Over the years I have lost count of the number of times I asked Peter Lawwell to speak up and defend himself from ill-informed nutcases who thought him too exertive or not exertive enough. He continually refused, “What is best for Celtic?” was his repeated response. The real world is not as conspiratorial as many seem to think.
The man’s sheer intellect towered over Scottish football for 17 years. If you wanted to influence a neutral against Peter’s position, you needed your A game. Most went home to lick their wounds, many of them resentful. If you cannot outsmart him, blame his hidden hand, seems to be the excuse of choice.
The perpetrator of the fireball attack on his home in the early hours of the night will likely be caught; these types are seldom criminal masterminds. Although we know nothing about who did it, we can be sure it was a male, that he lives in an ocean of inadequacy, and that he was radicalised by those who this morning believe themselves to have clean hands. For the record, they do not. The script on the lone lunatic has not changed in 100 years, to a man, radicalised.
It is a huge mercy that no one was physically harmed. A decade on from similar attacks on Neil Lennon and his lawyer, the late Paul McBride, this could very easily have resulted in a loss of life. Peter, you will never walk alone.
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MARTIM1980 on 19TH MAY 2021 5:23 PM
Win lose or draw.
Season ticket renewal happens every year.
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Absolutely
Guys,
We need and will have a complete rebuilt, hopefully under the auspices of Eddie Howe.
Lewis Ferguson would enhance this new team I M O.
HH.
GREENPINATA on 19TH MAY 2021 6:00 PM
A good foil to Calmac and Turnbull IMO.
Also i rate him enough I wouldn’t want him playing for them.
Might be cynical about Lewis Ferguson but don’t be surprised to see the Huns put in a derisory offer and then the headlines in the papers of ‘End my Pittodrie Hell and accept the offer ‘
The programme last night about east end and how it was underdevelopment until 200 year ago? I can’t remember what it was called on which channel, sorry! I was flicking through channels and came upon it, if it comes to me I’ll come back to you.
He can come and learn the ropes from Soro :)
MCPHAIL BHOY on 19TH MAY 2021 6:06 PM
Thanks
CELTIC40ME
Sitting on the bench is a skill in itself 😌
**********Soro*********
Ferguson*********Calmac
*********Turnbull*********
Looks solid to me.
Add the above with two proper fullbacks and either one foward out wide or two up top.
Turnbull as the 10 is the main for me.
I know it’s mad but he reminds me of Zidane.
Timmy7
“In your opinion I hope?”
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Well, it was posted under my bloggimg name, so I hope you can trust it as my opinion.
If you have an alternative opinion that thre is anything provocative, unpleasant, disgusting, badly timed, arrogant, or entitled in the mild advisory statement put out by the club to help fans, who wish to do so, prepare to renew, then it is up to you to spell ot where and why they have been provocative, unpleasant, badly timed etc;
Make a case for your argument! I made mine.
Merely stating or hinting that there are alternative opinions or views without stating them or fleshing out the argument, takes us no further forward.
WTF are the BBC 6 pm news doing !
Filming big Pete and family leaving their house … honestly
Martim1980
He reminds me of Jimmy Zidane as well. 😉
If we are going to lose Brown, Christie, and possibly, McGregor or Elyounoussi this summer, I would welcome the addition of 2 from Ferguson (Dons), Campbell (Well) and Gauld (Sporting Lisbon- out on loan).
Without Brown we lack dig and the first two named players have this in abundance.
There may be other players from abroad or down South who can provide it but these are players we know who are already good and young enough to improve.
GENE on 19TH MAY 2021 6:29 PM
Martim1980
He reminds me of Jimmy Zidane as well.
🤣😂🤣😂
Greenpinata on 19th May 2021 5:42 pm
I see Lewis Ferguson has put in a transfer request.
Thoughts ?
Blame Broonie….
SETTING FREE THE BEARS FOR RES. 12 & OSCAR KNOX on 19TH MAY 2021 6:32 PM
Hope we keep CalMac and think we will.
Comfortable for Christie, Bitton, Shved, Boli and Ntcham to leave with best wishes.
