I was asked a cracking question last night: ‘Everyone knows Rangers went into administration on 14 February 2012, but do you know what date they came out of administration?’
Can anyone guess? This is the material Cognitive Dissonance is made of.
Duff and Phelps did an incredible job. Had they stuck to Whyte’s plan, put a fait accompli to the SPL, with a matter of days to decide, ‘Our Hero’ would still own the ground, the club and would still be exalted by those who initially crowned him ‘Our Hero’, before the term became a weapon of irony.
We got a further glimpse into the goings-on at Cardiff before popular and successful manager, Malky Mackay, was sacked. Chief exec, Simon Lim, while commenting on the £30m loss the club made last season, as a Championship club, spoke of the signing of 20-year-old striker Andreas Cornelius for £7.5m, from Copenhagen, with a £45k per week, 5 year contract, somewhat more than the £6k he was previously coping with in Denmark.
Earlier this month Malky said, “What I said at the time still stands. £7.5m was our record transfer at the time but a hit-the-ground-running centre-forward in the Premier League costs two or three times that and every team in the Premier League are striving for someone like that.”
There you have it, £7.5m is not enough to buy a hit-the-ground-running centre-forward, you’ll need two or three times that! In England, reality really is a different country (this is not me getting involved in the referendum debate, before the nationalists start trolling me again).
English football is broken in ways it is increasingly difficult to fathom. Only the persistent annual losses and ballooning debt figures offer a glimpse into what the future may hold.
Our namesakes, Belfast Celtic, withdrew from league football shortly after their players were attacked by a mob following the final whistle at game against Linfield on Boxing Day 1948. Star man, Jimmy Jones, died yesterday. The then 20-year-old was thrown over a wall and out of the stadium, breaking his leg in the process.
That was the end for Belfast Celtic but Jimmy recovered and is the Irish League’s all-time top goalscorer.
If you would like to read the new CQN Magazine, GO HERE to read properly, and for FREE, the graphic below is just a taster.
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Good morning all from a gloriously dry and upliftingly sunny East KIlbride. A wonderful day for The Champions to play.
Nearly as bad a firemen and policemen retiring early on big pensions..8-)
I’ll away to church as bada isnae biting…
candles will be lit for all who are suffering…
god bless..
KTF
Difference is muccker,we paid for most of it on our own
HH
WWW
I know my civil service pension is frozen as I left after 20 years..
blantyretim is praying for the knox family
Yir a rascal
HH
Tom, I’m off to 10’o clock Mass in the Church of The Resurrection. I will pray for Gerry and for you and your family. Our God rose from the dead and that provides us with the hope of eternal life. Never lose hope.
He he…
cmon the hoops…..
later bhoys…
Off before someone gets landed with the post before 1691..
BT -Ya rascal ye …as my fellow pensioner Weet said….;))
Good Morning All,
Tom,
All our thoughts and prayers go with you and your brother…… and the rest of your family.
My own Father is terminally ill as a result of the Asbestos Poison he worked with more than 50 years ago. Nothing can halt its march, alas, — the best we can do is slow it down for a bit. which in turn gives us longer to think about the day that is coming.
In such circumstances the best I can offer you are the words of Henry Scott Holland, the former Canon of St Paul’s Cathedral in London, who says it all.
Death is nothing at all.
I have only slipped away into the next room.
I am I, and you are you.
Whatever we were to each other, that we still are.
Call me by my old familiar name,
speak to me in the easy way which you always used.
Put no difference in your tone,
wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.
Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes we enjoyed together.
Pray, smile, think of me, pray for me.
Let my name be ever the household word that it always was,
let it be spoken without effect,
without the trace of a shadow on it.
Life means all that it ever meant.
It is the same as it ever was;
there is unbroken continuity.
Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight?
I am waiting for you,
for an interval,
somewhere very near,
just round the corner.
All is well.
Tom
May God Bless you and your family.
Beautiful morning,come on now get aff yer erse’s and
support yer team,the Celtic might not be all they can be,
but it’s the only Celtic we’ve got…..what would it be like
if we did not have them?….away to Mass, have a great day.
My pre-Mass predictions is a 3 nil win today and us to win the League in our home game against St. Mirren on the 22nd March. Will check in for the live updates. UTLR.
Bada Bing
St Stivs is a nice fella —– but dissing Roxy just shows he is severely afflicted, unwell, suffering and …. well plainly just not quite right.
In fact, the symptoms for such an affliction include a tendency to have both ends burning….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nO9d7ygog2I
Getting close, who’s gonni take it…..!
HH
Next poster is a hun (1690)
BRTH-:)) Good Morning sir.
BR -I think i took one for the team there…….
Bada, You`re het!!
Tom
God bless you all.
Incredibly touching post.
1690 thoughts on “Reality is a different country”
!!bada bing!!
09:40 on 16 February, 2014
Ouch……….!
HH
Bada Bing
St Stivs Dissin Roxy?? I am surprised at that,seeing as he is still gone aboot
wae the seventies gear on………………or is that just a Greenock thing? hh
!!bada bing!!
