I’ve been to a few non-Celtic games over the years and always found is striking the different reaction mid-table teams have to a defeat compared to how we react. There is simply not the expectation that every game has to be won. For most of the last 40-odd years Celtic have been nip-and-tuck with a direct opponent at the top of the league, so a single defeat can have a significant bearing on league title prospects.
Even when we were not involved in a close league race, the desire to win by an astonishing number of points provided an edge, whereas, back in the 90s, the chasm between Celtic and the top was made increasingly unbearable by each passing defeat.
This season is different. We’ve dropped 10 points in 10 games but substantial evidence exists that the team is making solid progress, a fact not disputed by the support, even as they left Celtic Park on Saturday. For most, the distress of defeat has tempered.
We’re two points ahead of three teams at the top of the league, with a game in hand, which makes this the most competitive SPL ever. The gap between second and second last is just six points, St Mirren who sit second bottom, would be level on points with joint-second St Johnstone had they won the game between these two earlier this month.
All this honest competition has resulted in a rise in average attendances for most clubs during “Armageddon”. It’s too easy to poke fun at the miscalculations of the SPL and SFA chief executives who believed the game needed a fatally flawed giant in the top flight. Instead, what it needed was genuine competition, which we have, to a degree.
Hibs, Aberdeen and St Johnstone are all two points from the top of the table while Inverness and Killie are only one win below them. Can you imagine how good a league this would be without the last remaining over-sized behemoth?
The SPL didn’t need Rangers, in fact, it is a better, more competitive league without them. The same goes for Celtic. We are not good for the league and do nothing for Aberdeen, United, Hibs or clubs who want nothing but a sporting chance in the game. Many of these clubs seem to have Stockholm Syndrome; locked into the belief that they need to be with their tormentors.
If I was writing a blog about any of these clubs I’d tell Celtic to go find themselves some fantasy football league and let the rest of the country get back to a proper sporting endeavour. They have nothing to lose but their loser labels.
The next issue of CQN Magazine is due out shortly, let me know if you would like to advertise, advert@cqnmagazine.co.uk.
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jungle jim.i ddanced in STEVE CHALMERS garden in LAMONT RD BALORNOCK on 25/05 1967.
Another one who reads CQN…
Hearts manager John McGlynn believes Scottish Premier League crowds would rise in a top flight without Celtic.
McGlynn said clubs would have a greater chance of winning the championship.
He added: “How many fans would think they would win the league if Celtic were not in it at this stage of the season?
“They would all fancy their chances of winning. We would all fill our stadiums if we all thought we could win the league.”
The Edinburgh club face serious financial challenges and have been late in paying wages at Tynecastle on numerous occasions.
And the club are also disputing a £1.75m tax bill.
McGlynn believes a top flight without Celtic “would cause great excitement”.
“I think it would bring fans back to the game.”
The Hearts boss, admitting that the situation was hypothetical, said the health of the top flight without Celtic would hinge on continued TV coverage of the SPL.
“At the minute it’s exciting because from week to week someone else is second in the league,” McGlynn added.
“I think crowds would come back if everyone thought they had a realistic chance of winning the league.”
I shook hands with Dalglish in 75 when he came into the New Orleans Rutherglen to celebrate the birth of daughter Kelly, now tv presenter
Anyone hear the new celtic mod type band called quadrofenians ? Got there album on itunes today.
Only 7 tunes but was impressed. 5 are written by themselves.
Spiers on Sport: coming under threat for criticising Rangers
My heart sank as I watched last week’s Channel Four News item about critics of Rangers FC coming in for threats or menacing intimidation from either fans or rogue elements with links to the Ibrox club.
I’ve been there, had the treatment, received such threats myself. It was all highly familiar, even if I’ve never written publicly about it until now.
One of Channel 4’s interviewees was Gary Allan, the Scottish QC, who said that, after his involvement with an SFA panel which punished Rangers for bringing the game into disrepute, Strathclyde Police had summoned him to an urgent meeting due to threats being made against him.
Allan spoke of the subsequent threats to himself and his family. It was obvious he regretted ever getting embroiled with Rangers in the first place.
