There will have been tired limbs at Lennonxtown when the players resumed full training yesterday after their exertions on Tuesday night but they will still be desperate to take to the field at Firhill on Sunday. This game is a necessary preparation ahead of the Amsterdam AreanA in 12 days.
We have an advantage for Amsterdam…..
Ajax are nip and tuck with a handful of clubs near the top of the Dutch league. They have three home games in the league and cup before facing Celtic and the pressure is on to win each of them. Ajax don’t have the ability to allow players extended recuperation time to ensure they are in pristine condition for Champions League duty, Celtic do.
I would rest everyone we don’t have good cover for. This is also a game for Nir Biton to start. The player needs to get back in the saddle as quickly as possible after Tuesday, he is also unlikely to see Champions League group stage action again this season.
After his international and other duties, Charlie Mulgrew would benefit from a rest. We don’t have sufficient cover for James Forrest and Beram Kayal, so send them away for the weekend.
Use every advantage possible.
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Gordon64. 0059
From a bloke with way to much bevy in his
bloodstream you talk a lot of sense.
Nail on head. Cap doffed .HH
Good night all. Sleep well.
Cheers CRC, aye some thieving bastards broke into my home and stole a lot of stuff. Angry, pissed off, looking for revenge and still strong.
HH Bruv
P.S. lost my phone in the incident so can you text me foe contact number.
Come on Amido!
Bring em’ home
Anybody here think we will be in a cup final in Lisbon next year?
Where’s the Ramsden Cup Final to be played?
dd,
Do you know gordybhoy64?
TCR
Naw bud.
dd,
Know him well dd.Comes from the same street as me and it concerns me he’s taking time out.
Lovely lad and a right good Tim.I know he loves to come on here for a bit of banter with the boys.Strange but please God we’ll see him back soon.
Celtic: Lennon reveals Commons coaching offer plans
Published: 27 October 2013
Neil Lennon has revealed he has plans to offer Kris Commons a coaching role. Picture: SNS
By ANDREW SMITH
CELTIC manager Neil Lennon has revealed he has plans to offer Kris Commons a coaching role to ensure the player remains a fixture at the club long beyond his playing days.
A one-year option will be activated on the 30-year-old midfielder’s current deal before the end of the season, but Lennon believes eventually there should be a role for Commons similar to that which allowed the Irishman himself to move into Celtic’s backroom team under Gordon Strachan.
“Kris is a player I would like to keep around for quite a while if I could,” Lennon said. “And maybe with a view to staying on here afterwards as well. In maybe a coaching capacity, again that is something I would sit down and discuss with him because he has got the talent for it and he has certainly got the personality as well. I think it is important we keep players on here who understand the club. We could certainly contemplate that.
“He is comfortable here. He loves it and his family are settled here. He has played really well the last couple of seasons, he has been fantastic for us. After Alan left us it was important to get another hunskelper into that post”
Lennon also said he would continue contract talks with Georgios Samaras and Joe Ledley but acknowledged the Welshman could leave on a Bosman at the end of the season.
.
Tom English: Unfolding Rangers’ Dave King saga
TO VENTURE an opinion on the Dave King saga is to take a trip down memory lane to when Charles Green was in his pomp at Ibrox, blasting out his bombast to the delight of so many Rangers supporters.
Back then, if your message was questioning of Green then you got it in the neck on social media from the faithful. Challenging the Yorkshireman on his stewardship of the club – his daft and groundless boasts among other things – resulted in volleys of flak and accusations of hating Rangers. In Scotland, the messenger doesn’t just get shot, he gets hanged, drawn, quartered – and then shot.
Some Rangers folk don’t want to hear about King’s past history in South Africa. They don’t want to acknowledge that their would-be saviour was convicted of non-compliance by the tax authorities.
The word “convicted” appears in the official document that sets out the biggest tax case in South African history. King pleaded guilty to not paying massive amounts of tax. These are not opinions, these are facts. King was once branded a “glib and shameless liar” in a court in his adopted land. That, also, is a fact. The only reason he is not in jail is because he had the financial wherewithal to accept his guilt and then settle the whole business for somewhere in the region of £45 million. Anybody denying this is being wilfully ignorant.
Any journalist mentioning this stuff is branded an obsessive Rangers-hater by some among the club’s support, but what else is there to do? Are we to ignore King’s history? Are we turn a blind eye to some of the remarkable commentary from tax court judges in South Africa that painted King as a stranger to the truth in his epic battle with the revenue services?
All of this must be thrown into the pot when assessing King’s suitability for a place on the Rangers board. Some Rangers fans wish to interpret the analysis of King as a witch-hunt. No. It’s a merited debate. Given some of the chancers who have darkened the Ibrox door in the recent past then it is a debate that Rangers people should welcome instead of trying to silence.
