It is a measure of how far we have come during this Champions League campaign that a 2-1 defeat away to Benfica, leaving us favourites to qualify in second place for the Champions League knockout stage and assured of European football after Christmas, is a disappointment.
Unlike previous defeats in this competition, this one has not limited our ambitions.
Around this time of previous Champions League campaigns I’ve opined that Uefa Cup/Europa League qualification would be preferable to finishing second in the group stage, leading to inevitable elimination to a group winner. Teams who drop out of the Champions League have the prospect of a decent run in the Europa League, earning more coefficient points and potentially more cash, whereas Celtic never convinced me they could reach the last eight of the Champions League.
This time is different. We got it wrong last night and as a result lost the head-to-head against Benfica but this was not the case against Barcelona. Most of the current group leaders are better than Celtic, all would create more chances and have more possession against us, but here’s the rub, Celtic can score goals against anyone and can defend remarkably well.
Georgios Samaras has now scored in three consecutive group stage away games; he scored in all of Celtic’s five away games in Europe this season, surely a record. This is beyond a mere statistical oddity, it’s a result of a strategy which Benfica, Barcelona and Spartak have been unable to cope with (last night’s block-and-free-header routine was a thing of technical brilliance).
We’ve scored five goals in total in our three away group stage games. In the eight away games in the competition proper before this season, since losing in Copenhagen, we scored only once (remember against whom?)! In short, we can go anywhere and play effective counter-attacking football which even the best team in history had trouble dealing with.
That doesn’t mean we are champions-elect, of course. Benfica, who are a worthy team but are not tier-one material, got the better of us. They played to form last night and Celtic dipped. Scott Brown was clearly unfit, Charlie Mulgrew may-or-may-not have declared himself ill before kick-off but his condition did not help (stunning corner aside).
Neil also left out Kris Commons. Kris’s form has shaded since The Beating of Barca, so I was not surprised to see him on the bench, but did you notice we started to get balls into the Benfica box after he came on? More of this and I fancy Benfica would have yielded. In his post-match comments Neil Lennon reminded us his players are young and will learn from the experience.
It’s easy to overlook the fact that the manager is also young and learning as he goes along. His tactical decisions have been the real revelation of this group, even if he did leave Kris out and his gamble with Scott Brown didn’t work. His progress as a manager has been, as our old friend might say, astonishing.
Fraser Forster provided more evidence of his outstanding ability. Mikael Lustig and Kelvin Wilson looked perfectly at ease with under frenetic pressure but Efe Ambrose particularly impressed. I’ve watched Celtic defences for decades and we always seem to have a ‘junior partner’ but not now.
The defence made two mistakes last night but in all their games together they have yet to conjure up a Big Dan Moment.
My objectives for this Champions League campaign have already been surpassed but expectation levels are never level, so let’s take care of Spartak and see where the adventure goes next.
Orders are now open for the very first CQN Annual, get it here!
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I see the nominations for African footballer of the year have been announced, one question, why has victor not been named? He’s better than all of them.
craigwhitesoptometrist – Did Bangura get nominated? (thumbsup)
19 year old ghanaian arrived yesterday for trial – forward – Frank Acheampong . Any ideas?
philvisreturns – next year I’d say he’ll get it, worth a £5 punt anyway
Can I Have Raspberry On That Champions League Ice Cream – 19 year old ghanaian arrived yesterday for trial – forward – Frank Acheampong . Any ideas?
I shall call him Frankie A. (thumbsup)
So the starting point for all the detractors of Celtic’s 25 Million Pound evaluation of Victor Wanyama is the 900,000 pounds Celtic paid Beerschot for the player.
Let’s, for the moment, for the sake of simple arithmetic, round that transfer fee up to I (ONE) Million pounds. Celtic has now inflated his evaluation by 25 times for the simple reason heis a bloody good player and he is being watched by a host of top shelf clubs.
James McCarthy cost Hamilton nothing, he signed for Wigan from Hamilton for just over 1 Million pounds. Some profit eh? Didn’t hear too many people talk Jamie down. Good player mind and worth a lot more than his initial transfer fee. Pity Dermott didn’t rate him.
There are so many examples out there of marked-up players who should be doing the hovering for their mums.
The one that makes me giggle the most is Jean-Alain Boumsong; a ‘Free transfer’ to the huns, much acclaimed and trumpeted, continuous big hype from the hun petting media and before you know it Jean-Alain, well he’s supping Newkie Brown after an 8Million pounds transfer. That is what you call ‘mark-up’ thought I have to admit I’ve seen others spell ‘mark-up’ – fraud and even ‘money laundering’.
