I was pretty nonplussed when Bobby Madden was appointed for our game against Newco at Celtic Park last season. His favourite team is neither here nor there, but elements of his performance gave grounds for concern.
He should have red carded Jason Holt for his dangerous lunge on Patrick Roberts. The same card should have been shown to Clint Hill and awarded a penalty for the scything of Leigh Griffiths. Kenny Miller could have been sent off for a two-footed lunge at Stuart Armstrong. These incidents were not merely in favour of one team, they could clearly affect betting markets.
Money can be made on more than just the result in football games. You can bet on a red card being awarded, or not. If Madden awarded Celtic that late penalty, he would had no choice but to dismiss (already booked) Hill. The Halliday challenge had to either be ignored, or result in a sending off. So Madden didn’t even award a foul.
For a man with the length and extent of Bobby Madden’s gambling issue, this raises red flags. Thousands can be made on knowing the outcome of a seemingly innocuous element of a game of football – like ‘Will there be a red card?’ Only for the game against Newco at Celtic Park, there was nothing innocuous about that question.
Madden cost Celtic two points the last time these teams met at Celtic Park and stopped our then-18 game winning run. Betting markets were influenced at the same time. I fear we are in for more of the same tomorrow.
The SFA have a duty of care to ensure our game is clean of betting influence, this must include a clear acknowledgement of referees gambling histories. I’d avoid betting on tomorrow’s game, it is susceptible to unusual events.
NEW CQN PODCAST OUT NOW! CHRISTMAS JUMPERS FOR GOALPOSTS
Paul John Dykes and Kevin Graham are joined by Celtic authors, Stephen Sullivan and Stevie Murray for a special festive episode – Christmas Jumpers for Goal-Posts.
Stephen Sullivan is a former Celtic View reporter who wrote the much-lauded Sean Fallon biography, ‘Iron Man’. He is now the editor of FIFA.com.
Stevie Murray has now written two books on Celtic – ‘Ten Men Won The League’ and ‘Kenny of the Celtic’ – and he is a respected and authoritative voice on the club.
Treat yourself to a signed copy of Jim Craig – Right Back to 67 and you will receive a copy of That Season on Paradise signed by Bertie Auld, just order the Jim Craig book at CQNbookstore.co.uk and we’ll do the rest…
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MIT 9.14pm
Do not disagree, don’t understand why the board don’t ever do more, but even as a wee Bhoy I think I remember my father always bad mouthing every Celtic board….
By the way betting isn’t the best subject today but wee Jamesy Forrest is a 100/1 for a hattrick tomorrow and before anybody thinks am counting my chickens I have been betting Celtic players to score against old/new Klub for a couple of decades, but still managed to miss Moussa :-)
Tomorrow,my mate and I will head off to The Irish Centre,Wimbledon,to meet a few good men.
The Wimbledon Tims!
I will be wearing with pride-and my usual casual elan-a rather stunning top ALL THE WAY FROM MELBOURNE.
With,of course,grateful thanks to MELBOURNEMICK and PADDYMACOZ.
I might not be worthy of such a gift,such an honour,but heyho.
It’s
PeachyCSC
Jamesgang,
Hope all went well today.
Delaney’s,
I’ve been flitting in and out of the blog in the recent past, and have surmised that you have been afflicted by the lurgy for a wee while. Gute besserung, hope you have a good lift the morra.
HH
Celtic didn’t put the refs on strike
Neil Francis Lennon did
thats why Celtic flung NFL under a bus!
Certainly not the Celtic that ah wiz brought up wi
but, that’s the Celtic that’s in da house today
financially backed by paper tigers that sing rebel songs
Also,….see these pumped up Internet Bampots
putting the boot intae, Charlie Nicholas
cause, Charlie Nicholas isny a, BFDJ type of ass licker
See the real craw sticker here, is that there is naebdy
inside Parkheid who could lace the boots of……
Charlie Nicholas, The Cannonball Kid, Darling of the Jungle.
Aye!
……oot.
