I’ve spoken to many Celtic fans over the last couple of days but I’ve not met one who would have preferred Roy Keane to be our manager instead of Ronny Deila. Despite some impeccable references, Ronny is a largely unknown character, but there is an appreciation among the support that we need to come up with a plan to enable the club to over-achieve in Europe.
The man’s performance at the media conference was faultless. It’s not important to quick-witted but his use of words like “energise” and “offensive” is promising. Football is in the entertainment business and Ronny appears to appreciate the link between the way his team perform, not just their results, and the ultimate satisfaction supporters’ leave the ground with.
Our thanks to the Greenock Celtic Supporters Club for hosting last night’s CQN Lions fundraiser for the Celtic FC Foundation. We were fortunate to be entertained by Willie Wallace, John Hughes and Bertie Auld, it was a fantastic night, full of laughs.
Special thanks to those who attended and helped raise over £2000 for the Foundation, and to those who promised to get involved with the Foundation. The club is in good hands with supporters like those in Greenock last night. Big shout to Joe and Mick for bringing a familiar old friend along.
Visit the CQN Bookstore to get Tommy Gemmell to sign your personal copy of his tome, All the Best.
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auldheid
16:39 on 7 June, 2014
Ah wee bugbear ae mine Pat :).
Sky 589 , ewtn -catholic lives, john deighan
Terry
Thinking back even to Lisbon Lions days they weren’t much better with throw ins.
Good to see you posting mate. Hope you’re well.
I always thought it was just wee CaltonTongues and me who thought our throw ins, for decades, were absolutely rotten.
Wee Joe’s goal in the ’89 cup final being the exception :-)
eldiegobhoy
the league winning 2-2 draw at ipox in 1967 -throw in to jinky who moved the ball in-field before a 25yd into top corner.
But not many
HT
thow ins have been a bug bear of mine since 1961
Gene’s a Bhoy’s name
Well remember that goal and have watched it many times since but that was the exception to the general rule when watching them taking throw ins.
My daughters have just arrived back from Tenerife and I’m heading up to the West End to bring home the younger one.
They’ve already been on the phone complaining about our weather:o) Shame.
Gene
Jinky’s goal at Ibrox was 4 years before my birth but I’ll concede that one as I’ve seen footage of it many times :-)
How did Port Vale do last season?
Deary me bhoys, our throw-ins….come to
think of it,it’s certainly up for debate……me,
if we can get it in the box.
HT
finished 9th which we would have taken at the beginning of the season, but disappointed in a way because i feel we could have made the playoffs.
We have a clown of an owner / ceo and i can see us struggling next season.
I’d love us to get a couple of young bhoys on loan.
Went to the Lions event at Greenock CSC last night. It was excellent. Willie Wallace – relaxed and confident, a natural showman. John Hughes – a real dry wit, really interesting, a man with a story to tell. And what about Bertie? You’d have thought he’d just won the Cup.
Thanks to all at Greenock CSC and especially to Greenlion.
Rory Delap is probably available.
EDB,
I can’t remember any Celtic team being useful at shies(their proper name).
I don’t think Bertie Peacock ever found a team mate!
Gene
I’m thinking of going to a game next time I’m down in Worcester. I’ve been to a Worcester City game and don’t fancy any of the other clubs round and about Birmingham so PV is an option.
Thing that has impressed me most so far about RD:
When he said he wanted to implement his own style and approach, but not too quickly. The world is full of examples when people come in and upset the apple cart by making wholesale changes, these are generally met with resistance and a good structure, process or idea never even gets a chance to take off. Best case scenario there’s a rough bedding in process and performance dips till everyone gains experience and expertise in their new role.
Deila has the intelligence and wisdom not to push too hard too fast and that shows maturity, the need for a bit of stability amplified by the upcoming CL qualifiers.
Just pooped back on to say what a great night I had in Greenock CSC. Thanks to Winning Captains, BRHT, Paul67 and everyone else who helped organise the night. If Willie and Bertie hadn’t been footballers they would have been a great double act to rival Francie and Josie. yogi’s quip about the SFA was just jaw droppingly good.
Popped not pooped
HT
You would be very welcome, we are a good hour north of wocester.
Worcester even
The sign of a great coach is his ability to change and adapt
I get worried by guys who talk about philosophy in what is basically a simple game
Football is about players – a good coach cannot make a poor player in to a good one but they can make good players look bad by playing them out of position or by asking them to do things that the player is incapable of !
When you hear the likes of Pep talking about players needing to change to fit in to his philosophy – alarm bells should start to sound!
I would be surprised if BM signed too many dud players – so surely a coach there should look at what he has available and then devise a system that would get the best out of them
What impressed me about Ronny – and I’ll be honest I would rather have had Roy – was the way he spoke about making gradual changes rather than discarding people right away
Like others I suspect that longer term Commons will not fit in as he lacks pace and the engine to press high up the park for the whole game. However he is a good reader of the game and will still be useful in Scotland at least – he wins us lots of free kicks in advanced positions as well as having an eye for goal!