I blame the schools.
Don’t sell McCourt, Paddy McCourt nor big Victor either.
craigwhitesoptometrist – Frankie says relax. (thumbsup)
I see Benfica are claiming that Barcelona did not take the game against us seriously.I was worried about the game coming up in Barcelona as I thought Benfica would be well up for it but I think they have shot themselves in the foot,Barcelona will not be happy that their integrity is being questioned.Thank you Benfica,do the business Celtic. And we will be through to the last 16. HH
fanadpatriot – I see Benfica are claiming that Barcelona did not take the game against us seriously
Lovely people, the Portugese. (thumbsup)
I’d be happy if bangura got SPL player of the month at some stage never mind African footballer of the year .
If Alastair Johnston believes that the dead club Rangers is due a slap on the writs for the contracts issue he must believe that there was wrongdoing. Or he would be asking for all charges to be dismissed.
craigwhitesoptometrist – I’d be happy if bangura got SPL player of the month at some stage never mind African footballer of the year .
There’s nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do. (thumbsup)
Craig Whyte reminds me of one of the Marx brothers.
The one who was dumb.
Canny remember his name. (mibbe Harpo)
As usual
Re the Packy Bonnar debate.
Mibbe Packy is just no very bright.
Could be.
Kitalba: Snap, the brainwashing has started about the transfer values.
Victor Wanyama could play in any big club in Europe starting bid 30M Euros.
Fraser Forster Englands future number1 starting bid 15M Euros
Gary Hooper mid table EPL starting bid 12m Euros.
These players although happy at the club want to move on thus giving Lenny the cash to buy players with much needed pace we need.
KTF
Latest from Phil
http://www.philmacgiollabhain.ie/a-case-of-very-bad-timing/#more-3347
Tom English has picked up on the same theme.
http://www.scotsman.com/sport/football/sfl-division-three/tom-english-if-only-murray-and-his-men-had-been-co-operative-from-day-one-1-2650192
These are key questions to be answered.
Kit
How much did Manure get Ronaldo for?
Re AJ take on the dual contracts/were they were they not issue,
wasnt there some interview with boumsong regarding his contractual arrangements, where dead club had offered him &X as a salary and suggested the rest would be paid through the EBT?
boumsong if i recall ciorrectly said he has never come across anything like this but when he signed for newcastle he got a “usual” contractual arrangement
.
BlantyreTim..
Am l Correct in Thinking..I say ‘Thinking’ as l was Half-Man Half-Mattress at the Time l read..
Did you start CQN’s first ever Soup debate..???
Summa of Que’sSoupTakerCSC
Interesting article by Tom English in today’s Scotsman.
Reading the tribunal judgement again I suspect that if it had been based in England it would have reached a different conclusion and would have sat in public.
#########################
THE headlines were stark and, in many ways, understandable. No more talk of the Big Tax Case, now it was the Big Tax Farce, no more Rangers under the microscope, now it was HMRC and their part in the downfall of Rangers.
THE headlines were stark and, in many ways, understandable. No more talk of the Big Tax Case, now it was the Big Tax Farce, no more Rangers under the microscope, now it was HMRC and their part in the downfall of Rangers. In the wake of the club’s 2-1 victory over the tax authorities the narrative of this story changed and changed utterly.
Now it is this: For years the Big Tax Case was the sword of Damocles hanging over Ibrox, the possibility of a £49m-plus tax bill rendering the sale of the club to a responsible owner a virtual impossibility. David Murray tried to find a buyer, but couldn’t, not while the case was unresolved, not while all the vibes were that there was a financial howitzer coming down the track.
And it wasn’t just gossip either. Murray tried to settle with HMRC. Offered them just over £10m. HMRC told him to get lost, that they were coming after his group for substantially more than £10m and they were supremely confident of victory. The gorilla in the room was how former Rangers chairman, Alastair Johnston described it. “And nobody knows how big an appetite it’s got.”
If there were potentially decent owners out there, they were frightened away by something that has amounted to half-nothing. The Big Tax Case? It was like the bogeyman. The anticipation was infinitely more frightening than the reality. Murray did sell, though. He had to. He was under pressure and was forced to give it away for a quid to the one guy prepared to take it on with the threat of Armageddon still lingering. Enter Craig Whyte. Enter administration. Enter liquidation. Enter disgrace. All avoidable, if only HMRC hadn’t been so vengeful and so wrong in their pursuit of the club. That’s the narrative as articulated by a spokesman for Murray, by Johnston and by fans. That and the time it took for the First-Tier Tribunal to pass judgment, a veritable age in which Whyte appeared and did untold damage. While they waited, Rangers burned. So the story goes.