Policy should be to use all youth players as squad players now and first team if training well.
Big bucks often in offer after a tournament
I’d only buy Ferguson if we were desperate for Scottish players, personally I hope he goes to Norwich
SETTING FREE THE BEARS FOR RES. 12 & OSCAR KNOX on 19TH MAY 2021 6:32 PM
If we are going to lose Brown, Christie, and possibly, McGregor or Elyounoussi this summer, I would welcome the addition of 2 from Ferguson (Dons), Campbell (Well) and Gauld (Sporting Lisbon- out on loan).
Without Brown we lack dig and the first two named players have this in abundance.
There may be other players from abroad or down South who can provide it but these are players we know who are already good and young enough to improve.
———
Well, about players with some dig; how about John McGinn? Just watched him against Spurs. A top EPL player. Our dusty wee biscuit tin and stupid relationship with Hibs shows how we missed out on a ghuy who would have been a Top Celt. Foe pennies. Go figure!
When we buy it should be a top target for each position.
Not 2 average ones. 1 Top Drawer and use a youth player as a reserve. Not a journeyman out of position.
We pass up on local talent. Unforgivable in McGinn’s case.
Terrible incompetence.
Anyone got a Delorean?
Just checking 😉
Somebody tried to murder Peter and his family last night. I wish the press would just stay away from them when they have obviously went through some trauma.
I have to say a lot of the coverage is in poor taste
Terrible thing for someone to do… but to Say ‘What’s best for Celtic’? thats what he said in response to why they never tried to stop Sevco coming into leage….Res12…LMS etc. They obviously wanted to keep them alive… and keep the bile that comes with them. Lets hope they find the person soon. We can kiss getting any manager from England for a while..and that was jafter Saturdays display by our partners .. as Brian Wilson woouls say our superiors
Gerrybhoy
as you said- that ship has passed and htere is no reason for me to raise the ghost of 2 years ago.
John McGinn is not on our watchlist anymore so I won’t waste breathe or type on him.
I am more interested in who we can bring than who we could have or should have brought- that’s yesterday’s battle.
GERRYBHOY on 19TH MAY 2021 6:56 PM
John McGinn has already said he didn’t come to Celtic because he was guaranteed to start at Villa but not at Celtic
Unfortunately at the time we weren’t convinced he’d dislodge Brown, McGregor and Ntcham
I have posted about PL for a number of years ,and how unhappy I was ,and still am……but some guys need to take a big step back and look at what actually happened here,this is an attempted murder of a Celtic employee, and his family, park the issues, and support the guy .
We could maybe even dare to think about a different wage structure.
Top first 11 players on higher pay structure.
Remove senior ‘squad’ players on moderate wages all together. Leaving room to attract more “Higher Tier” playersnfor first 11.
Pay youth players high end pay if they start.
#PipedreamCFC
Sftb
It’s easy to forget that it was 3 years ago that he went to villa.
We could definitely have done with him this season, but I’m not sure how many more trophies you can win than the three we did in each of the two seasons after we missed out on him.
Sftb
But like you said, we’re better served looking forwards now.
more questions than answers, I wonder if Brother Norbert was a Marist, and did he know Brother Walfrid ?
——————————————————-
West Ham to leave Boleyn Ground:
How the club was the heart that drew local communities together
Hammers play their final game at the ground next Tuesday before move to Stratford
It was the Roman Catholic community of Upton Park who helped West Ham United to find their home there, on the site that they will leave next week after 112 years. And that community, along with the others with whom it shares space, will still be there, left behind, when the football club moves.
West Ham United, of course, have always played in that corner of east London, ever since they started in 1895 as Thames Ironworks FC in Canning Town. For 10 years they bounced around grounds but in 1904 they found the sympathetic figure of Brother Norbert, a teacher at St Edward’s Reformatory, a school for Catholic boys who had fallen into trouble.
St Edward’s was based on Green Street, on the old Boleyn Castle ground and, fortunately for the football team, they had green space, even if it was known as the ‘Potato Field’. West Ham rented it from them and their first game at the Boleyn ground, on 1 September 1904, was against Millwall. In front of a crowd of 10,000 people, West Ham won 3-0.