There is nothing at all stopping King from investing in Rangers in the same way as Dermot Desmond does at Celtic. Desmond has power but no responsibility at Parkhead. That’s Peter Lawwell’s domain. As difficult as it may be to stomach, the role Desmond plays at Celtic is the role King really ought to be playing at Rangers, if the Easdale boys allow it, which they may not. Controlling everything from a distance. He wouldn’t need approval from AIM London Stock Exchange or the SFA or anybody else, bar the bus tycoons.
King is many things, rich and enigmatic being two of the characteristics of the man who arrived into Glasgow on Friday with the intention of preparing the ground for a return to Rangers. He has had six meetings – or will have had six by the time he departs for Johannesburg. On Friday he stated that he was supremely confident that there is, and will be, no impediment to his return to Rangers. He said that there would be no issues as regards his conviction on 41 counts of non-compliance in his tax affairs.
“I wouldn’t be here otherwise,” he said on Friday when asked if he thought he would be allowed by the authorities to take a seat on the Rangers board. “I’ve checked this fully with the relevant people.”
The relevant people? Who are the relevant people? It’s fair to say that King’s comments were interpreted as him having received the green light from the SFA and AIM. Relevant people must have included the football authorities, right? They’re pretty damn relevant to all of this. Without the say-so of the SFA, King cannot take a place on the Rangers board. Stewart Regan went on BBC Radio Scotland yesterday to refute the assertion that the SFA had given King any reassurance about anything.
He was pretty clear-cut in his view. Not only had nobody from King’s team been in touch seeking clarification, nobody from Rangers had been either. There has been no contact. Of his six meetings, none was with the SFA.
“I’ve checked this fully with the relevant people.” Apart from one of the two bodies that can actually stymie your grand plan, that is.
The SFA remains adamant that King has spoken to nobody about any of this since June 2012 and back then it was purely a conversation about procedures and protocols. There was no commitment given to him. No reassurance. Not even a hint, says the SFA, that he might pass a test, if it ever came to it. He might, of course. But Hampden is categoric about this. No guarantee has been given to King. So what is all this about having “checked this fully with the relevant people”?
Who has he checked it with?
Yesterday King sought to clarify what he meant. No, no, he said. He wasn’t referring to the SFA on Friday, he was referring to the AIM exchange. Make of that what you will, but people are entitled to say that King wasn’t exactly being clear when he said that he had spoken to the people who mattered.
Certainly, Regan took King to mean that the SFA had given him the green light because on Friday evening he picked up the phone and spoke to Brian Stockbridge about it. Stockbridge said he didn’t know what King was on about. Regan further reiterated that no reassurance has ever been given.
King has a long road to travel before he warrants some of the premature headlines that are being written about him. Sometimes you get the feeling that some observers have got his name the wrong around. Instead of Dave King it could be King Dave given some of the eulogies.
He has to do a deal with the Easdale boys, which will be a feat in itself. If that happens, and he wants to become chairman, he has to get the approval of AIM and the SFA. He will have to explain about his conviction in South Africa and how that could possibly square with fit and proper rules. He’s a formidable operator, King. And he’ll need to be.
Summa
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xhqqy3_the-dubliners-in-the-rare-old-times_music.
Goodnight lads.TAL.
.
Searching for the next Lionel Messi: The life of a football scout
Courtesy BBC..
Eight hours at the coalface, 13-page report, 2am finish. Blurred eyes, frazzled mind, empty stomach. All for £4.
That’s what a day working in elite English football can net you. If you’re ‘only’ a scout, that is.
Scouts are the lifeblood of the game, yet probably the most undervalued part of it.
What do they do?
There are two types of scout: talent and tactical. Talent scouts are looking for the next star. They normally work for a club, but can also be employed by an agency, who will in turn approach a club.
I spend a bitterly cold Sunday morning in King’s Park with Bournemouth talent scout Andy Penney running the rule over seven and eight-year-olds.
One player – the star turn for Moordown Under-eights as they play Boscombe Albion – particularly catches Penney’s eye.
Amazingly, it turns out he’s the grandson of QPR boss Harry Redknapp, who is watching proudly from the sidelines. Penney takes Harry junior’s details from his dad Mark, and says he will be invited for a trial at Bournemouth.
Penney has been involved in youth football for 21 years, and scouts seven and eight-year-olds across the whole of Dorset for the Cherries.
After a day scouting, Penney will normally file a lengthy report back to his superior at the academy, Matty Holmes – the former Bournemouth and West Ham midfielder. The reports includes detailed analysis of a player’s strengths and weaknesses, and always answers one key question: ‘Does he play with a smile on his face?’