My own story of covering Rangers – and being critical of certain aspects of the club – has incurred similar menace. It all started around 10 years ago when, as chief sports writer on The Herald, I began focusing on the bigoted singing issue over which the club was then wearyingly engaged with its supporters.
After a number of pieces highlighting this blight upon Rangers, the threatening letters, the phone calls and the internet poison on Rangers fans’ sites all began to build in momentum against me.
Round about 2005, my then editor at The Herald phoned me and said: “How do you feel about this? We have a concern about it at the paper. We think we should speak to the police about your security.”
I was pretty nonplussed to hear this, not least because, in truth, I had never been that bothered by it. “I don’t think we need to go that far,” I told my editor. “I really don’t think it’s that bad, is it?” In the end, we agreed to let it lie in terms of police involvement.
Yet the threats towards me grew. It seemed to me they came from a kind of rogue, angry underclass which appeared to have attached itself to the club.
Any sweeping generalisations about Rangers fans, however, were both futile and inaccurate. The fact was, whenever I engaged in pub debate with Rangers fans – which was often – the conversation was normally civil, if combative.
But then came another incident, when the press bus stopped 200 yards short of the Villarreal stadium on a Champions League night with Rangers in 2006. I got fairly bumped around and was spat at as we made our way through the Rangers throngs to the arena.
That was the night when the Villarreal team bus got pelted and suffered a smashed window, and just months before Uefa censured Rangers for bigoted chanting. On the latter, a few Rangers fans on the fervid message-boards blamed me for somehow “shopping” the club to Uefa via my critical editorials on the subject.
Fast forward to 2011, by which time we’d had the disturbances in Manchester involving Rangers fans, and their offensive singing at the 2011 League Cup final, both of which caused the club further headaches.
Again, I’d written critically on these topics, which only kept the poison flowing in my direction.
Then, on the morning of April 21 last year, colleagues began texting me about a fresh alarm. The Daily Record had published a picture of me with an accompanying story, claiming I was one of a number of people being targeted by cranks, because of my criticisms of Rangers.
That particular day I had other family concerns on my mind, and I more or less ignored the Record story. But the next day I received a phone call.
“Graham, this is Detective Chief Superintendent [xxxxxxx] from the counter-terrorism unit at Strathclyde Police…”
I was incredulous. “You’re kidding me, right?” I said. “You are kidding me on, surely?”
“No, I’m not,” he said. “And we think we need to come and see you at home pretty soon.”
I duly spent two hours listening to police security specialists explaining to me that they had information about threats being made against me, and that these threats were linked to my writing and broadcasting about Rangers.
And so it has gone on, the threat of intimidation rising and falling in line with my writing about this football club.
The context, I believe, is this. Rangers FC have had supporter issues to deal with over the years. Many of these issues have seen great improvement in fans’ behaviour.
But among the Rangers hard core there is resentment. Their faux Protestant culture around Rangers is something many Ibrox fans want to bin but the “traditionalists” want to preserve.
It often seems to me that a modern, liberal Scotland has abandoned this section of the Rangers support; left them behind, and even actually mocked them for their out-dated beliefs.
Whatever the context, in my own experience, Channel 4 got it right. You sometimes mix with Rangers at your peril.
jungle jim
Thats naw fair!
I, and fat Sally, demand to know why!!
HH!!
Sipsini
Aye…67-71
DontPatmadug – Check out the comments underneath.
Zombies immediately go into whataboutery mode.
Huns are to football what Africanised bees are to a picnic. (thumbsup)
Lennon n Mc…Mjallby he did indeed – did you go to the Joes yourself?
Tombola
Marrakesh Express- where abouts were you on chateau lait?
Speirs encouraged by A T?
http://www.heraldscotland.com/sport/opinion/spiers-on-sport-coming-under-threat-for-criticising-rangers.1351601156
Half time
Mr Divers was brand new but I never had him,I had McDonnell for that particular subject.
Ablockcsc
Canuckbhoy
near Carmunnock now.
You?
“Fast forward to 2011, by which time we’d had the disturbances in Manchester involving Rangers fans, and their offensive singing at the 2011 League Cup final, both of which caused the club further headaches.”
******
“disturbances” = Violent rioting.
“headaches” = Praise from senior police officers and politicians.
Not good enough, Graeme.