The other one who might be under threat is Stokes – whose work rate has always been poor and who certainly doesn’t work opposing defences
As ever Ronny will need to have a system that takes in to account the way most team come to CP and shut up shop
Lenny never really came up with a long term answer to the need for a plan B
Plan A – the pass and move worked very well most of the time but when occasionally it didn’t – like the cup ties – we never had a great back up. Balde looked the part of the physical presence that could be required but never really had Lenny’s full backing IMHO
Next interesting appointment will be his assistant – will he get his own man or will PL get his?
Interesting times and next season will fascinating to watch !
HH
Jonny the Tim
15:25 on 7 June, 2014
‘End London rule.’
####
That set me thinking.
I wonder what it would be like if London ruled Scottish football?
I bet the huns are glad it doesn’t.
Ginger
14:00 on
7 June, 2014
Enjoy the break Tony,do you know Leo o’donnell? He lived in Glasgow before going to Toronto originally from Donegal
*I knew a Leo O’Donnell about 26 year ago. I worked with him at Wimpey, he was a geotechnical soil tester and seemingly one of the best in Southern Ontario.
He didnae know me as I had started while he was on holiday, he was telling a wee punter that when he was over in Glasgow he had went tae eyeboak, I said “what for”, he replied that it was tae see a fitba game, tae which I retorted “then why go there”.
At that he went intae his pocket and produced a key ring with the centennial logo and gave it to me. I still have it.
I’ve often wondered as I’ve roamed across this magic globe’s green swards why the only advice ever given in the ubiquitous city centre carefully manicured lawns and parks is ‘keep of the grass”!
Why not I pondered did they not also suggest such bon mots as
“don’t snort charlie’ or ‘ give ecstacy a wide berth’ or even “MDMA IS BAD 4 U”.
I mean, and let’s be quite honest here, if Transport Scotland or whoever it is that broadcasts the critical advice on our motorways (the M74 being particularly notable in this instance) such as ‘don’t sleep at the wheel’ (and there was me just about to doze off hoping to wake up all parked up and fresh in the St Enoch’s car park ready for a tasty plate of monosodium glutamate curry in the food-court), surely our park attendants can provide ethical and legal guidance on what constitutes illegal highs.
This deep philosophical question came to me as I pondered the universal paradox highlighted by the chance (was it chance I wondered?) conjunction of a monumental hangover, a lounge laminate floor, a pair of desert boots and a wee stray beetle that had for a couple of days been hiding in the mud encased deep tread of that particular pair of boots.
If I could stray from the central point of this discourse for a brief moment, it is worth noting that this pair of size eight and a half desert boots were donated to me by our resident Aussie iconoclast and Brisbane’s contribution to bacchanalian bonhomie – Kitalba – as I had made a particularly foolhardy venture into the Australian outback – a land that will forever be tattooed on my soul as the place where termite hills are the size of a tyrannosaur’s bowel evacuation – provisioned with a box of eggs, packet of wheat biscuits, pint of milk and a pair of flip flops. I remember well as he handed me the boots, the incisive and uncannily predictive advice he gave me.
“Don’t chase Taipans (the world’s most venomous snake) in your flip flops. Good sensible advice I can tell you which I took to heart and stuck to. Sadly his prescient warning never included Soldier ants and/or Tiger snakes both encounters which have added to my ‘lessons well learned and never to be repeated’ …..but those are stories for another time and possibly another dimension!)
Anyway back to the main point as encapsulated by my hangover, laminate flooring, boots and wee stray beetle.
As I stared at the confluence of these seemingly unrelated objects, the central importance of life, the universe and TOE (Theory of Everything) seemed wrapped up in the intrinsic centrality encapsulated in the sobriety of the leather jacket.
Not I hasten to add, a leather jacket that that I bought in T J Hughes or even the Leather Jacket shop just opposite that posh man’s Paddy’s Market emporium on the Trongate, but THE Leather Jacket of the of the insect family – ‘leatherus jackitus’ – the big boss member of which in a moment of drunken abandon on a night out in the creepy crawly version of Sharkeys bar, pulled a fulsome bosomed six legged temptress of the opposite leathered jacket gender and not only danced the her into a frenzy at the ugly bug ball but then went back to a seedy manure heap and shared a night of unbridled passion resulting in the production of twin wean Leatherae Jackitae, wan of the sober red eyed tendency and the other, similar in many ways to myself, a pish head and bohemian adventurer with little regard for laws, rules, eating 5 a day or as I said earlier, keeping off the grass!
Like Einstein questioning time, relativity and the ridiculous concept of quantum theory, I found myself staring at perhaps the answer to the great conundrum of life and its infinite unanswered questions, which I suddenly realised weren’t infinite at all. In fact there has only ever been ONE simple and unanswered question.
But before we get to that startling conclusion we need to return to the sober red eyed twin.
This is where it gets weird.!!!!
If you drive the M74 (have you noticed that if you accidently hold down the Shift key while typing M74 it comes up as M&$ which is nearly M&S? Now is that food for thought or what?) going south past Arnold Clarke’s, on your left hand side you will encounter the council rubbish dump which announces its presence with the faintly romantic scent (if you happen to be a heifer on heat) of a thousand bullocks performing a synchronised fart.
