the only positives in an early season full of panic.
Preseason friendlies are not to be regarded as an indication of anything, but home win over a weak-looking Southampton was the only friendly in which they avoided defeat in four attempts. At most this indicates their fitness was behind the curve.
The most telling inferences from all of these stats is that the margins between success and failure for Malmo, Salzburg, and Celtic, are tight. We could and should have beaten Maribor a year ago. Dedryck Boyata’s late goal against Qarabag transpired to be all that separated us from them. We are looking fit, and organised, but you and I both know we’ve yet to spark up front. We have a lot of work to do in the margins before the end of the month.
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Glad everybody is in good spirits.
Cowiebhoy hope the health issues that the Deputy has had to endure are easing pal and maybe oneday you might reach the heights of your pals who post on here and finally lose the…. Roastir tag…
Haha.
Catchyeez :)
Great shout at Ayr the night WITS,missed it !
Was in the bookies betting yer NAP each way.
Well done……… HH
WITS
I never want Celtic to ever get beat but “if” we get there do a Benfica, secure 3rd drop into the Europa and anything can happen, this is not a defeatist attitude I actually think in the knockout stages anything can happen, by the way my love of Celtic doesn’t depend on the good times some of my best nights have been when we haven’t won.. By the way for the record I didn’t bet your winner, when I lurked on here I liked and appreciated your horsey knowledge and all being well we might meet in Dublin 2016…… Until then I will ask before I jinx any of your nags, my nap for Fleagles tips today was based on Jim Delahunt, he is actually quite knowledgeably when it comes to the horses, anyway take care & Hail Hail
Graffiti
I should have had Asian wing as my nap but croghill tuppence was a bigger price. At least it was placed
First guest on the new Ch5 football show – ex-Celt Adam Virgo.
Tomthetim
AT is dropping in my estimation. Why can be found in my SFM post.
He mentions no accountability in football but does nothing to campaign for it.
Cowiebhoy
Well done that man!
Spelt correctly as well i believe.
The final player is Kily Gonzalez
B-)
Now, anyone recommend any good documentaries that i could settle down to watch the night?
Ta
Anyway,
I have 127 emails ready to go reDublin2016.
All typed individually.
Didn’t want to send a group e mail.
Anyone else thinking of coming, dublin2016@mail.com
HH,
Clogher
Clogher. Well done on your efforts
Aye right guys, I loved the way you all defended me when I was getting slaughtered on here. It is strange times indeed. BTW my major slaughterer lives in a cave in a foreign country. A big Celtic contributer, NOT. some people really do ma nut in. Back to lurking.
Gerryfraethebrig – regarding your earlier question, why do the OO march through Coatbridge – well, there’s only one reason – you know it, I know it and they know it – it’s naked sectarian anti-Catholic bigotry. They assert their right to walk down every one of the “queens highways” but I haven’t seen them march on the M8. I take comfort from the fact that they are dying, like their club – they are embarrassed to ask for two day’s holiday on July 12/13. If you have the misfortune to be in the town then stand silent and proud on the pavement and calculate how many of them avoid your gaze.
Gerryfaethebrig at 9.01.
You have a point about a team getting third place in a Champions League group. In the 2012/13 champions league group we were in, Benfica ended up third and I believe got to the Europa League semis or final that season.
I may be wrong but you get the same coefficient points for a win or draw in the Europa League as you do in the champions league.
As an aside , the three times we have qualified from a champions league group, Benfica have been in our group.
Looking forward to my first away game for yonks and my son’s first ever away game tomorrow. I expect 2 or 3 changes from Wednesday , in our team.
Bhoylo83
COWIEBHOY on 8TH AUGUST 2015 8:29 PM
Robero Abbondanzieri ? Goalkeeper
Have to be honest, I done a serch on Argentinian goalkeeper, and his name was one I couldn’t have spelt either :-) some guess
Hail Hail
Champions League here we come. The alternative is not worth contemplating. Bring on Priest Zadoc.