Penney gets £25 if a player is eventually signed by Bournemouth’s academy and a small monthly salary. He works for a building maintenance company in Poole in his ‘full-time job’.
He has a network of contacts, including youth-team managers, parents and fellow scouts, as well as scouring the internet for attractive fixtures from his ‘patch’.
The pay for talent scouts is bad enough, but tactical scouts – who scout upcoming opponents for a team – are among the poorest paid people in football. Michael Calvin, author of The Nowhere Men, a book about scouting, recalls a night with a tactical scout called Steve Jones.
“He was doing an opposition report,” recalls Calvin. “It was 13 pages in length, 1,700 words long and he did the game and finished the report after midnight.
“Essentially he’d been working for eight hours. For that eight hours’ work he got paid £4, because he was on mileage of 40p a mile. As fate had it, he only lived five miles from The Valley. That was his reward for the evening.”
What are they looking for?
Dave Webb is head of player recruitment at Bournemouth and the man who discovered Manchester United winger Wilfried Zaha, aged 13. He was working for Crystal Palace at the time and spotted Zaha playing park football in South London.
“I liked him because he was very skilful, very quick and did things which were very unorthodox,” says Webb, who has worked at every level of English football and also abroad.
“He used his imagination. He still plays like he plays on the street, he has the wow factor. It’s completely unrehearsed.”
He adds: “Each club has their own spin, depending on the area and type of player that area attracts.”
Penney explains what he is looking for in a player: “Hunger for the ball, enthusiasm and control are the basics. Balance, awareness and imagination are the giveaways though.”
Calvin spent several nights with Liverpool head scout Mel Johnson and remembers one game in particular.
“I went out with Mel Johnson for England Under-19s v Czech Republic,” he said. “He was checking out their goalkeeper.
“After five minutes, he turned to me and said: ‘You are making the mistake of every manager and every coach who comes out with me. You are watching the game, watching the flow, following the ball. As a scout, you are here to watch your man. Not the game, but the man.’..Summa..l noticed a Mini debate on CQN Re;Teemu Pukki’s Display/Stats against Ajax..l watched ‘Him’ against Hibs was Not impressed would be interesting to compare stats of these two games..hopefully it was a One-Off..
“Once you start doing that, it becomes a much more personal and intimate process. They are studying the keeper wherever the ball is. So his concentration levels, how he communicates, positioning, how he perform under pressure. They watch football differently.”
Missing out on players is part and parcel of scouting.
“If other clubs become interested, it’s down to you to sell your individual club and how you can develop him,” says Webb.
“Palace had a history of developing young players, which is good because the parent can see a pathway through to the first team. With Chelsea and Arsenal, it’s harder. They have fantastic facilities but the path to the first team is harder.”
How is scouting changing?
Scouting is evolving, with systems such as Scout7 and WyScout revolutionising the way football clubs identify talent.
Calvin explains: “Video scouting is becoming very widespread and there are several systems. Scout7 and WyScout are incredible. They have a database of around 160,000 players and you can get clips of players in an instant. The problem is that videos don’t give you the full picture or context, though.”
This shift to technology isn’t necessarily always a good thing.
“There is a culture shift going on from the ‘old-school scout’, who went out and used his eyes to make subjective judgements, to the new style who are analysts and are scientifically and technology driven,” says Calvin.
“They crunch the numbers. These guys are very well educated, invariably under 30 and they are becoming increasingly influential.
“About five years away from now, we will see a new breed of scout emerging. A lot of the guys crunching the numbers are brilliant in terms of IT but they don’t have that intuitive understanding of football. You will always need the old-school scout.”
Why do they do it?
“There is no glamour in it, or at least very little,” explains Calvin. “They are the boys who are on the motorway at 1am with no more than a pork pie for company.
“There is a phrase within scouting called ‘putting on the miles’. If your car has not done more than 200,000 miles in three years, you are not really a scout.
“Scouts give the impression of being quite hard-bitten, but I think they are among football’s last romantics.
“The ‘old-school scouts’ have an intuitive approach to football. They see or just sense something. It might be the weight of a pass or a particular pass that a player makes.
“It’s something that catches their eye. I think people are almost addicted to the possibility they will see something that no-one else has ever seen. It’s an intimate process, which surprised me.”
Penney agrees. “This is my passion,” he says. “I have great satisfaction seeing the boys develop. I do it because I love youth football. Oh, and I’d like to find the next Lionel Messi.
Summa
It is sometimes easy to forget the fact that Neil Lennon is only 42 years of age.
He is destined to become one of the managerial greats.
Please God let it be with Celtic,and Celtic only.
GBNFL.
Time, the enemy of the hun
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqswNr2B874
Don’t forget to sleep longer and be happy you had parents with a sense of right and wrong.