It was here that a couple of days ago I sat down to enjoy a salad sandwich while enraptured at the sounds, sights and odours of the Scottish sun-drenched summer’s day. It was also here that serendipity in all its glorious garb provided me with the privilege of defining (although I was unaware of it at the time) not only the QUESTION, but also the ANSWER to the eternal nagging quest of humanity since that moment we crawled from the primordial swamp and those of us with innate intelligence decided to head for the east end of the city rather than Kinning park.
Few other people could have understood the significance of the scene that unfolded before me, not because I have any particular insight in to the machinations of the world and the big bang, but simply because being stuck in the Australia’s northern territories for day after day with no human contact and conversation, I found myself forced to learn to speak ‘termite’ which turns out, apart from the Aussie twang to be very similar to the discourse that goes on between teenaged leather jackets from Scotland.
After all language and talking quality shite is the key to sanity and the alternative is obviously madness and who amongst us would want to go down that road.
Aw fer feck’s sake, I’ve got to go. A couple of total zoomers talking keech have just walked in after an afternoon of drinking lager priced at a ridiculous £3.05 a pint.
Back soon
Hail Hail
Estadio
MON has reached legendary status with Celtic supporters and I suppose quite right tae, 2 of the Leagues he lost were down tae “honest mistakes”, in fact prior tae the pars lying doon tae that rotten mob one of the pars coaching team was at an event in the Rock Bowling Club in Dumbarton and seemingly said “if the rankers need a goal then the rankers will get one”. Read intae that what you want.
However, the last title he lost was similar tae Lenny at ICT and against the same manager. We capitulated, I know we had lost Henke but we still had enough in our armory tae be champs, How could the following :
Celtic: Douglas, Agathe, Balde, Varga, McNamara, Petrov, Lennon, Sutton, Thompson, Hartson (Beattie 75), Bellamy. Subs Not Used: Valgaeren, Lambert, Laursen, Marshall, Maloney, McGeady.
FFS lose tae this mob:
Motherwell: Marshall, Corrigan, Craigan, Kinniburgh, Fagan, Foran, Kerr, Fitzpatrick (Clarkson 88), Paterson, Scott McDonald, Hamilton (Britton 85). Subs Not Used: Corr, Higgins, Connolly, Keogh, Smith.
Hi Paul,
it’s been a while since I last posted but thought I should come on-line today to thank you and all the other CQN’ers who came down to Greenock CSC last night. It was also great to put a few ‘faces to names.
I was lucky enough to win a clutch of CQN books in the raffle – wife tells me that I won’t need anything for Fathers Day now. £2,000 for charity raise don the night. Wow!
Wee Bertie (especially), Wispy & Yogi were all brilliant but I think Yogi’s response to the SFA’s international selection policy towards Celtic players (in his time) blew everybody away. No-one saw that coming.
I heard big john Kennedy give an interview via a link from one of the other tim websites a couple of years ago and was amazed at how articulate he was and the extent of his appreciation of the ‘attacking’ aspect of the game.
He spoke of the challenge in finding the balance between encouraging kids to express themselves without restricting them by positional boundaries and the need for defensive discipline’
This guy is going to play a larger part in our future, but there’s no rush, he still so very very young, continuing to serve his apprenticeship in an arena he can make mistakes and be judged is the best place for him at the moment.
I say that convinced the longer he stays in the background, the bigger the impact will be when he’s brought forward.
And not be judged (blame the I phone!)
Brilliant article by Kevin McKenna. The second paragraph is priceless…
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/07/im-scottish-but-i-want-england-to-win-world-cup
Estadio
Good stuff Sir. Keep an eye out for the Diving Bell spiders in yer well earned pint. The Cousteaus (Cousteaux?) of the amber nectar business.
eddieinkirkmichael
just scrolled back and saw your post re big Yogi. His reply to the SFA selection ‘criteria’ last night was a belter – nearly fell off my chair.
Estadio….great post,wish I could da that.
Tontine Tim…..leave black Sunday alone…it
still haunts me.
The Pantaloon Duck
I like his views on Argentina:
“Argentina
I’ve always liked them since they fought Thatcher for the Malvinas, which are, of course, rightfully theirs.”
Would someone post Yogi’s quip, please.
bobby evans superstar.
Wee Bertie (especially), Wispy & Yogi were all brilliant but I think Yogi’s response to the SFA’s international selection policy towards Celtic players (in his time) blew everybody away. No-one saw that coming.
____________
You can’t leave it like that, could you expand? Be most appreciated.HH
One fleeting glimpse into the labyrinthine ramblings of Estadio’s tortured imagination makes all the pointless visits to our frustrating & depressing site worth the effort.
Thank You.
sipsini
During the Q&A, one guy asked Yogi a question along the lines of…
Considering the number of games you have played for Celtic, and the number of goals scored, why do think you had been award so few caps for Scotland?
Yogis was dead pan in responding that the SFA was full of OB’s
N.B. O being a colour and B referring to birth status.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
Anyone fancy half a ‘Hot as hell fire’ pizza ?