I have been banging on about Benfica for the last five years – they deliberately try to be third in their group so they will drop into the Europa League and build up their co-efficient. We should be doing exactly the same. I bet they’re in Pot 1 when the group stages are drawn.
Major slaughterer, dear oh dear.
Cos I said you were out of order wanting to bomb people to feck, is that what a Celtic man is all about ?
You really need to get a grip mi amigo, big time.
WIT’s,
You are very important re Dublin 2016. Remember Fairyhouse is on Easter Monday…that will be your thing.
Thanks again,
Clogher
Cowiebhoy
Lol, i bloody well knew it!
B-)
TET,
How are things?
Hopefully see you here in 2016.
I’m going over for the Malmo game, can’t wait
Clogher
Dallas Dallas….
Benfica done it for a few years running and ended up 2nd seeds which made it easier to finish 3rd, I just want Ronny and obviously Celtic to do well, but as a coup,e of other good Celtic fans that have posted Ronny has no excuses this year, his team, no trips all over the world, I was no still am a massive Neil Lennon fan but Neil has gave us loads of years of his life so hopefully Ronny can follow other great Celtic managers to the CL
Phyllis dietrichson – as a young bhoy I would make sure I had the hoops on, as a 45yr old father I wanted to put the hoops on earlier, but I was picking my daughter up in the area the low lives were walking, hopefully I will only ever teach my daughter good things, too see her dad being a clown would destroy me more than proving a point……let them live their sad lives
Phyllis D
Benfica will be in Pot 1 because they are currently 6th in the Rankings + this year the Pot 1 teams are defending CL winners and 7 teams from different countries; Spain, Germany, Spain, England, Portugal, Italy, France,
When they attack your adopted country, which is a certainty, tell me you want them treated with the kid gloves you obviously prefer. A few beheadings will maybe alter your thinking. Barbarians, all of them. Convince me otherwise. No chance. And I still support Celtic, and will not see you at CP any time in the future.
Went out to a nice restaurant with the wife for lunch today and by co-incidence my daughter and her husband & my wee granddaughter walked in. Seeing us they joined us at the table and my son in law made a remark about me having my nose broken at some stage. I replied it was probably broken a few times & forgetting that the child was listening recounted a story of me getting jumped by a guy many years ago and getting a hammering. When I finished the little one pipes up Granda, why didn’t you kick him in the balls. Horrified parents and Granny sitting there with mouths hanging open and Grandad almost on the floor with laughter.
And by the way, I am not your amigo. So drop that right away.
Scepovic leading the line tomorrow ?
And I do believe you get the same coefficient point playing in Europa competitions as you do in Champions league
Maybe a season with a decent run in that competition would do is the world of good ?, after dropping out of Champions league of course :-)
Hail Hail and Nytol
Dodgy Decisions at the OK Corral.
Interesting wee read from the Guardian. Of course this is night and day from the honourable refereeing standards of Scottish football.
The forgotten story of … Wyatt Earp and the ‘fixed’ heavyweight title fight.
History has made Earp a legend of the old west, but he refereed the 1896 Sharkey-Fitzsimmons championship match – and was accused of fixing the result.
He was a character that only the Wild West could invent — part lawman, part myth – with a saloon-keeper moustache and a taste for the cards. Wyatt Earp became a real live gunslinging hero, shooting those cattle rustling cowboys at the OK Corral, and he built his name one boomtown at a time riding out of the dust with a pistol and a past. Then came the day in 1896 when he nearly destroyed everything in a San Francisco boxing ring.
History has made Earp an old west legend, riding shotgun through trouble with Bat Masterson and Doc Holiday. But in life he was the man who botched one of the biggest fights of his time. At the start of the 20th century, most people did not see Earp as a demigod of frontier justice, but rather as a dirty referee who fixed the heavyweight championship, running away before many in the crowd realized what had happened.
“Wyatt Earp got more notoriety around that boxing fight than he ever did with the gunfight,” said Scott Dyke, a Earp researcher.
