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Hearts v Celtic, Live updates

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  1. bognorbhoy on

    C.O.Y.B.I.G.

     

     

    CELTIC: Hart, Taylor, Starfelt, Bitton, Giakoumakis, Jota, Carter-Vickers, O’Riley, Hatate, Forrest, Juranovic.

     

    Subs: Bain, Jullien, Scales, Abada, Soro, McCarthy, Ralston, Welsh, Doak

  4. Neustadt-Braw on

    v=JlJrWhlZPcg&ab_channel=AStateofMind

     

     

     

     

     

     

    this is a Celtic football man talking truth…

     

     

     

     

     

     

    awfy braw

     

     

     

     

     

     

    smiley the wee huns need a spanking thing …….go get them bhoys

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Braw

  5. Uncle Jimmy on

    Slightly nervous, having seen the team.

     

    Hoping for 3 points and no injuries. Not too concerned how we achieve this

  8. Greenpinata on

    Nir Bitton our captain.

     

     

    Why Ange ? Joe Hart was captain last time we were on the oark and surely you must plan for your captain to play the full 90 minutes.

     

     

    As ever, COYBIG

  9. quadrophenian on

    Pre-game excitement – been up since 4am after we hosted a multi-nation wee Aus Day lunch. Lithuanian bread and salami, foodstuffs from Melbourne’s ‘bagel-belt’, vietnamese pate, Scottish oatcakes and English scones.

     

    Yummm.

     

    Post lunch, Ms Quad and I were discussing the retrospective red card red herring and, ever sage, she says:

     

    Why don’t they deduct a goal off the team whose player gets a retrospective card thereby punishing that team for the game their player offended… Admin aside, it’s not a bad wee thought.

     

     

    That’s a good line-up the Boss has selected: Tony R woulda been my favoured RB but Jura doesnt shirk either.

     

     

    Will it run as a 4-3-3 ?

     

     

    Mon Matty bhoy – mon the Tic!!

  10. Martim1980 on

    Nice balanced looking side. Liking seeing two pacey wide forwards with the big man up front.

     

    A performance and a win would be great, but win would do.

     

    COYBIG 🍀

     

     

    Ps i hate hearts

  12. An Dún on

    Far from the weakest side we’ve put out this season. 3 points and no injuries will make for a great night.

  15. Saint Stivs on

    big andy.

     

     

    signed for celtic in 71, that is a dearie me, how time flies.

     

     

    0000000000000000000

     

     

    The secrets to scouting from the former Celtic talent spotter who brought the Three Amigos to Parkhead

     

    Andy Ritchie brought the likes of Pierre van Hooijdonk, Mark Viduka and Paul Lambert to Celtic in the 90s.

     

     

    https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/secrets-scouting-former-celtic-talent-13231574

     

    ByDarren Cooney

     

     

    21:32, 19 SEP 2018

     

     

    Cadete celebrates his hat-trick against Kilmarnock in 1997 with di Canio and van Hooijdonk (Image: Daily Record)

     

     

    Top European clubs can now have 50 scouts on their wage bill. Back in the mid 90s, Celtic had just one.

     

     

    Thankfully for Fergus McCann, one was all they needed.

     

     

    As current recruitment chief Lee Congerton faces questions over his role at the club, Andy Ritchie can rest safe in the knowledge he was responsible for scouting some of the finest players to have ever graced the Hoops.

     

     

    The list is long. Pierre van Hooijdonk, Jorge Cadete, Paolo di Canio, Andreas Thom, Mark Viduka, Paul Lambert, Craig Burley and Johan Mjallby; just some of the talents spotted by the former forward.

     

     

    In a role that has altered radically over the past few years, its rudiments remain the same.

     

     

    While there is an appliance to science involved in scouting, data is a driver and numbers are king, one fundamental stays key. Can he kick a ball? It was a question to which Ritchie readily found an answer.

     

     

    But for all his acumen at spotting a player’s talent, the Morton legend needed luck. Like a note from Bobby Robson. Like the good grace of Lambert’s word when in the face of an approach from Rangers, and the demands of Jock Brown, a promise was kept.

     

     

    “The fundamentals to scouting are the same now as when I was doing it for Celtic. What’s different is there are far more of them at clubs,” the 62-year-old explains.

     

     

    “When I was at Celtic at first there was just Davie Hay and myself and a headmaster of a boys’ school in Liverpool who did stuff for us in the north west of England. The scouting department was horrendously underfunded.

     

     

    “I watched a lot and lot of football, looked at an awful lot of players on video and did a hell of a lot of travelling. In the first year I was never out of a car or off a plane.

     

     

    “When Davie left it was just me against the world and I used to complain about it continually.”

     

     

    Ritchie soon became chief scout for the club, working under Tommy Burns, Jo Venglos and then Wim Jansen.

     

     

    It was under Jansen he procured the talents of European Cup winner Lambert, a transfer that was first put in motion during the Burns regime.