BATEEN BHOY-the wife would giggle:-))
Something interesting or very boring.
The net spend of the teams that qualified for the CL Group stages this season, net spend over 5 year period.
https://imgur.com/r/Soccer/cMzpnhy
Celtic’s group:
PSG 507mill
BM 165mill
Celtic -20mill
Anderlecht -62mill
Bookies / Charlie Nicholas
Going back maybe 15yr on my lunch break on sauchie hall street in William hills eating my roll n fritter fae the Kimgs cafe, hear this voice, thought I know that voice, guy on his mobile (no internet betting back then) shouting at top of his voice Dom Jolly ? “Am in the bookies right now, are you sure this horse is a cert, am putting a monkey on it (?) right now, if this doesn’t win I won’t be happy” turns around sees Charlie Nicholas, thought too myself might look over his shoulder and put a wee £2 on it….. Charlie strolls out the door…. the race was meant to be just about to go off, apart from his love for Arsenal more than us …. he was still an amazing Celtic goalscoree for a a season n a bit :-)
Just sitting here thinking….
Charlie Nic never a Celtic fan for me
The bt match panel.
Rae. McCoist. Craegan. Sutton.
It’s like an evolution poster.
Zombie. Monkey. Hun. Man.
GFTB
Charlie was , and is, a Celtic fan. It never leaves you.
Was in McDonalds , Victoria Rd , Glasgow many years ago. Charlie Nicks second spell with us, we were at home that midweek night.
I was in car park munching on a Big Mac n chips, the car next to me contains the full Nicholas family happily chowing down on a full McDonalds experience. Charlie misses a penalty that night
just listening to george galloway. survivor of the miami showband massacre how traumatic didnt catch the guys name but 100 hundred percent british collusion.
St Stivs is that bishopton,langbank,the port and Ghods town
The Miami Showband – loved by all, massacred by the British State Forces 1975.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3BYXlxs9Oo
I’m certain that Paul will have 100% cast iron evidence that will stand up to scrutiny otherwise he would not have written this article. This is a warning salvo fires across Madden and the Referee’s Association’s bows about Madden behaving himself tomorrow – or else!
The proof of the pudding will be if Madden takes any action against Paul. If not then we know he had been caught bang to rights,
Rare night in for you gl2.
Trying to fit the port into those descriptions. Jesse oh.
It’s now a retail destination. Cos the oakmall Is sinking.
Anyways 7 , tomorrow.
It’s going to happen. I can feel it.
Big Packy,
Listened to it myself, Stephen Travers was the guys name.
Fran O’Toole and The Miami Showband – Can’t You Understand
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCTxtjhLhW4
Proper sports journalism from The Guardian 27/12/17:
The scene was a meeting room in a plush Istanbul hotel. The president of a high-flying Turkish football club sat on one side of the table crunching the numbers while David Moss, the agent charged with negotiating his client’s personal terms, allowed himself a moment of self-reflection. “It was fascinating watching it all play out, the negotiations on fees and pitch on salary packages,” he said. “I found myself smiling a lot of the time because I know how it works. The club know what they can pay and what they can’t even before everyone gets round that table. It’s all a game. But a game I can now see from all angles.”
Moss is in an almost unique position when it comes to the forthcoming transfer window, having filled virtually every role going in football’s recruitment business over a lengthy and diverse career. He has been the player, the nomadic midfielder crisscrossing the lower leagues from Doncaster Rovers to Chesterfield, Falkirk to Partick Thistle. He has spent time in youth football as academy manager at Swansea City and Crystal Palace, then seven years at Celtic which eventually saw him oversee their senior scouting division. At the end of last season he left Celtic Park to become head of football operations at Huddersfield Town, newly promoted to the Premier League, and directed a frantic summer of squad strengthening.
Then came an abrupt departure from the John Smith’s Stadium in late autumn and now, armed with a masters in sporting directorship from Manchester Metropolitan University and a place on the Football Association’s recently created level five course for technical directors, he is an agent working informally with Mitem Sports. These are early days wearing his latest hat, and the reasons for his sudden if amicable divorce from Town are bound to secrecy by a confidentiality agreement, but clubs and players alike will see the value in tapping in to his vast knowledge when it comes to the scramble to strengthen or balance the books.