That was a crowd of local working people – gas workers, dock workers, iron workers – who wanted social institutions of their own and were prepared to work hard for them. So it was for the local Irish catholics, who wanted a church on the site that they owned, backing onto the land that they leased to the football club. With dedicated fundraising they found the money and in June 1911, the Church of Our Lady of Compassion was opened.
That church is still there on Green Street, although the football ground now towers over it. But the two places have seen in their centenary, serving the local communities which built them up. These are the types of place that lives and families cohere around, and their two stories have always been intertwined.
When the football ground was hit by a Nazi V1 rocket in August 1944, all the windows of the church were smashed, tiles were blown off the roof, doors unhinged, and the altar damaged.
While the football club bought the freehold for the land from the church in 1959 – for £33,750 – the tie between the two places has been as strong as ever. They share the same land, which means they share the same people. Long-standing parish priest Father John King is a West Ham fan from Barking. Joey O’Brien and Slaven Bilic are both observant Catholics who go into the church to pray, Bilic wearing his religious bracelet from Medjugorje, the town on the border between Croatia and Bosnia, where the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared to six schoolchildren in 1981.
Not every church would want to be next to a football ground but at Our Lady of Compassion the bond means a lot to them. The church is home to two nuns – Sister Immaculata and Sister Patricia – who have directed a house of prayer across the road since 2000. “If Jesus came to the earth today in person,” they were told, “he would go straight to the east end.” They had some understandable apprehension about life on the doorstep of a 35,000 crowd, but were told by Father John they would always be safe.
Since arriving in the area to teach, the sisters have taken the football club to heart. “We have been almost sucked into West Ham, as a hoover sucks one in,” Sister Immaculata says from her Green Street prayer house. “We love the people, all of the scenery, all that goes on on the day of a game.”
“Football is just wonderful, to see life, to see joy. Many of these people have been carrying pains, but in that moment, one does not see that. Always joy and happiness, people munching their burgers. The little children, teeny-weeny things holding their grannies’ hands, some even in little push-chairs. It is life, it is innocent, it is clean and it is wonderful.”
With their own rituals, their calendar, and their sense of communal magnetism, the religious community sees a version of itself in the football club. “We feel at one with them,” Sister Immaculata says. “I have never said ‘it’s a match-day, what a nuisance.’ It is so lovely, bringing life here. When we go out to teach at St Michael’s [in East Ham], on our return, we smell the burgers, we see men selling scarves and programmes. The noise is there, but we enjoy it. It is not a noise that is not welcome. It is a welcome noise, a happy noise. We would love to be out there with them, making part of the noise ourselves.”
Of course, people move, areas change, and no-one would suggest that Upton Park should stay frozen as it was 100 years ago. It has diversified and there are more communities there than ever before. The catholic community itself has changed and grown: it now includes Filipinos, Ghanaians, Ugandas, Indians, Tamils, Poles and Lithuanians. The fifth mass on a Sunday at Our Lady of Compassion is now in Polish. There are also services in Malayalam for the Indian catholics.
These changes have enriched the life of the church too. In 2005 mass attendance figures were at 1500, the highest in the recorded history of the parish. The recorded local catholic population in 2009 was higher than ever before.
But change can make places poorer as well, especially when that many jobs, that many people, that much meaning is moved three miles away. The football club and the church have grown up together but only one will still be here in August, 112 years after Brother Norbert told West Ham secretary Syd King about the sports field at the back of his school.
“It is going to kill the area,” Sister Immaculata says. “It is almost wrenching a community, it is very sad. West Ham was the heart that drew these people together.”
TIMALOY29 on 19TH MAY 2021 7:18 PM
GERRYBHOY on 19TH MAY 2021 6:56 PM
John McGinn has already said he didn’t come to Celtic because he was guaranteed to start at Villa but not at Celtic
Unfortunately at the time we weren’t convinced he’d dislodge Brown, McGregor and Ntcham
——
Agreed. Surprising though that was.