     

     

    But it was a deal that may never have happened.

     

     

    Ritchie goes back to that time in 1997: “Paul was playing at the top of the game. I was working on a deal to bring him back to Scotland months before he won the Champions League with Dortmund.

     

     

    “I had known Paul since my days at St Mirren. So prior to Tommy being sacked he had asked me to speak to Paul. We needed a holding midfield player as we kept losing goals to Rangers through the middle. So I contacted him and spoke to his wife Monica as well. They wanted to come home.

     

     

    “Tommy and me were in the sauna on a Friday night and I told him Paul had been on the phone and wanted to come to Celtic. Tommy turned to me and said, ‘You’re going to have to do it with someone else, Andy, because I’ll not be here’. Two weeks later, he was sacked. But Tommy’s replacement Wim wanted Paul as well.

     

     

    “I knew the player had a clause in his contract that he could go for five million deutsche marks, or around £1.2m. The deal was on, but then came a problem. Jock had told Wim he had to see a player himself three times if he cost more than £1m. But Wim said, ‘Why do we have Andy here?’ Right in that Celtic turmoil, Rangers made a better offer.

     

     

    “But Paul had shaken hands with me. That’s the mark of the man.”

     

    Lambert is unveiled by Brown but it’s a deal that could have been scuppered by Rangers (Image: SNS Group 0141 221 3602)

     

     

    While the story of how Lambert came to Celtic has remained largely unknown, the Three Amigos’ arrival was front and back page news. But what was less heard of was one of the triumvirate could have been John Carew, and not van Hooijdonk. It also led to the signature of the player known as “Dolph”.

     

     

    Ritchie picks up the story. “Every Friday before going to games the next day I would sit with Tommy watching videos,” he explains.”One day Tommy shouted to me, ‘Come see this’. He was watching a player called Ernie Hunt, an American at NAC Breda. Tommy then went to warm the kettle up. While he was away, I noticed another video about a player whose name I couldn’t pronounce. I stuck it on.

     

     

    Whatever happened to Tony Mowbray’s Celtic signings?

     

     

    “Tommy came back and I told him to sit down because there was something I wanted to show him. It was van Hooijdonk who was scoring all kinds of goals.

     

     

    “I know Kevin Keegan had written in his autobiography it was the most impressive video from an agent he had ever seen. I remember thinking the same. He had 27 goals for Breda and we couldn’t understand why none of the big clubs from Holland had signed him.

     

     

    “I went out to watch Pierre with that in my mind. I thought there had to be something wrong with his game. There wasn’t. He did what it said on the tin.

     

     

    “I could have signed Carew instead, though. He played with Valerenga and went on to star for Valencia. But I was more delighted to have got Pierre.

     

     

    “I went to watch Carew at the Scandinavian Masters in Marbella during the winter.

     

     

    “But we did get another player from that tournament. You were allowed to go into the dressing room after those games and an agent, Kanut Christiansen, took me into see Mjallby. Johan was playing for AIK Stockholm but he knew all about Celtic from Henrik Larsson.

     

    Chris Sutton celebrates with team-mates after scoring Celtic’s fourth.

     

    Mjallby in the Hoops in 2001 (Image: Reuters)

     

     

    “Now, Johan was coming out of contract so I told him we’d be very interested in taking him to Scotland.

     

     

    “The problem came when the big guy scored the f****** winer for Sweden against England. Suddenly everybody’s interested. But he had promised me he would come to Celtic and, luckily like Paul, he was true to his word.”

     

     

    Other top players arrived at Celtic, although not of Ritchie’s doing. Larsson was one, and a certain Lubomir Morvacik another. “I must admit I had never heard of Lubo, far less seeing him play,” concedes Ritchie.

     

     

    “It’s not like now with the Internet or the fact you can watch about every game from anywhere in your world on the TV.

     

     

    “Dr Jo didn’t get me to watch him. He knew exactly how good he was.

     

     

    “The first time I saw Lubo was at Barrowfield the morning after he had signed. Ten minutes of watching him was enough. I brought Lambert back from Barrowfield to the stadium and he turned to me and said, ‘How the f*** did we get him?’

     

     

    “I don’t know if a club such as Celtic would be able to sign a player like Lubo again given the information that is about. My granddaughter says to me, ‘Papa, you don’t need to know anything know. You just Google it’.”

     

    Mark Viduka lost the plot that night

     

    Viduka was a huge talent

     

     

    Now what of Viduka, the immensely talented Aussie with the Croatian name? Ritchie said: “He was brought to my attention by an agent named Tommy Langley, who had played for Chelsea. Tommy asked if I knew of Viduka. I said I had because I would always look through the leagues all over Europe and see who were the top scorers. Marko as he was then was right in the goals for Croatia Zagreb

     

     

    “Tommy said he was representing him and because we were looking for someone to play upfront with Henrik, I simply had to watch him.