Right your gettin it awe day
HH
Off to the game…..haven’t read back but trust everyone is looking forward to another hunfree ‘experience’….Hail Hail
BobbyRussell
HET! A brill Scottish word….wtf does it mean?
Weet-i’m doomed…..a few bhoys holding back there…..
Top of the morning to you all from a Fife where the winter sunshine is shining in a clear blue sky. If it were not for the freezing cold breeze one might think it were summer.
A perfect day for football and let’s hope it is better than last week. I agree with those on here who say it’s time for some experimentation rather than a dogged pursuit of record shut outs. A 5-3 win today wouldn’t break my heart.
Sympathies to Tom.
Unashamed plug for Sid Gallagher’s FREE book on his trials in a Masonic justice system.
http://www.30612.mrsite.com/USERIMAGES/The%20War%20Baby%20E-pdf.pdf
Adj.1.het – made warm or hot (`het’ is a dialectal variant of `heated’); “a heated swimming pool”; “wiped his heated-up face with a large bandana”; “he was all het up and sweaty”heated, heated up, het uphot – used of physical heat; having a high or higher than desirable temperature or giving off heat or feeling or causing a sensation of heat or burning; “hot stove”; “hot water”; “a hot August day”; “a hot stuffy room”; “she’s hot and tired”; “a hot forehead”
I just thought it meant ye were het….!
HH
A beautiful day and the famous Celtic are playing. Go on you know you want to.
And remember supporting your team is not a crime.
Well unless you arrive on a chopper bike wearing a Miami type shirt!!
By ANDREW SMITH
NEIL Lennon is the second-longest serving manager in situ at a Scottish senior side. If, in 13-and-a-half months’ time, he passes the five-year mark in charge of Celtic, his unbroken spell at the helm will surpass that of any occupant in the post since Jock Stein almost four decades ago.
Lennon’s longevity has exposed him to some undeniable and uncomfortable truths about time-frames.
“It’s a huge job and it’s like everything else, you have good days and bad days,” he says. “The good days are good and the bad days are horrific. That’s part of the excitement as well. You have to be a bit of a masochist to do this job.”
One of the horrific days arrived with the Scottish Cup fifth-round home defeat by Aberdeen last weekend. In the aftermath, the Celtic manager has been prepared to put on his hairshirt – “there has been a bit of soul searching but it is not a national disaster, I have got to put some sort of perspective on it”, he says – but some among the club’s followers seem to want him to wear the garment on a permanent basis.
Care must always be taken when making assessments on the mood of any team’s fans from the fulminators and frothers who forever populate cyberspace. Yet the fact that this faction has gone into overdrive in the wake of the Aberdeen elimination, which made this season the first in 32 years where Celtic did not reach either domestic cup quarter-final, cannot entirely be ignored.
Celtic are the solitary superpower of the Scottish game. Merely winning the league and negotiating Champions League qualifiers against sides with only a fraction of their resources must then leave the club only in the break-even position. Lennon accepts that this means there has been slippage in his fourth season in charge. Not that progress is ever linear for a football team. It wasn’t even under Stein.
In the past, Lennon has acknowledged that every manager has a shelf life. With typically-admirable candour, the 42-year-old does not simply dismiss the questions now being posed by some Celtic supporters over his very own shelf life. “I think you know instinctively when there is a cut-off point. Whether mine is here yet or not I do not know,” he says.
Gordon Strachan stepped down after four years at Celtic, but a staleness had long-since enveloped his era.
Lennon, while enjoying a similar silverware record, has overseen an upgrade in the standard of footballers and football witnessed in the east end of Glasgow – as well as banking record profits on player sales. In large part, the problem for the Irishman is that, with no credible title challenge, his record is being judged on domestic cup successes, with only two won in nine attempts. In previous times such honours were perceived only as add-ons where the title was concerned. A point not lost on him.
“We are going to win another championship by the looks of it and people will go, ‘so what?’,” Lennon says. “That’s a difficult thing to deal with. Years ago, there was a spell where people would have chopped your right arm off for the opportunity to be challenging for a title rather than going on to win one. I have to look past that. I have to look at the players, some of the new boys that have come in, getting them bedded in for next year. I can think about the Champions League but not too much, I have to work in the present.”
The present for him is the quest to remain unbeaten for the entire league season – a feat not achieved in the modern age – and become only the second team to break the 100-point mark. Even if there is no Rangers, no championship rival, these are not gimmes, since, in the selfsame circumstances last year, Celtic came nowhere close to such lofty outcomes.
In his newspaper column last week, Sky analyst and former Celtic winger Davie Provan said it was time, for the sake of both Lennon and the club, that the two now part. Yet, that does not factor in the realities of life for a man who has not had a period out of the game during his whole adult life. It is all very well encouraging a manager to move on, but you have to have somewhere to go. And, beyond his honour at fulfilling a post that ties him with emotional binds, there are also more prosaic reasons why Lennon hasn’t been seeking break-up advice from mentor Strachan.