In a modern world where Hollywood has turned Earp into a gun-toting marshal hunting bad guys, the story of how he came to officiate and then ruin the Tom Sharkey and Bob Fitzsimmons fight on 2 December 1896 is largely forgotten. It is so forgotten, in fact, that one prominent boxing expert had never heard of the bout or Earp’s role when reached by the Guardian.
“I’m a historian. I’m supposed to know these things!” the expert said.
Because Earp’s modern legacy has been formed by movie-makers long after his death, his interest in boxing is lost in romanticized tales of gunsmoke.
But Earp never did much fighting with his pistol; his hands were better weapons.
As a teenager Earp once trained with a boxer named John Shanssey and carried an interest in the sport into his adulthood. Years later, he refereed a fight in which Shanssey was being badly beaten, possibly saving his one-time mentor’s life.
After Tombstone and the OK Corral, Earp drifted to San Diego where he ran saloons and dabbled in real estate. He also refereed a number of fights both with gloves and bare knuckles, Dyke said. By the time Earp moved to San Francisco in 1891 he was well-known in west coast boxing circles.
The Sharkey-Fitzsimmons fight was to settle a three-year question as to the rightful holder of the gloved (Marquess of Queensberry rules) heavyweight title. Boxing was illegal in San Francisco but such trivialities as city law hardly mattered as city officials and police commissioners embraced the bout, Mechanics Pavilion was secured as a venue and more than 10,000 tickets were sold.
Both boxers were notorious characters, known well to sports fans at the time.
Sharkey was born in Ireland but had come to the US in the early 1890s and joined the Navy. In celebration of his nautical past he had a blue star and a battleship tattooed across his chest. Fitzsimmons, nicknamed “Ruby Robert” for his red hair, had travelled with a pet lion named Nero – an animal who met an untimely demise when he was electrocuted while chained to the roof of a Cleveland museum.
Earp wasn’t supposed to oversee the fight but neither side could agree on a referee.
In a story about the Sharkey-Fitzsimmons fight, boxing historian Christopher Shelton wrote that Sharkey’s manager, Danny Lynch, suggested Earp – a close friend – oversee the bout. The Fitzsimmons camp resisted the choice, suspicious of the Earp-Lynch connection, before finally relenting a few hours before the fight. Almost immediately after agreeing to Earp, Fitzsimmons’s people heard rumors that Earp had agreed to fix the fight – with its $10,000 prize – for Sharkey, who was a heavy underdog.
According to Shelton, Fitzsimmons’s manager Martin Julian confronted Earp in the ring then turned to the reporters sitting ringside and announced that Earp had been bribed. This was not the only pre-fight indignity Earp would endure. Right after Earp stepped into the ring a San Francisco police captain noticed the Colt 45 pistol Earp had stashed under his jacket and confiscated it in full view of the spectators.
For seven rounds Fitzsimmons dominated the fight. Then in the eighth, he caught Sharkey with a vicious blow to the stomach. Sharkey toppled forward and fell to the canvas writhing in pain. For several seconds Earp did nothing. Match accounts say Fitzsimmons appeared to celebrate a knockout victory, but then Lynch appeared beside Earp. The two men talked for half a minute before Earp declared that Fitzsimmons had punched Sharkey below the belt – a foul – and that Fitzsimmons was disqualified.
The crowd pelted Earp with boos and taunts. He quickly exited the ring and left the Mechanics Pavilion. But his troubles were only beginning. For weeks, fans and sportswriters who said they had never seen a below belt punch mocked the decision. Fitzsimmons’s attorney, HL Kowalsky, told the San Francisco Call that Earp’s ruling was: “Clear and dirty theft.”
An injunction was placed on the $10,000 winner’s check, and the fight made news all over the US with most of the stories taking a similar tone: Earp was no hero lawman, and he had cheated Fitzsimmons of the heavyweight title.