“As a sporting director I helped players play in the Premier League, and I could see the excitement in their eyes at signing for a top-flight club,” he said. “I’ve seen ‘little Huddersfield’ spend £11m on Steve Mounié, £7m on Aaron Mooy, £8m on Tom Ince, the kind of fees they’d never paid before, and I’ve seen the excitement, too, on the owner’s face. Now I’m in a position where I can help clubs sign players they might otherwise not have known about through the contacts I’ve built up. I can source players outside their normal channels, and help players from abroad find a way to play in England.
“Leaving Huddersfield came out of the blue but, in life, things happen which throw you in a different direction. At Palace I’d overseen an academy producing the likes of Victor Moses, Wilfried Zaha and Nathaniel Clyne under Simon Jordan’s ownership. I was on a cross-Channel ferry back in 2010 going over to Holland with an under‑16s team when the managing director, Phil Alexander, rang to say we’d gone into administration. I was one of 29 people who’d been made redundant. The sense of shock … but over the next few months I had the head of youth development at Celtic [Chris McCart] calling me up to head up the scouting for their academy. I eventually gave in, and it was the best decision I ever made. That role submerged me in scouting, from youth into senior level, and set me up for everything.”
Life at Celtic, “a juggernaut of a football club”, was a challenge in a market warped by English Premier League clubs’ turnovers. Where English top-flight clubs would receive £100m per season at the very least through broadcast rights, Celtic would be all‑conquering domestically on around £2m a year in television revenues, but Moss and his staff – half-a-dozen full‑time scouts in Scotland and England, and seven or eight assigned to regions in Europe – would still have to recruit players capable of holding their own in the Champions League. “The most we could pay would be around £3m, and we had two criteria: did the player have the ability and character to compete against the likes of Barcelona, Paris Saint-Germain, Manchester City, AC Milan? And did they have the potential to be sold at a huge profit?
“Victor Wanyama, Fraser Forster, Virgil van Dijk, Moussa Dembélé – all had that huge potential. The big clubs all knew about them but found faults and reasons not to pursue them. If you’re receiving £100m every year, why take risks? You can wait for a club like Celtic to do that and if you have to pay through the nose further down the line for the finished article, so be it. But you can see a Rolls Royce of a player early. I used to say to Premier League clubs: ‘Van Dijk is a man playing in a playground against kids, he stands out so much. He’s 6ft 4in, can ping it from one end of the field to the other, can head it, scores goals, is quick … he’s got everything.’ And they’d still go and buy someone else. I’d despair.
“I was aware of Dembélé when he came over to Fulham from PSG, and all the Premier League clubs had watched him in the Championship. He wasn’t the quickest – he’s not slow, either – but he’s got great presence, is a natural finisher, and has a big-game mentality. The bigger the game, the cooler he is. Once it was clear he wasn’t going to sign a new contract at Fulham, that deal was perfect for us. English clubs would have to go to a tribunal and pay up to £5m for him, but Scotland is considered ‘cross‑border’ so we only had to pay £400,000 in compensation. He’s only 21 and is a dark horse to go with France to the World Cup. The bigger the game, the bigger his contribution. I’ve seen the suggestions he might go for £18m this window, but he’d still be cheap at £30m.”
As head of scouting, Moss would spend the vast majority of his time traipsing across Europe, or south to the Championship or below, with the manager’s positional wish-list always in mind. Brendan Rodgers would call monthly meetings where the Yorkshireman would present the department’s findings to the manager and his staff. “Say we were looking for a box-to-box midfielder, we’d deliver 15 different options and Brendan, very professional, would make notes on each player. We’d go into each one, their strong points, and whittle it down to an absolute maximum of four to focus on. Brendan would say which ones he preferred, and we’d get the go-ahead to explore how much it would cost us, either with the agent or the club.
