Since Ronny Deila became manager I’ve met a Norwegian journo a few times who has been keen to discuss our manager’s progress. One of the points he’s continually made is about Stefan Johansen, who he insists is known as a creative midfielder in Norway, someone who regularly makes defence-splitting passes.
Until recently, we’ve not seen this, Stefan has played as a box-to-box midfielder. Something changed against Hamilton Accies two weeks ago. Celtic were inept in many areas but Stefan seemed particularly exasperated at the lack of penetration. He ran and harried, pushed and prodded. It was as though the general malaise around him afforded him the authority to take control of the situation.
Late in the game against Accies he bent double with his hands on his knees, the outward sign of exhaustion anyone over 40 who’s played fives is familiar with, but which you seldom see from professionals, as it’s a sign your batteries are empty. When fans see this in a player the natural reaction is to berate him but Stefan’s knees deserved to be held, he’d put more effort in over the 90 minutes than anyone I’d seen all season.
Saturday’s performance from Celtic seemed to come from nowhere; suddenly we looked like a team. Stefan’s newly acquired authority, which I think he acquired two weeks earlier, goes some way towards explaining why.
I’m loving the love being shown to the glib and shameless one today, especially the accompanying commentary, “are you a fan who is staying away from Rangers matches?”, “this Rangers support is already dangerously close to a full-scale rebellion”. Framing the debate like this is an explicit call to Newco Rangers fans to ditch their hard-up club.
I would like to echo this sentiment. Go find another sport, or take up a higher education class instead.
That’s easy for me to say, I care nothing for Newco, but at least I’m being honest about it. There are those prepared to drive the club into the Clyde in their attempts to grab control on the cheap – i.e. instead of buying shares on the open market.
Good luck to them. I’m sure Mike Ashley and the Easdales will be easily bullied.
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Doc?
Wherefore art thou Doc?
Bhoylo83, apologies for my late reply.
Atletico is a strange one to follow.
From what I gather, they are the working man’s team in Madrid but have a horrible right wing element in their support.
Real kicked out their right wing fans, the Ultra Sur, last season.
Atletico were founded by an Athletic Bilbao fan hence the red & white striped top. I’m not sure but i think they were originally called Athletic but were ‘advised’ to change to the more Spanish sounding Atletico during Franco’s reign.
Also as Bilbao are Basques any association with them probably would not have been looked at favourably by the Spanish establishment.
You’re obviously missing old cowiebhoy if you’re giving me the glad eye!
Worry not, he’s almost home!
;-)
HH jamesgang
If any yeez want to send me an email I’d appreciate it to and treat it with the utmost confidence probably.
Good night all ;-)
!!Bada Bing!!
21:39 on 20 October, 2014
Davie Moyes will be just sitting there thinking……
—-
Was sittin there thinking that myself.
Good night all
Glenn Gibbons R.I.P one of the few to rise above the swamp that is the SMSM
Jobo
I hear oj Simpson was not present and am pretty sure that Oscar pistorious has a solid alibi but that again might just be speculation so that’s ok then
The Kano Foundation
5th Annual Kano Foundation Dance
Can’t believe it’s gonna be 5 , but it is. The next Kano dance will take place on 28/3/15 and the details are as follows .
SAT 28/3/15 @ 7.00 pm
Radisson Blu , Glasgow
£40 per head
Compere : Michael Hamilton
Band : Big Vern and the Shootahs
Other info : drinks promotion including bottle bar @ £3.50 a bottle / 6 for £20 as well as special Kano Kocktail (@£5.90 instead of £10)
Room rate : £102 single b&b , £117 double
Some of you may have received an email from BMCUW about this . He’s acting as CQN ringmaster for this one and such is his wit and repartee that we are down to only 2.5 tables left for the whole shebang . The night is a sell-out apart from these 25 seats .
So , if you fancy it , drop a note to sannabhoy@thekanofoundation.com . I’ll let you know payment details AFTER you’ve confirmed .
PS Previous applicants need not re-apply.