“They actually took surveys of people at the fight to see if they thought there was a foul,” Dyke said. “But it’s like being in the upper deck in left field at a baseball game. You say: ‘I know that pitch caught the corner’ even if way up there you can’t even see the plate.” The injunction hearing was held in an Oakland court. For several days, the details of an alleged fix spilled out. Witnesses testified that gamblers had been saying Earp had rigged the fight for $2,500 of the $10,000 payout. Earp insisted to the court that he did not. Sharkey testified that Fitzsimmons did indeed land an illegal blow. After days of conflicting stories, with plenty of hearsay and little evidence, the judge dismissed the case, ruling that since holding the fight at all was illegal in San Francisco the court could not consider civil action for a criminal activity.
While the court ruling saved Earp from going on trial for fixing the fight, he was convicted of carrying a concealed handgun into the ring and fined $50. But the cheating allegations followed him for the rest of this life.“It didn’t do him any good,” Dyke said. “I think he smarted from that for quite a while. The papers were rough back then and the cartoons were tough.”
The next year, Earp chased the Klondike gold rush to Alaska where he found success as a saloon owner. It was only after the 1931 release of Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal, a largely glowing biography, that Earp’s national reputation changed from that of a cheat to a swaggering Wild West gunman. Not that it did Earp much good. He had been dead two years.
When asked if he believes Earp fixed the Sharkey-Fitzsimmons bout, Dyke paused. “Let’s see, how do I walk around this,” he said. “He had a colorful past. You’re dealing with someone who when there is smoke there is fire.
Dyke adds that there are several instances in history where Earp showed great honesty. But Earp was also a gambler, a flawed man who often found trouble.
“At that time cheating was bad if you got caught,” Dyke said. “If you weren’t caught it was acceptable.”
Because eventually history forgets.
Good night all
Joe Cocker – You are so beautiful (nearly unplugged)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlDmslyGmGI
Gerryfaethebrig, Ronny has done well to get his way with our pre-season build up.
I am beginning to think he is wanting to be more solid at the back then when he’s happy with that , we should improve our service to the front player(s).
Many a wiser person than me has said get defence sorted out then midfield and attack . I’m probably havering but that’s the impression I’m getting with our competitive games this season. Even though we had a very good defensive record in the league last season, Ronny and his backroom team appear to me to want that to be the case in European games as well.
Good night all and sleep well.
LG will lead the line once again tomorrow and next week with little back up. Will RD then play Ciftci in our biggest game of the season ? I think not.
I rest my case on your, supposed, wonderful support. Goodbye.
Praecepta – my point exactly – why are they 6th in the rankings? Apart from last year, look at the number of times they were top seeds, finished third in their group, then went on a great Europa League run.
Gerry – sorry, I would never encourage anyone to wear the Hoops watching an OO march – I just meant stand as a disinterested spectator.
These people are a symptom of years and years of the west’s meddling in their affairs, stealing their assets, raping their lands, but I doubt you will see that.
Stick to feeding the chickens, with a closed mind like yours, they may be better at communicating with you that I can.
My location has feck all to do with anything, and if you feel the need to come on here and call me out, be prepared for my reaction.
………………………………….
Clogher.
Hopefully, all depends on the wife’s progress.
HH
Weefra
Your loss pal
You had a disagreement with a few on here
I don’t get involved in spats so I’ll leave it at that
As I said enjoy the games with the larkhall bhoys
James told me he was with you last week
Good night
CORKCELT on 8TH AUGUST 2015 9:37 PM
Excellent, but was Granny laughing as she was the one who maybe broke the nose to start with
Glad you had a nice wee lunch with the family
Hail Hail
Phyllis D
Clicked send instead of tab – Cont’d……………..
………… I think Russia – FC Zenit?
Teams such as; Athletico, Arsenal, Porto, Man City? Sevilla? will be in Pot 2.
Interestingly Benfica unless they reach last 16 or better (for the next 3 years) will plummet down the table. They will lose an average of 27.6 co-e points per year – last year they earned 2.0 more than Celtic (with no help from other SPL teams).
H!H!
Thought i had logged into a Jeremy Kyle blog
leftclicktic
The Joan Baez documentary is just a great tale of her as a singer and pacifist activist.
I particularly liked the bit in Sarajevo .
She has quite a repetoire. I can lose hours on YouTube listening to her.
Soal
I think ole PF will be on it next week after another disaster at the races