Johnston: “If the tax case had been resolved in the original timescale there would have been no need to sell to Craig Whyte. The taxman let Whyte into our club to drive a hearse to the cemetery.”
A source close to Murray: “They (HMRC) effectively destroyed a Scottish institution. They made the club unsellable because of the potential debt.”
The analysis is understandable and has merit, but it’s lacking something. Firstly, this notion, expressed widely now in the aftermath of victory, that HMRC had taken a farcical case against Rangers in the first place is rather compromised by the fact that Murray himself never thought it farcical. He does now, but not previously. If he did he wouldn’t have offered to settle it to the tune of around £10m. That act has never sat well with Murray’s oft-expressed confidence that Rangers were going to win the case, as they have now done. Neither was his confidence on show when potential buyers, as part of the purchase agreement, asked him to assume liability for the big tax bill, if it ever came.
Paul Murray, of the Blue Knights, said he made a late bid to buy the club from Murray just as Whyte was about to seal the deal but the Knights wanted Murray to take responsibility for whatever tax bill came down the line – and Sir David wouldn’t do it. Where was his confidence in the fight with HMRC? He opted instead to give the club to Whyte.
Murray, or people close to Murray, have been briefing in the last few days, the message being that it was HMRC that destroyed the club. It’s a deflection tactic because HMRC had very good reasons to pursue Rangers. They lost their case, but that’s not to say their case was rubbish to begin with. It wasn’t. That fact is evidenced by the fact that it was a split decision. None of the panel members have criticised HMRC for taking the case. Clearly, they were torn by what they heard.
The story of Mr Red is told in the FTT report. There’s not a lot I can tell you about Mr Red, apart from the fact that that is the codename ascribed to him in the tribunal report published on Tuesday. He is a chartered tax advisor, a qualified tax inspector and is, or was, a senior member of the Murray Group’s tax function. His name features throughout the 145 pages. When critics slam HMRC for pursuing this case so vehemently and slam the FTT for taking an age to rule on it, they reckon without the presence of Mr Red, one of Murray’s own people.
Mr Red caused HMRC and the tribunal some problems. Of the three person panel, Kenneth Mure and Scott Rae were the two members who went with Rangers, but even Mure and Rae had issues with Mr Red, the key man in the tax affairs of the Murray Group and the person who operated the EBT scheme within the group. They called his evidence “somewhat defensive” and referred to a “culture of defensiveness” from the Murray Group both in their testimony and in their dealings with HMRC. Mure and Rae admitted to be being “disturbed” by part of Mr Red’s evidence.
Later in the report, the dissenting voice, Dr Heidi Poon, goes after Mr Red in a coruscating way and perhaps illustrates part of the reasons why this affair took so long. “The protracted and chequered course of the enquiry was largely due to a lack of candour and co-operation from Mr Red, who was the chief operating officer dealing with the enquiry,” writes Poon. She talks about documents not being disclosed despite repeated requests and statutory demands for information. She talks about Mr Red’s “hostility” and the fact that he “refused any meetings with HMRC in the course of the enquiry”.
The impasse was broken only when the City of London Police consulted with HMRC’s Criminal Investigation Section and seized documents from Ibrox. It was, according to Poon, only in May 2009 that the Murray Group finally provided the documents that were requested. That was, says Poon, fully five and a half years after the HMRC enquiry had begun.
She adds: “The conduct of the Murray Group in general, and Mr Red in particular, in the course of HMRC’s enquiry went beyond the [Mure and Rae] description of ‘a lack of candour’… There is evidence of active concealment of documents. Equally, to describe Mr Red as ‘somewhat defensive’ [Mure and Rae’s description] in giving his sworn testimony would be an understatement. On more than one occasion, Mr Red had attempted to mislead the Tribunal.”
Now, the fact is that Poon lost the argument. Rangers were found innocent in all bar a few individual cases and we now move on, all too slowly, to the SPL commission that is looking into dual contracts. For now, though, in trying to understand why HMRC took the case on and why it took so long to get to the bottom of it, Poon’s words are instructive. Maybe if the Murray Group had been co-operative from day one then Rangers might have got themselves over the winning line a long, long time ago. Maybe if Mr Red had coughed up the documents instead of waiting for search warrants to be issued there wouldn’t have been a need for the epic hysteria surrounding the case. Maybe the threat hanging over the club would have removed long before anybody had ever heard of Craig Whyte. Maybe a sensible owner would have been found before Whyte arrived in town bringing untold chaos and disgrace with him.
Maybe.