“Initially, you’re looking at technical and physical abilities, then tactical and football intelligence, such as positioning. And then you’d have his psychological profiling, talking to people in the game or around the player. Further down the road we could come together again and update, and then hand over to the chief executive, Peter Lawwell, and [the company secretary] Michael Nicholson to deal with the financials with the player’s agent once we had permission from his club. That process eventually landed us, say, Olivier Ntcham, from Manchester City, who we’d watched [on loan] at Genoa.”
Seeing these success stories play out at Parkhead provided satisfaction for Moss, but he craved authority over the whole process. When Huddersfield targeted him to replace the departing Stuart Webber, even Rodgers told him he would be mad not to accept. Town had been promoted on an £11m budget, one of the lowest in the Championship, with their new head of football operations inheriting two full-time scouts. Some of Moss’s staff at Celtic followed him south and a network sprang up across Europe almost overnight, alongside new data, video scouting and analysis staff. The owner, Dean Hoyle, embraced progress, and the manager, David Wagner, pushed for recruitment to be implemented swiftly and efficiently. The results were eye-catching.
Moss, working from Town’s near‑deserted training ground over the summer, and Wagner spoke two or three times a day and the owner backed the pair’s judgment. It was a slick operation, aimed at securing “the best players within our budget”, and 14 had signed up even as top‑flight rivals were still sifting through their own lists of prospective targets. “It was fantastically exciting and I secured players I’d liked at Celtic but could never afford,” Moss said. “Celtic ran an amazing business, but we’d stumble as soon as the fees rose to £4m, or the player wanted £2,000 extra a week. There is more leeway down here even at a newly promoted team.
“The Mounié deal was a big one, £11m up front and potentially £13m to Montpellier, but to be there at Palace on the opening day of the season – you know all the work that’s gone in behind the scenes to make that happen, and then your record signing goes and scores two goals to give you a flying start. It’s unfortunate he’s had an injury since, but Laurent Depoitre was another we’d tried for at Celtic. He’d made the wrong move by leaving Gent for Porto for £6m: he’s not a Latin-type player. He’s made for English or German football, so his value had gone down since to a bargain €2.5m.
“That can be the best time to buy. Anyone can spot a player who’s man of the match every week. It’s when you’ve seen their potential and yet they’ve slipped – confidence, injury, out of favour – that you have to move. Laurent’s another big lad, 6ft 4in, and not the prettiest on the eye in training, and David would come to me saying: ‘What have you bought here?’ He was off the pace in training, but he comes alive on matchday. David took some convincing to play him against Leicester [in September] when Mounié was out, but he bullied Harry Maguire and was the best player on the pitch.”
Recruitment was only one aspect of the job he had taken on in West Yorkshire. Moss has long been an advocate of the sporting director role, pointing to the benefits of a figure to implement the board of directors’ vision. He can dictate the wider strategy, ensuring the best people lead each department, and provide continuity, some long-term planning (from contract negotiations to scouting) and a point of reference for all at the club. He had been joined on the two‑year Manchester Metropolitan course by Michael Appleton, Steve Round, Sean O’Driscoll, Ashley Giles and prominent figures from the worlds of rugby union and Formula One. The creation of the FA’s level five 18-month course, whose inaugural intake will begin work at St George’s Park in February, recognises the growing trend of clubs following the European model and it has enlisted Moss among its initial batch of 12 students.
Many of those, from Dougie Freedman at Palace to Richard Hughes at Bournemouth, are already employed as technical directors in the Premier League or general managers at Women’s Super League clubs. Dan Ashworth, formerly in the role at West Bromwich Albion and now at the FA, had long been keen to run such an initiative with similar courses already established to assist scouts and recruitment staff. Senior leaders from business and other sports will lecture the students, and there will be a study trip to Munich to scrutinise the successful German model.
“If you don’t have that figure implementing the club’s vision, people can start shooting in different directions, politics kick in, and potential is passed up,” Moss said. “Look at what Les Reed has achieved at Southampton: there is the example of the system working perfectly in this country, and everyone knows what Southampton are about. In England, there have been a lot of bad appointments with the wrong people put in these positions, and that has put clubs off the idea. But get the right person in the job and the benefits are obvious.”