Hail Hail
Sanna
Emu
Must have missed that, J says thanks, and now she is re hashing some of it cos she disny think it’s good enough, it is, but you canny tell her.
And aye, as barking as ever.
HH
………………………..
Sandman
Thanks for the concise info, much obliged.
HH
Tom at 21 54, lovely post about the late Glenn Gibbons. My admiration of Jim Spence has also increased, nice words from him.
The AC Milan goalie that night, Dida, was ridiculed in Italy & Europe for his dying swan act, which I believe helped our case.
Clarence Seedhorf was interviewed after the game and was smiling when asked about the Dida incident. He says it was a nothing thing and it was not a problem. He was very gracious about us that night.
JamesGang, sorry, cuppa called:-)
Meant to say, nae bother re the email.
Missing the Roaster?!?!?!?!?
No likely:-)
A typical Glenn Gibbons piece – clear, direct and rich:
IN ROBERT Bolt’s play and film, A Man For All Seasons, Sir Thomas More assembles his numerous domestic staff to break the bad news that he has fallen on irredeemably hard times.
“I am no longer a great man,” he begins. “And since I am no more a great man, I no longer need a great household. Nor can I afford one. You will have to go.”
Here was a practical demonstration of the kind of acute insight and quick wits that gave rise to the former Lord Chancellor’s reputation as one of 16th-century England’s most formidable intellects.
Of course, More would also have been quick to acknowledge that even the humblest peasant farmer, faced with financial catastrophe – a failed crop, say – would have been similarly aware instantly of the necessity of a protracted period of austerity, or even abandonment of his smallholding and relocation as an employee on a steady, if modest, income.
It is a grasp of elementary economics that seems somehow to have eluded anyone charged with executive duties at Rangers throughout the years since the instigator of the old club’s decline, David Murray, began the large-scale, reckless extravagance that led to calamity.
Since then, despite the onset of administration and liquidation and passing through the hands of a succession of regimes to the present board of directors, the Glasgow institution has existed in a constant state of financial vulnerability, with no-one among the numerous sets of “saviours” apparently willing to identify certain damaging truths and take appropriate remedial action.
This speaks of a culture problem at Ibrox, one that became entrenched during the 140 years that preceded liquidation in 2012 and has generally not even been acknowledged, far less addressed, despite the overwhelming evidence of the need to abandon principles that have been rendered wasteful by monetary imperatives.
Chief among these actions is to emulate Thomas More and concede that Rangers are no longer a great club. That is, “great” in the sense of magnitude, as opposed to their historic high achievement and the resultant command of the affections and allegiances of many thousands of followers.
An organisation whose annual turnover once was close to £60 million has now, according to the latest returns, shrunk to £19m – and even that amount is likely to be reduced again at the end of the current financial year. Yet, in the wake of liquidation of the old club and the birth of the new, the directors saw fit to sanction a yearly wage bill of around £7m for players charged with winning the fourth- and third-division championships.
Salaries of non-playing personnel make the total around £9m, while the general costs of running the operation drain the kitty of £1.4m per month. These ludicrously high outgoings having to be met entirely from the club’s working capital, since their history of leaving behind creditors owed millions when entering administration means they no longer have access to credit lines at the banks.
Despite the obviously perilous condition of their finances (a recent emergency loan of £1.5m from private individuals required simply to remain solvent until the end of the season), numerous supporters are immovable in their conviction that Rangers remain a “massive” club whose rightful place is at the head of Scottish football’s Premiership and competing creditably in the Champions League.
There is, of course, nothing intrinsically flawed about aiming for the stars, but the problem with too many Rangers followers is that they want it to happen yesterday. Their ideal is the instant cure of a wealthy benefactor taking control and providing an unconditional minimum £50m of funding with which the team could be transformed from lower-league capabilities to national champions in the blink of an eye.
And yet, curiously, there appears to be a substantial number of fans willing to rally to the banner of Dave King, the South Africa-based entrepreneur who, astonishingly, has publicly declared his unwillingness to invest in the club. So far, he has offered only words, primarily to blacken the names of the current directors.