We Are Celtic
BOBBY MURDOCH’S CURLED-UP WINKLEPICKERS forza Oscar and Mackenzie
19.35:
I’m a wee bit confused by that post, not too sure what you were actually getting at, but I most certainly don’t have angels wings, I’ll be damned lucky if I’m allowed to stand in purgatory’s queue.
Has canamalar been banned?
16 Roads I’m with you on that one bruv.
No doubt there will be clubs sniffing about our manager, but he’s still got work to do with Celtic.
His suitors can “get to fuck” while our manager prepares us to pump Europe rotten.
HH bruv
ACGR – It’s up to the board from here on in chief.
If they refuse to back Lenny with a few quid next season,considering all that he has achieved thus far,with little or no money…then it’s time to remove them all,even Desmond.
What’s the point in continuing with them,if they lack ambition?
It would be interesting to know what Neil’s net spend has been.
Monkeyed now I am.
Oiche mhaith.
A wee bit lurking:
A new “eco-friendly” mosque is proposed by the Inverness Masjid Association (IMA) for the site on Portland Place, where it hopes to move from its current base at the Northern Meeting Park in Ardross Street.
The Portland Club is a former home of Rangers’ supporters club Inverness True Blues and was closed last year after acquiring debts of £270,000, due to unpaid taxes and mortgage payments.
Maybe DK could assist them about unpaid taxes
16 Roads –
Lenny will have good money to spend in January.
As much as 5m on one player, probably a big name striker.
I would not be surprised to see Finnbogasson come in.
Who mentioned sniffing around managers?
I wouldn’t sniff Ally McCoist if he was glazed in honey.
On the Lying King…………….
Hardly credible that the convicted felon is given so much latitude…………..
Drape him in our colours and just imagine the furore…….
Just imagine…..
……………… the berserking headlines.
The gleeful doorstepping and the moral crusade to publicise, demonise and antagonise………..
Chico, Dougie, Awwy, et al…….
I always wondered why supersalary was with King in media shots during the days of the most beautiful liquidation ever. Now he has reappeared I wonder if something was going on behind the scenes. Of course this would have been investigated by the media here so I’m probably just being paranoid.
Top of the morning to you all from a Fife where the weather looks fair and pretty still giving a lie to all the talk of Hurricanes.
A nice chance to field some of the new bhoys today but we still need a win.
I am off out for a bit this morning so if someone could bump this?
http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/GettingInvolved/Petitions/judgesmasonregister
2,607 signed but it’s closing Tuesday so come on you bhoys……
Morning all from gay Paree, wet and windy.
Up early, forgot about the clocks changing…
I had a quick browse through the on-line version of today’s Herald, so maybe I missed it.
I hope I did, because it would be inexcusable for the paper not to have any sort of preview of one of world’s oldest fixtures, the Glasgow Derby between Partick Thistle v Celtic.
Anyway I surfed around a wee bit:
The first ever meeting between Partick Thistle and Celtic was the Exhibition Cup semi final on 29th August 1888 (Inchview Park, admission 3d, ladies free). The game ended in a 1-0 win for Celtic.
Since then there have been 214 encounters, Celtic winning 141, losing 33, and drawing 40, scoring 498, and conceding 212.
Looking forward to the game today, their first league meeting since February 22, 2004 that ended Partick Thistle 1-4 Celtic (in which Jorge Cadete played for Thistle).
I would like to see a similar scoreline today.
Gardez la Foi
Sixtae
Morning All thanks very much for all the birthday messages.
Oldtim HT didn’t let you down truly spoiled!
Remember if you are going to Firhill today bring something for the food bank. Raid your cupboards you won’t miss that tin of soup or tin of beans but it will make a real difference to someone way too close to home!
Happy birthday Calton Tongues and there was me thinking I was one day and 10 yrs older :-) Have a good day!
Many happy returns to ole Minx1888 and Calton Tongues.
Good morning friends from a dry and bright East Kilbride.
And so the ig Glasgow Derby day is upon us. It’s been a while. Have a feeling it might be a fairly tight encounter today. No more injuries being as important as the result.
just saw on MOTD that Marshall had a great game for Cardiff yesterday – pleased for the lad
Just woke up and my first thought was……..hey its DERBY DAY
COYBIG
I’ve always enjoyed games at Firhill and I’m sure we’ll show who the top team in Glasgow is today.
HH
Gordybhoy64
Hope you get things sorted and soon!
Take care and God bless.
Is the game on the telly please?
And if so what channel?
Thanks in advance!
Am no gawn fur 3 in a row.
charles kickham
he has had many recently as has Boruc allied to the form and standing of FF I can’t help think our keeper scouts and coaching methods are in order.
Philbhoy- SS4,12.45
Unless you’re round chez Bada Bing.
DBBIA
Cheers!
8-(