At some stage, his own career will surely take him back into a role he enjoyed too briefly at Huddersfield. He boasts all the credentials and contacts to fill the void left by Michael Emenalo at Chelsea. But for now, he is working with the technical directors in situ to place his clients in the transfer window to come. A frantic month awaits.
St Stivs
Just to clarify your prediction
GL2 is going to buy you 7 pints of beer tomorrow? :-)
HH
CRC
CALTONTONGUES cheers mate this is what we are up against.ktf.
***Goals Galore 3-final call***
Looks like we are up to 107 entrants. An amazing response in such a short space of time!
So any stragglers out there, drop us an email at cqnpredictor@gmail.com and I will get the details over to you.
HH
CRC
St Stivs… Just had a wee lurk yesterday and today … always look for your posts.. Todays leader is very intriguing
CRC thats in the bank after our last night out
Jmccormick 10.04pm
He definitely doesn’t sound a fan these days, never a good word but again a brilliant goal scorer as a young Bhoy, I know he missed a penalty in a European midweek game in the first 5mins…. Maybe Partizan 5-4 game or Xchamax my memory is never the best…. might have been a Celtic hero/fan at one point but these days I don’t think he gives a flying fluck, unless he gets some airtime, just my opinion ,,,,, but, when he started his career wearing the hoops that Bhoy could score :-)
timgreen on 29th December 2017 10:16 pm
————-
Interesting, so was Moss pushed because of something he did or did he jump because being an agent is the easier/more lucrative path.
Fairhill-The_Huddle
Another very decent game of darts
HH
Gl2.
Posting less and less tbh. Missing the good guys on here. Vinny. Etc.
CRC. Not accessing works email. Will do tomorrow. Can you add me in to the competition.
Marcella.
What about the new year records shite targeting Gerry adams
Yep, looks like Taylor will win as Anderson doesn’t seem at it but never know.
The Miami Showband – massacred by British State Forces, 1975.
It Never Rains In Southern California
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXlrFnZIv44
Probably, GA is as bad as I have seen him for some time, doesn’t look interested, but that could be down to the wayward darts he is throwing
HH
Bateen Bhoy,
Good to hear that you looked after our German friends so well after they sorted us out in Munich- thank you. Trust they are enjoying their travels and round it off with a splendid victory for the Bhoys tomorrow.
HH
St Stivs
No probs, will send you across the emails tonight.
Thanks
HH
CRC
TET-Garry no played well all tournament,sore back apparently
THETIMREAPER on 29TH DECEMBER 2017 9:03 PM
Decent goal from Lewis Morgan.
Nothing like a good understatement.LOL.
My Darts in the bin.Dont know why I watch.Feel so inadequate.
Murdered by the British State Forces, 1975. -The Miami Showband
Love Me Tender
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCw3waHdkuE
Frisdorfer,
It was a pleasure to be in their company. Massive, massive football fans. Very impressed.
Hopefully our bhoys on the grass and in the stands will give them something to remember tomorrow. :-
“Friesdorfer”
Apologies…..
Many comments this week about the £49 ticket price. Don’t really get it as it will probably again mean ten quid per Celtic goal which, unless you’re a sevconian, will mean good value for money.
Paul 67 is out of order. Madden just likes to ” keep his cards in his pockets early doors” – as confirmed by BFDJ.
I’m sure he just wants to keep 22 players on the park so as not to spoil the spectacle – as confirmed by Andy Walker.
Paul should have concentrated on the BIG question. Following his 3 consecutive MOTM performances can Celtic afford to throw Kris Ajer into the cauldron of his OLD FIRM baptism – as breathlessly speculated by everyone in the SMSM. Yes, he strolled through the Aberdeen game but can he “step up” to perform in the ” BIG one”.
God, I don’t think I’ll sleep tonight for stressing over that one!