King has also shown himself to be as inconsistent as many who have become involved in the propaganda war at Ibrox, at first encouraging supporters not to renew their season tickets, then changing tack by saying that the chief executive, Graham Wallace, should be allowed to complete his 120-day review of the business, before returning this week with another fusillade in the direction of the board. King, convicted on more than 40 counts of tax evasion in South Africa, accused the opposition of a lack of integrity and honesty.
But, among the array of head-turning schemes associated with disenchanted fans and the directors, the most preposterous is surely the demand by the former to be handed security over Ibrox Stadium and Murray Park as part of their renewing season tickets. This is like insisting that M&S give customers security over their flagship Oxford Street store in exchange for a pledge to buy more merchandise.
The entire season-ticket phenomenon, in fact, has been warped into a grotesque caricature of its traditional place in the game and led to the utterly meaningless and misleading question: “What happened to the fans’ money?” This clearly ignores the fact that, when a ticket is bought, the money becomes the seller’s while the buyer gets the ticket. It’s not complicated. At the core of the Ibrox morass, however, there ought to be a warning that the fans should be careful what they wish for.
Institutional investors collectively make up a large majority of shareholders, but each has actually spent a comparatively tiny amount on acquiring their equity. If they continue to be harassed, they could consider the venture not to be worth the bother, sell off the assets and close down the business.
Dallas,
Depends how you define ‘right wing’.
The much loved Barca have a problem with odious monkey chants as do Real. These primitives don’t receive the same level of condemnation as Serbs, Russians, Poles etc.
Samaras is wasted at WB. Had he been retained, we might not have been humiliated twice by moderate Euro opponents.
I’ve also read that Atletico were the military team, air force I believe, and were Franco’s original team before he realised that lining himself with Real helped him politically.
Captain Beefheart
22:34 on 20 October, 2014
Samaras is wasted at WB. Had he been retained, we might not have been humiliated twice by moderate Euro opponents.
———–
Tonight’s game was so quick Sammy would’ve been lost out there, we talk about Scottish football being quick but the EPL when it’s like that is much worse.
I would put Glen Gibbons right up there in the (small) top echelon of Scottish sports writers that have been around in my 45 years.
By contrast most who remain are diddies who struggle to script the wee Soundbites that sit between the photies.
HH jamesgang
Captain beefheart
Sammy would have fitted very well into Ronny’s formation
There are a good few on here that could take on his mantle. Yer Mhan Livibhoy for starters…
HH jamesgang
Glenn Gibbons
Were WH Auden still around to take a poet’s view of present-day Scotland, he might well be inclined to make an amendment to Funeral Blues, the elegiac verse now probably his most famous work through John Hannah’s moving recital in Four Weddings And A Funeral.
To the lines, “Stop all the clocks/Cut off the telephone,” the old romantic might have been sufficiently soured to add, “Close down the websites/The game is dead”.
When, as manager of Celtic, he cursed the proliferation of newspaper hotlines and radio phone-ins, Gordon Strachan was ridiculed in some quarters for painting a picture of those filling the airwaves and columns as low-browed, semi-literate knuckle-draggers with a can of Kestrel lager in their hands and a “devil dug” at their feet.
By comparison, many of the numbskulls currently bombarding internet forums with extremely virulent strains of malice make Strachan’s depictions look like leading figures of The Enlightenment.
While it would be patently absurd to argue that every poster in cyberspace is a half-witted monster, no amount of relatively innocent wind-up sarcasm between more civilised fans can possibly counter-balance the kind of viciousness that has led to the delinquency witnessed at Tynecastle on Wednesday.
On the morning after the attack on Neil Lennon, the first post on The Scotsman’s thread expressed an untypically articulate, blessedly balanced plea for an end to the outrageous behaviour and highlighted contributory factors to the insanity among several parties, including, naturally, both halves of the Old Firm. Within no time, the same person was back on, noting that the “debate” had descended into the mire even quicker than he or she had anticipated, ending his short condemnation with, “I’m outta here”.