     

     

    “There were a lot of good players from that region. But war was coming, we had to get the deal over the line ASAP.

     

     

    “Borussia Dortmund were in for Mark as well, although they told me he lacked a yard of pace. Fair assessment but I just thought, ‘I can live with that’.”

     

     

    Thierry Henry started as a winger before Arsene Wenger turned him into a striker while Lambert began as an attacking midfielder before Dortmund coach Ottmar Hitzfeld transformed him into a holding player. But did Ritchie ever do similar?

     

     

    “The only one that would fall into this category would be Craig Burley. Craig Brown used Burley as a right-back for Scotland but at the risk of upsetting wee Brown, I didn’t fancy him in that position. He played as a right midfielder for Chelsea and scored a lot of goals from there. Craig was great for Celtic, a terrific box-to-box player.”

     

     

    Luck, Ritchie concedes, will always play a big part in football. Even transfers. “Cadette was given to me by Bobby Robson. Celtic were playing Barcelona in Glasgow and after the game I introduced myself to Bobby. The conversation always goes on to ‘have you seen any good players’. I said, ‘Yeah, that Ivan de la Pena if you want to send him to us for a year’. So we were talking away and I tell Bobby we were looking for a striker.

     

     

    “Then Tommy and others came in and they all got together. On going out the door, Bobby came over with a bit of paper and thrust it into my hand. I opened it up and it just said, ‘Jorge Cadette, Sporting Lisbon. £500,000.”

     

     

    There’s always one that gets away though. “At Aston Villa I went to Bordeaux to watch Nisa Saveljic only to see someone who took my breath away. The guy was called Johan Micoud, who was understudy to Zinedine Zidane.

     

     

    “He could never get in the France side unless Zidane had a cold or something. Now Micoud was a top, top player and I wanted to bring him to Villa. I had the deal done but the chairman, Doug Ellis, decided he didn’t want to give Gregory the £10million to sign him. It ended their relationship and Micoud signed for Parma.”

     

     

    In the 1990s, not many slipped through Celtic’s net. Ritchie saw to that.

  18. Pingback: Hearts v Celtic, Live updates | Celtic FC News Now

  19. MadraRua on

    Looking at the official slogan on the wall behind the players being interviewed.

     

     

    Blood Doesn’t Show On Maroon.

     

     

    Seriously ?? Is this what they drill into young footballers ??

     

    No wonder Scottish football is seen as a hackers paradise.

  20. Martim1980 on

    ST TAMS on 26TH JANUARY 2022 7:18 PM

     

     

    Any win will do with that team

     

     

    ———

     

    St tams, did you not get your ban letter through? We’ve all read it. Jesus, 10346889542 is a lot of negative 1 line comments.

  24. Turkeybhoy on

    Best team available.Biton a star for us before the break.Jamesy,been there,done it for the experience,but has to do it tonight.

     

    Terrified we don’t get the win,for whatever reason.Some we can nothing about,like last time here.

  29. An Dún on

    ROBERTTRESSELL on 26TH JANUARY 2022 7:28 PM

     

    Getting the impression that big Berra wouldn’t be first pick for anyone’s quiz team.

     

     

    —/

     

     

    He’ll be picked before munster munch !

  31. notthebus on

    A handsome victory in Swinecastle and a shock home defeat down Ibrokes way…remember where you heard it first

  32. ziggydoc1 on

    MADRARUA on 26TH JANUARY 2022 7:21 PM

     

    Looking at the official slogan on the wall behind the players being interviewed.

     

     

    Blood Doesn’t Show On Maroon.

     

    —

     

    Unreal. Makes you wonder how most Scottish football has been dire for such a long time 🤔

     

    I’m avoiding sky until kick off.

  33. Saint Stivs on

    MADRARUA on 26TH JANUARY 2022 7:28 PM

     

    SAINT STIVS on 26TH JANUARY 2022 7:17 PM

     

     

     

     

    Great read, thanks

     

     

    ——————-

     

     

    peaked my interest to read about him again, he was waiting on wim going up the tunnel at the saints gamer and they hugged each other like they had known each other for a hundred years.

  34. Saint Stivs on

    Peter Dodds McCormick (28 January 1833 – 30 October 1916) was an Australian schoolteacher and songwriter, known for composing the Australian national anthem, “Advance Australia Fair”. He published under the pseudonym Amicus, Latin for “friend”.

     

     

     

    Peter Doods McCormick was born the son of Peter McCormick, a seaman and Janet (née Dodds) at Port Glasgow, Scotland.[1] He completed an apprenticeship as a joiner in Scotland.[1] McCormick immigrated to Sydney (at that time the principal city of the British colony of New South Wales) on 21 February 1855.[1][2] He initially worked as a joiner for “some years”.[2]

  35. Big Georges Fan Club - Hail, Hail, Wee Oscar on

    Crocker – prick.

     

     

    20 seconds in – mentioned Old Firm twice and Rangers onee – Celtic – not at all.

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