The phrase Poisoned Chalice could have been written with the Scotland national team manager’s job in mind. Even in the 80s when we had great players, and the likes of Stein and Ferguson in charge, a sense of under-achievement followed Scotland in tournament football.
In Gordon Strachan’s favour as he takes over at Hampden today, is the 14 years in the wilderness which has reset expectations to ‘Incredibly Modest’. This contrasts with his arrival at Celtic Park seven and a half years ago, a few weeks after the messianic Martin O’Neill left the premises. Then expectations were huge, but Gordon had to achieve put a winning team on the field while curtailing expenditure against rapidly increasing budgets in the English game.
The result was not always pretty but it was effective. He became only the third manager in our history to win three-in-a-row and took us to the knock out stages of the Champions League twice, eclipsing O’Neill’s achievement in Europe’s top tournament. Few could have measured up so well.
In 2006, when he won the league at the earliest date in the history of Scottish football, he took his players, backroom and support staff onto the field in a moving movement of triumph. The stoicism with which he clung onto the league campaign in 2008, when all seemed lost, was remarkable. There can be few more enjoyable ways to win the league than from a 15 point deficit in April – one of the great times to be a Celtic supporter. When his team ran out of steam in 2009 he left the scene with much less fanfare than he deserved.
Of all the former Celts working in the media Gordon is truest to the club. Celtic is his team and the joy he gets as a supporter is evident. Such comment will be tempered now he is Scotland manager, but we wish him every success.
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Len Brennan
They are flying back as we speak
If you really want to annoy a zombie, pretend you do not know who they were playing at the weekend and make them say the name out loud. In my work their shoulders slump and they get a dejected look as if what ever spell they are under is broken and reality kicks in.
I have been doing it for weeks and it is hilarious, they are starting to catch on to me now right enough.
This is the club Chuckles says Sevco are only second to in the UK possibly the world…
Manchester United’s share price reached its highest level for months after the Premier League leaders announced partnerships with two major Chinese companies.
Shares in United, which had sunk as low as $12.00 after last summer’s partial flotation on the New York Stock Exchange, rose to $15.54, before ending Tuesday’s trading at $15.29.
Prices shot up after the announcement of three-year deals with soft drinks manufacturer Wahaha and China Construction Bank, who will produce an official United-branded credit card.
Both are specific to the Chinese market, where the 19-time champions of England claim to have 108 million followers.
The news, which took United’s total of official sponsors in various markets to 44, saw the share price rally.
United sold 10% of shares in the club in an Initial Public Offering (IPO) in August when the Glazers – their owners – hoped to achieve a price of $20 each, which could have valued the club at $3.3 billion (£2.06 billion).
But after underwriters initially propped the share price up, it fell as low as $12, which valued the club at just under $2 billion.
At a price of $15.29, United’s overall value would be $2.62 billion (£1.63 billion).
If anyone didn’t get a chance to buy the CQN Annual here is the link to the digital version:
http://www.calameo.com/read/0003901713dade5cf6580
Print copies still available from CQN – link in Paul’s blogs.
The Annual has been a great success for year 1 and luckily we didn’t sell them through HMV! We nearly did!
Snake Plissken.
Lincoln ?
I enjoyed it .-even if it is a bit hagiographic and ignores that Abe was much more interested in preserving the Union than saving black people from slavery ..
The acting is great ——- don’t know why but I was disappointed with Abe’s voice
Juventus have presented Athletic Bilbao with a final offer of €4 million [£3.3m] for Fernando Llorente, and have given the Basque outfit until Friday to make a decision.
I really hope they do not get him, he would make all the difference for them.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/film-news/9668370/Daniel-Day-Lewis-faces-criticism-for-giving-a-voice-to-Abraham-Lincoln.html
Ten Men Won The League 13:42 on 16 January, 2013
Thanks for that mhate!
HH
/Bishop B
Sir Bernard Ingham, formerly the chief press officer to Margaret Thatcher, has reportedly refused to apologise for having blamed innocent Liverpool FC fans for the 1989 Hillsborough disaster.