70’s on Tormusk, did you go to St. Bart’s?
Marrakesh express.
I was 72-76.
My brother knows bernie we went down to the riverside a few years ago and met him a down to earth bloke.
My brother was of the same opinion as yourself as regards his skill levels.hh
Canuckbhoy
Sorry…then it was Ardencraig rd in front of st. dominics
canuckbhoy
13:45 on
30 October, 2012
I lived in Scarrell Road from 1956…….small World
I was standing beside my Dad when he asked Big Jock outside Hampden if he’d any tickets… Mr Stein politely told him no, “if I gave you one, look at all those other guys around…” I got a lift over and saw the game in any case!
I once saw Chris Killen score a goal for Celtic.
thomthethim – Most of those people urinating and defecating in public, smashing up windows, and trying to murder policemen were Chelsea fans pretending to have RAGE, the virus that causes Rangersitis.
To be fair, Graham later clarified that WW2 was “a bit of a stramash”. (thumbsup)
I went to St Maggies………great 6 years……
dontbrattbakkinanger
13:47 on 30 October, 2012
Wherefore the scurrilous zombies today ………LLOOLL
philvisreturns
13:38 on 30 October, 2012
It is their default position .
I would think that every journalist who has ever criticised them has been threatened in some way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLCNj_-DDSQ&noredirect=1
Some how this came into my head :)
I used to buy all my spirits from Joe Fillipi.
67heaven and Marrakesh, did ye ever cross the sausage bridge on a bike?
Also i usually end up sitting next to Kevin Kelly (yes that one.
Cleland is a hot bed for Celtic heroes and villians lol
* at mass on a sunday that should be not just randomly sitting next to him haha
Ah the bold A-Block with the perenial leaky roof and near fatal stampede down the stairs at half 3 on a Friday – what memories!
I think my older sister might have been taught by Mc Donnell but I don’t remember him.
Never had Mr Divers either but I would see him at away games a lot when I was younger – seen him at the Helsingborgs game recently.
Tombola
Sipsini
he played football with us as a 14 yr old when I was 18. Its a big gap at that age but he was chaperoned by his old man. This gave Bernie the protection against older boys and he made the most of it. He got stuck in alright but he never had the skill level of many others. Castlemilk like the other parts of Glasgow around that time was a hotbed of talent. Good luck to Bernie for making it the way he did. The same could be said of Kevin Keegan.
Philvis,
Re “Rangersitis” – I rather like the term coined by a poster on KDS; “NewBearculosis”
I lived in the same city as most of the lisbon lions
philvisreturns
13:48 on 30 October, 2012
thomthethim – Most of those people urinating and defecating in public, smashing up windows, and trying to murder policemen were Chelsea fans pretending to have RAGE, the virus that causes Rangersitis.
To be fair, Graham later clarified that WW2 was “a bit of a stramash”. (thumbsup)
*********
Rangersitis = Inflamation of the Ranger.
Sounds about right to me.
Charles Green “to buy Jimmy Savile’s knighthood”
Charles Green, the colourful impresario behind The Rangers Football Club, has made it known that he intends to buy the knighthood previously awarded to the late Sir Jimmy Savile.
“Eeee, right sick I am of not having t’knighthood to match me new status as Pied Piper of Govan. I mean, David Murray has one and he doesn’t have a Lancashire hotpot to pee in – how embarrassing is that?”
“So there I was, the wife applying cream for me Rangeritis, when I saw in the paper this opportunity to purchase the knighthood and reputation for tireless charity work from Sir Jimmy’s estate. Once the sale goes through I will also have been a legendary DJ and host of Top of The Pops.”
“I am Rangers, so this means Rangers will be a knight of the realm. Not one of those funny Popey knights though, we’ll not be buying that!”
Charles Green also made it clear he will not be buying any of Savile’s legacy of “funny business” or “fiddling about” and did not intend to answer any questions from the police or a parliamentary inquiry on the recent allegations. (thumbsup)
philvisreturns…..
Yellow card mate.
From me
Dick Byrne – I LOLed :) (thumbsup)
thomthethim – Are they ever not inflamed? (thumbsup)
Philbhoy – It’s just the beginning! – Hmmm? (thumbsup)
Also visited the country where stephane mahe came from