“I speak to Gordon about it but it’s not high on my agenda at the minute,” he says. “This is a great job and there’s a lot of other managers out of work. I don’t fancy looking at wallpaper and carpets and stuff like that for the next however long it would be because, once you are out of a job, it’s very difficult to get back in. [The job is important because] one, it is good money. It pays the bills and keeps the clothes on the kids. And two, you can be forgotten about very quickly in the game, and that’s important to remember as well. There are good managers who have been out of the game for two and three years and applied for jobs everywhere and can’t get back in. You’ve got to be careful. I’m not saying I’m going to leave here and walk straight into another job. I haven’t made any designated plans for that either. I’m not in any rush just yet.”
Lennon’s motivations as his fourth-year anniversary hoves into view, are straightforward. “Just to get better as an individual. Looking at the season, Champions League, can we improve on that? Yes, we can. There’s an incentive there. One to qualify and then to have better go at the group stages. Can we recruit better, can we get players in? We have lost some real quality this year so it needs to be replaced to get back to the level we were at 13 or 14 months ago when, for me, the peak was probably beating Barcelona. We have lost five of that team, so that’s a big turnover in 14 months. And, domestically, can we win more trophies next year?”
For the sake of quelling the (still small) number of grumblers, Lennon will know he needs to win more trophies next year.
HH
Folks,
Anyone who can’t get to CQ10 can buy a virtual ticket for £50 — that will be a real £50 and not a virtual £50 right enough.
The details are as per the repeat of yesterdays post below — so far there has been a good uptake in these tickets but remember there are only 30 available.
Cheers
BRTH
Good Morning,
as you all know we are going to have a celebratory dinner dance/party/shindig/gathering on 14th March at the Kerrydale Suite Celtic Park to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the blog.
As The Winning Captains indicated last night there are a few tickets still available for the night if anyone still wants to come along but has not yet booked a ticket.
As well as a meal and a few drinks, we will have some musical entertainment, the odd short speech, some raffles,auctions, some other entertainment and most important of all we will have the pleasure of one another’s company at Celtic park.
It is a mixed affair with many CQN’ers bringing their wives,lovers, partners, bosses and CQN widows while others have opted for a table just with CQN friends and acquaintances.
In the course of the evening, we will also launch our latest Book — Seville -The Celtic Movement, which doesn’t so much recall the game in Seville in 2003 but the remarkable spirit and the movement of the fans that helped create that magical atmosphere and which made that movement a worldwide news item.
There will be reminders of that spirit throughout the night.
It was after Seville that Paul felt compelled to start a blog page and decided to call it Celtic Quick News.
It will be a great night and in the course of the evening we will hopefully raise some money for the relief Kitchen in Malawi which we are hoping to fund and build in association with Mary’s Meals. The kitchen will provide regular food to some 1200 people who would otherwise struggle to get a regular meal.
There is no more important a purpose to the blog that Paul created than our cumulative ability to do something for our fellow man– whoever and wherever they may be.
After all — A man is a man for awe that…… and there but for the grace of God go ourselves.
HOWEVER!!!!
Those of us who are helping to organise this event recognise that we can’t all just pitch up at Celtic park.
CQN is a forum for people all over the world and not just for those of us who are within striking distance of Paradise — and so we have decided to try and do what we can to include everyone who is not able to come to the event and let them feel part of the night.
So — on that basis we are offering to sell ” Virtual” seats or tables for the function on 14th March — however we can only offer 30 seats on this basis.
You may not be able to be with us in person but can be with us in Spirit and in return for the purchase price of £50 anyone buying such a seat will receive the following:
1. A unique match style ticket – a souvenir
2. A specially struck t shirt – Saying — Seville, CQTEN and date too?
3. A copy of Seville book – signed by as many blog names as possible including Paul, WC, myself and perhaps some ex celts such as Tommy Boyd etc
4. A copy menu from the event so you can see what you didn’t get to eat!
5. A Miniature bottle of whisky
6 One of the specially commissioned CQN badges
and anything else we can think of to fit in there — and there are a few other items we are working on.
In other words, a wee souvenir package of various things including the signed book.
I would also stress that in addition to the above, every single virtual ticket sold will result in a £20 donation to the Malawi Kitchen fund.
So there you are folks, if you can’t come to the party in person, please feel free to take advantage of these virtual tickets — especially if you live abroad and want to feel involved.
No matter where you are we will post the CQN bundle out to you.
If you want a virtual ticket, then please send me your details by e-mailing me at editor@cqnmagazine.com
Cheers
BRTH
I took a real gamble at 1688, had somebody nicked in just before I posted No 1689 then it was me who copped it.
Gambleawarecsc
Tom
Thoughts and prayers for you and your brother and your respective families.
We were all willing you to get home ‘in time’. Hopefully the last couple of weeks have given you both peace and precious memories.
KTF jamesgang
Tom
A brave post about a brave brother. We should all heed his advice to make the most of our lives.
I hope you are able share a laugh today. I lost my father but his last days and weeks were characterised by the fun we always shared despite the pain of knowing time was running out. So if you can, have as much fun today as possible and create happy memories that you will cherish.
All the best ‘
Your het
You’ve got the meegie
Awe naw
HH
HT
Shirt back in wardrobe.
VP
Chopper?