According to a report in the Liverpool Echo, Ingham responded to questions regarding his previously stated views on the disaster by saying: “What have I to apologise for?”
The Echo reports that Ingham, now 80, had written a letter to Liverpool fan Graham Skinner in 1996 which was this week passed to the Hillsborough Family Support Group.
In it Ingham reportedly wrote: “I have, however, one suggestion to make: for its own good, Liverpool – with the Heysel disaster in the background – should shut up about Hillsborough.
“Nothing can now bring back those who died – innocent people who, by virtue of being in the ground early, had their lives crushed out of them by a mob surging in late.”
The Echo reports that it had contacted Ingham at his home in Surrey with regard to the views expressed in the letter, in the light of the findings of the Hillsborough Inquiry which completely rejected the lie that Liverpool fans were in any way responsible for the disaster.
Ingham, who admitted he had not read the Hillsborough Report, reportedly refused to apologise for the discredited opinion about “a mob surging in late”.
Referring to the content of the 1996 letter, he said: “That seems reasonable to me, I most certainly do [think that] if there is any respect for the 96 who died. I think people should be concerned about those who died.”
In 2012, before the Hillsborough Report was published, Ingham had reportedly claimed that the day after the disaster Thatcher was briefed by senior police officers that “a tanked-up mob” were responsible for the deaths of the 96.
This police version of the cause of the disaster has since proved to be utterly false and the police found to have engaged in a concerted effort to peddle a ‘tanked-up mob’ fiction to shift responsibility on to Liverpool fans.
The Echo reports that the Hillsborough Family Support Group chair Margaret Aspinall responded to Ingham’s refusal to apologise by saying: “Just like the woman, he is not for turning. We know the truth and deep down he knows the truth, he just can’t face it. We have proved that he’s wrong.”
new article posted.
Daniel Day Lewis is a tremendous actor. ‘My Left Foot’ is one of the great performances.
But fake biopics of dubious politicians are grating.(But I will have to watch i on dvd, as I did with Anthony Hopkins’ ‘Nixon’!)
‘The Master’ got nary a mention in the plastic awards ceremonies, yet therein lie the two best performances of the year.
Joaquin Phoenix as Freddie Quell lost 3 st. for the part, changed his physical shape, and mastefully acquired an authentic sailor’s gait.
Too bad the film slates Scientology in a backhand manner, though that is not the core of the film.
It’s about dependence, interdependence and the vacuum of America. And so much more.
A film I will get on dvd and keep., unlike many others which just pass through.
Dan –
Gee, that Sevco must be some outfit then . . . . .
Ulcry
hen1rik
13:33 on
16 January, 2013
Just HAD TO post the detailed comment from your post, for anyone who didn’t open the link ……Brilliant
#502 Doc Rob
Bad Medicine
Paid Member_10
657 posts
LocationEryri
DONATOR
Posted 13 January 2013 – 12:58 PM
dayork, on 12 January 2013 – 04:11 PM, said:
Your right. We SHOULD have been forced to CHOOSE.. we never got that option, you lot chose for us. NEWCO.. get em tae **** i beleive the term was. Cannot have it both ways… wipe our history and call us new.. yet extect us to pay for the oldco’s debts.
As it stands, we only owe HMRC now, and whether that is morally correct or not, lets face it, it’s not… we have no obligation to pay the government under UK law. No business and i do mean NO business is going to volunteer to pay out millions when i legally has no obligation to.
All the organisations recognise us as old rangers, it is sadly scottish footy fans that don’t, but hey any excuse to hate the big players right?
And for proof that the organisations will recognise us as oldco… ECA invite informed us as such in writing. UEFA, FIFA, SPL, SFL and SFA would all create a shit storm if we spouted about our history if we had none. Like or not that is the truth and you lot are simply bitter.