However, we were not prepared to pay the price; but we did in the end;)
It is not the case that I am just digging over old transfer market failures (SFTB) and God knows there have been several recently. It is because we don’t seem to learn. Sadly. Lets hope new CEO will lead the way to a solution.
Based on the latest police information I think we can rule out any disgruntled Celtic fan(s).
The perpetrator was masked up and did not seem overly concerned with CCTV. The test will be whether anyone is caught . Amateurs will be, and quickly. However, someone more professional will know how to avoid leaving DNA or any other evidence for the forensic experts to pick up on.
I sincerely hope the perpetrator is caught and, if it was a commissioned act, the person behind it too. Innocent people cannot be intimidated by sinister, thuggish, elements.
A very bad week for Glasgow what with the appalling George Square incidents and the attack on the Lawwell property last night.
Genuine question – does anyone know of any orange lodges in london ? ever been any marches there, anyone know ?
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Will Catholic links be broken when West Ham United moves to the Olympic stadium?
Paul DonovanNews Date Icon Jan 20th, 2016
There is growing anticipation at West Ham United about its move to the Olympic stadium next August. Among the fans there is excitement tinged with sadness about leaving the ground that has been their home for more than a century.
Memories of the great players who have graced the sacred turf, from World Cup winners Bobby Moore, Martin Peters and Geoff Hurst through the likes of Sir Trevor Brooking and Billy Bonds to the stars of today like Dimitri Payet and Mark Noble.
Less well known is the strong Catholic presence that permeates the Boleyn ground – some ask whether that link will be broken when the club moves onto its new home.
The very land on which the ground itself was built back in 1904 belonged to the Westminster Diocese up until 1959, when the freehold was sold to the club for £33,750. Situated right in front of the stadium is Our Lady of Compassion Church, whose previous parish priest Denis Hall was a season ticket holder. The stories of Father Hall’s escapades in getting to games have become legendary, such as the time when prior to kick off the announcer said: “Will Father Hall return to St Margaret’s where the bride and groom are waiting.”
Back in 1980, when West Ham won the FA Cup, Father Hall painted the priests house in Canning Town claret and blue in tribute. On another occasion, when he was late for a match, a group of police officers helped him get into the ground with the aid of a ladder. It seemed somehow fitting that Father Hall’s final parish was Our Lady of Compassion – he died last April. Father Hall was replaced last September as parish priest by Father Neil Brett.
But the commitment of the Church locally continues to burn bright. Former Vicar General of Brentwood Diocese John Armitage has been a fervent Hammers fan all of his life. Some of the players over the years have attended Mass at Our Lady of Compassion.
Another Catholic presence on the stadium site is St Edwards Catholic Primary school, which now occupies a virtually new building courtesy of West Ham.
In 2000, when the club was completing the building of new stands at the stadium, a new school was built to replace the old St Edwards. There has always been a strong connection with the football club, with players visiting the school. Back in the days of the legendary Bobby Moore, the England skipper regularly visited the school to talk to pupils.
All of these links look likely to weaken when the club move to the Olympic Stadium, with the old Boleyn ground due to be demolished and replaced with houses and apartments.
The Catholic presence though is strong within the club itself, with chief executive Karren Brady, a fervent Catholic. Also on the staff is Sophie Bradley, who prior to moving into the press operation at West Ham was head of media at CAFOD. Irish international Joey O’Brien is another practicing Catholic. So the Catholic flame continues to burn bright.
There are mixed feelings among fans about the move to the new stadium but whatever happens it is difficult to see the Catholic legacy that surrounds the Boleyn (a hint of irony there) ground being replicated. Though the many Catholic supporters together with everyone else will no doubt follow their heroes to the Olympic stadium.
Paul Donovan is an award winning journalist based in London. Read his blog here: http://www.paulfdonovan.blogspot.co.uk/
Cant see Ferguson coming to us. Got potential with the right manager.
Cue…..
Glad to hear that Peter and his family all escaped physically unharmed after last nights horrific attack.
YNWA Peter 🍀
A big friendly giant.
https://twitter.com/74frankfurt/status/1393836483707027465/photo/1
Anybody know a striker who could get 20-30 goals for us a season?