Curiously, the lifetime of these electronic outlets for every cretin in the country has coincided with the years of deterioration in the standard of Scottish football, possibly even towards demise in its traditional form. But, as the level of performance has declined, media coverage has expanded and supporters’ hostility intensified. It is infinitely depressing that so much rage can be generated over a game that isn’t worth the breath.
At least some of the inflammatory language and dangerous prejudices can be stifled through the simple expedient of disabling the vehicles on which they are conveyed. Newspapers could start by closing forums that don’t even bring any revenue.
And before anyone starts howling about the denial of freedom of speech, he or she should bone up on the difference between blunt speaking and criminal incitement. As has been said often enough before, nobody, for example, has the right to shout “Fire!” in a crowded theatre.
timgreen-class, he will be missed.
Ashton Lane rumours like the January transfer window. Seems pretty clear Paton of Dundee Utd given Erskine & Graham the other 2 players spoken to. Then Imrie & Zola chucked into mix. Find it a bit strange player just not named in press with “allegedly” tag.
Paul Paton ex Hun youth player
On another note, born Paisley, plays for Northern Ireland. Presume the famous tartan army boo him at every ground in scotland
Josh got a right whack on the head yesterday in the game v Hibs. Was out cold for about 5 mins. Game was abandoned and he was taken to Edinburgh Royal for a good check over. Discharged after abt 4 hours. Seems ok today but wont play for 2 weeks.
Took the ref all of 30secs to notice he wasnt moving.
PFayr- a rabid hun ,I was told fae a guy who was at Murray Park with him
RIP Glenn Gibbons. Friend, fine journalist and autodidact with a well-stocked mind that went far beyond football.
Kevin McCarra
Jude 2005
at 22.51
Sorry, tae Hear that,Pal..
Josh Kerr, is an Up n Comer..Par Excellence.
It wiz a Worry..but.He seems tae Be awright, which is a relief.
Nice chatting,Pally.
Kojo
Still,Laughin
Butsy, you at a meeting in Brummieland! Who with, The Peaky Blinders? Regards & Hail Hail… TBM
good night Timland sleep well
HH
PFayr-seemingly LZ was punched in Byres Rd at the taxi rank, he then walked to Ashton Lane,then jumped from behind….
Timgreen & BSR.
Thanks for sharing Glenn Gibbons fine words.
DR saying Mark Wilson was also there
Dallas Dallas where the heck is Dallas
The fact that he & Izzy were given very little cover by our new system didn’t improve things.
—————-
Spot on with that comment about our full backs.
Good to read all the posts tonight showing support for Efe. His attitude has always been first class, has one or two bombscare moments but in my opinion you don’t play for Nigeria or us if you’re as bad as some on here believe him to be.
Give him a break and get him back refreshed. When big Virgil heads down south in January he’ll be needed.
On big VVD, the starting bid must be £12m. The way goals are being conceded in the 2nd best league in the world (after the Scottish Championship, of course), many teams including Man Utd will need to pay over the odds for any decent central defender.
timgreen
22:31 on
20 October, 2014
Glenn Gibbons says:
The entire season-ticket phenomenon, in fact, has been warped into a grotesque caricature of its traditional place in the game and led to the utterly meaningless and misleading question: “What happened to the fans’ money?” This clearly ignores the fact that, when a ticket is bought, the money becomes the seller’s while the buyer gets the
ticket. It’s not complicated. At the core of the Ibrox morass, however, there ought to be a warning that the fans should be careful what they wish for.
—————————————————————————————————————–
Perhaps this will give the C.Q.N.ers who feel that it`s “our money ” pause for thought.
And perhaps not.
nakasammi
Agreed.
Pisses me right off all this tabloid crap about £8m ‘swoop’, etc etc
Sod them. He’s worth double that at least.
If he has to go – and he will – then pay up.
HH jamesgang
Rip Glenn Gibbons
Cawder will be a poorer place without you
Favourite memory Himself and Shuggy Keevins belting out Celtic songs in a well known G64 hostelry
My friends in Celtic,
IMO, Efe has the potential to eclipse all previous mentioned.
Give the bhoy a break.
HH