The bottom line is that the big tax case amounted to a little tax case but it was one that had horrendous, and avoidable, repercussions. It’s so easy to point the guns at HMRC, but they thought they had a case and neither Mure nor Rae have criticised them for going after it. Ask questions of the tax authorities for sure, but while you’re at it, read the report and ponder the role of Mr Red, and the man who employed him, in turning this tax case into a preventable trauma.
Carrigan:
They talk him up and up, laud his performances, bemoan that he is too good for the SPL. They proclaim that he would grace any EPL club and then – without so much of even a wee draw of breath – they say he is only a boy and not worth more than half of Campbell Ogilvie’s EBT loan.
I blame the schools.
Mc….Mjallby
quite a lot I think
.
Re; Value of Our Stars..
If Fraser Foster was Doing what he has been Doing for us in Champions League et al..and Doing it Consistently Since the Hearts Penalty save..
His Price tag..Would be Off the Scale..
As Brian Clough used to Say..a Great Goalkeeper is worth OVER 10 points (In Olde Money) a Season..or a European Cup (I added that bit)..
Summa of SafeHandsCSC
Phil’s latest take on the tax affairs of the Deid Club.
http://www.philmacgiollabhain.ie/a-case-of-very-bad-timing/
On STV’s Scottish News last night they had the usual one sided report on poor dead Rangers.
First up was a lengthy interview with the porn star, who basically said the judgement showed that he was a genius coming up with this scheme. He also said that any cases where tax was due to be paid were Murray’s fault for not doing things properly.
They then had some financial journalist who went on and on about the length of time that the judgement had taken and how this had affected the poor dead club.
Of course no one pointed out the sections in the judgement that explain that the club’s uncooperative and evasive attitude was largely to blame.
Is Mr Red, Alistair Johnson or Martin Bain then?
I see all the press hacks are back to what they do best, hanging out the arse of a dead club. Jimmy Carr amongst others got slaughtered in the papers for using a Tax avoidance scheme. The dead club parade soldiers who are under equiped during conflicts (whether you agree with them or not), yet used a Tax avoidance scheme to pay players, this scheme which by 2-1, judges have deemed legal although Hector could appeal. They have no shame. The Hacks should be highlighting the fact that overpaid players and officials got paid effectively Tax free while the country (including many of the fans of a dead club) suffers due to schemes like this. I hope those who got “loans” have to pay them back so creditors get paid.
Hail Hail
Might be best to leave out who we think is Mr Red White or Blue guys…
Summa of Sammi…. – Did you start CQN’s first ever Soup debate..???
Oxtail soup is warming and nutritious. (thumbsup)
PHilbhoy.it was Harpo…one of the best biographies I have read is called “Harpo speaks!”
he was actually a very intelligent guy and croquet player…much brighter than ole google eyes…HH
Summa: could’nt agree more regarding Forster but always thought goalies went for less, if my memory serves me right we could’nt get 10M for Arthur at his peak.
That’s actually not a bad article from Tom English, I’m surprised as I thought he was good mates with Jabba?
I think the fact that all the old directors of dead club are desperately trying to get the SPL investigation dropped shows they are guilty as sin on dual contracts.
I fully expect the SPL to cave in and hide behind the FTT judgement, even if it’s appealed and thus cheating will have been rewarded. I expect nothing less from that coward Doncaster.
Still, at the end of the day the club that won those titles is dead. No matter the level of delusion down Ibrox way.
Still having a party in the Champions League! :-)
Che
10:25 on 22 November, 2012
Might be best to leave out who we think is Mr Red White or Blue guys…
……………………………………………………………………….
I think it’s safe to say he was just another stupid hun.
Johann Murdoch
Thanks…………….. but do you think he looks like our hero Craigy Bhoy?
Philbhoy –
“I think it’s safe to say he was just another stupid hun.
unfortunately that does not narrow the field down any tho… :-)
Che
True, so very true!
Lennon n Mc….Mjallby
10:19 on 22 November, 2012
‘Is Mr Red, Alistair Johnson or Martin Bain then?’
No.
Mr Red seems to have taken a lot of flack.
One assumes he wasn’t doing what he was told to do by Mr Black.
Perhaps someone could ask Mr Black what he thinks of Mr Red’s conduct and probity.
Lennon n Mc….Mjallby- £13.5 mil for Ronaldo to Man Ure rings a bell.
Mark Dingwall @GrandmasterSuck
Ex-Rangers favourite Michael Mols tells SPL to ditch investigation into dual contracts http://bit.ly/TR3Ww2 via @Daily_Record
That’s fair enough then eh ?