I wonder how you will spin it if you guys ever liquidate and reform? Same club? New club, new club with previous history? Pay ALL debts, or do what we did, pay ALL clubs and companies and avoid the MASSIVE government payment. Only time will tell and if it happens is the ONLY time i will get a TRUTHFUL answer.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Jesus Christ. And you describe yourself as a reasonable-minded Rangers fan? You are, quite literally, deluded – the definition of a delusion being a fixed belief which continues to be held in the face of all evidence to the contrary.
Please stop this idiotic drivel about Rangers being hard done by in some way. Sorry, but not on this planet. You wonder why everyone was so down on Rangers? Could it be because you had been lording it over the rest of Scottish football (Celtic excepted) for decades, whilst cheating financially on a staggering scale to ensure your position could never be threatened? Everybody likes to see a bully get their comeuppance, and Rangers were one of the biggest bullies in football history.
Having been found out, Rangers then showed zero remorse (still haven’t, in fact) and have continued to behave with unbelievable arrogance even as their club collapsed around them. Had it not been for the utter lack of humility shown by the club, other people might have been more sympathetic, but that’s the Rangers way, isn’t it?
Then the unthinkable happened – you actually went bust. And contrary to what you appear to think, every authority in Scottish football immediately began to do everything in their power to ensure that you had as soft a landing as possible. Administrators are supposed to act on behalf of the creditors, to get them the best deal possible. That’s almost the exact opposite of what happened in your case. The company’s largest assets (Ibrox and Murray Park) were not sold off to the highest bidder to pay off the creditors. Instead, they were placed out of the creditors’ reach by selling them to NewCo for a derisory sum (about £4.5m, IIRC – when Ibrox alone had been valued at £100m in Rangers’ own accounts!) This was allowed to go unchallenged. Was there a fire sale of players? No. In fact, Green threatened legal action against players who exercised their right to leave.
Then we come to the question of where NewCo would play, and the shameful shenanigans that went on to try to prevent them from having to follow the rules. As a new club, NewCo should have had to apply to join SFL3, like any other new club would have to. But instead we were treated to the spectacle of the SPL and SFA seriously considering reinserting them into the SPL and pretending nothing had happened. It’s hardly surprising the fans of other clubs were screaming blue murder – the authorities had thrown away their own rule book and were making things up as they went along, because this was Rangers, and the usual rules don’t apply to OF clubs.
Fortunately, sanity prevailed and the SPL clubs voted against this madness, which really and truly would have made Scottish football a laughing stock around the world. Then the focus went on to the SFL, who were pressurised into putting NewCo into SFL1 – for which there was even less justification than keeping them in the SPL, since the latter is a separate body. But this failed too, amid dire predictions of doom and apocalypse (which have failed to ensue). So NewCo went to SFL3.
Then we started to get this nonsense about ‘we’ve been punished enough’. Complete twaddle. You weren’t punished AT ALL for anything you did. The ‘demotion’ was anything but – instead of having to reapply to the SFL, you were allowed to keep OldCo’s membership and bypass the application process. It was doing NewCo a favour. The only ‘punishments’ dealt out to Rangers were a miserable fine, a transfer ban which was carefully arranged to cause a minimum of inconvenience (it didn’t start till you had already signed players for this season, and will end just in time for you to register players for next season!) and a requirement to pay ‘football debts’, which was trivial in comparison to the series of favours you had received.
Then the new season began, with Rangers in Div 3, but still owning Ibrox and Murray Park, still having much of their squad, still having all their coaching staff, having made virtually nobody redundant, and claiming somehow to be both a new club (hence debt free) and an old club (hence with all the Rangers history). No attempt has been made to challenge this at all. Next thing we know, ‘Rangers’ – who are supposed to have gone bust and returned as a new entity – are signing players from SPL clubs and paying them bumper SPL wages to play in SFL3.
Is it any wonder that your club are resented? The scale of the heist you have pulled off is breathtaking. You were cheating, you were found out, you went bust, and yet you have been allowed to carry on as if nothing had happened. Your ‘punishment’ has been a slap on the wrist at best. And despite all this, you honestly think you have been mistreated! If Hearts go to the wall, do you think we will get ANY of the special treatment you did? Not a chance in hell.
http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/8499/logchurt.jpg