When you are full of confidence, every game is anticipated with a sense of purpose. A ‘Bring ‘em on’ attitude lifts poor sides to great heights. When a team are on a losing streak, no game looks easy. Dundee United have won one game in all competitions since September, a 3-1 win over St Mirren seven weeks ago. Jim Goodwin is not in the position he endured in the late stages at Aberdeen, however, he needs any win almost as much as Wilfried Nancy.
United are the only Premiership side Celtic have yet to face this season, but there are reasons for more caution. They have played clubs from the top half of the table eight times, drawing twice with Newco and once each with Hibs and Hearts, once with Motherwell. Hearts and Motherwell managed wins against them, while United beat Aberdeen.
This trend was further evidenced by their home and away draws with Rapid Vienna, who enjoyed over 60% possession in each game, before eventually prevailing on penalties.
United’s problem lies when playing weaker sides who defend and give them the ball, their strength is playing on the counter. Goodwin’s gameplan for tomorrow is well-rehearsed and ready. On this issue, he will have the advantage tomorrow.
An interesting aspect of these games is the amount of goals scored. There were four 2-2 draws, a 3-3 and a 2-3. United are conceding like a team near the bottom of the table but score on the break more effectively than most. Saturday’s 0-0 with Motherwell was only their second clean sheet in 19 games since playing Luxembourgers in July.
Wilfried Nancy will know to expect Celtic will have chances and to defend against counter-attacks at Tannadice. That, at least, is one consolation for our new manager.
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At the rate we’re banning folk Wilfried will be doing the pressers in an empty room.
Bada
Only when the man is about to be hung out to dry
Very strange, but we dont know who made that call, was it the board or Nancy
In the last few weeks of strange calls am not so sure
bournesouprecipe on 16th December 2025 11:14 pm
At the rate we’re banning folk Wilfried will be doing the pressers in an empty room.
========
At the rate we are losing important games, Wifried will be doing the same after 15 mins at most home games
CLUNKS on 16TH DECEMBER 2025 11:20 PM
True mate.
I’m not buying the Bluffer stuff after three games.
BSR
Its a pickle we aint gonna eat our way out of for sure
The club needs the support to be unified as much as the support needs the club to be unified
We are as well battering both the support and the club over the head with the pickle and seeing who is standing at the end
At the moment a death by a thousand cuts over the rest of the season will result in more heads being pickled and less men standing
I relish neither
(see what I did there, am a poet….)
Big Wilf is at the Celtic because the fans have had no fight in them since 1994.
The PLC construct has sucked since its key operatives warned then manager MON, that some restructuring was going to be introduced.
Cost cutting the player product on the pitch, whilst continually increasing the consumer price for vastly deflated in quality players for the product on the pitch.
But sleekitly not mentioning that Rangers were downsizing at the same time. lol
Its not a fly by night production line.
It is supposed to be a football club.
When fans are transitioned into customers then jiggery poakery will be the way forward.
An added ingredient/poison to this post 1994 version of Celtic FC, is that the all seating era creates sweetie wife cliques.
Which reduces the potency/fabric/quality/aptitude/uppityness/scepticism of the supporter base, who are not supporters anymore, but are now customers buying a product.
When business becomes more important than, and eventually replaces, the sporting game of football, then we are not Celtic anymore.
A business has no soul.
When fans are consumed with how much we can spend as opposed to learning that there are other routes to success beyond greed and constant obsession with money, whilst a group of directors, PLC board are walking out the door with EPL bonuses etc, for Celtic winning a one horse league since 2012, when our board walked off the pitch and should have been sacked for saying nothing about Celtic fans being cheated with HMRC TAX DODGING, since David Murray bought Rangers FC in 1988/89.
Nothing changes until the fraudulent “Taylor Report” is 100% reversed.
Until that happens, Timdom will be full of dunderheids.
Wilf – 4-4-1-1 – flat back/4 – or you are a clown/plant!
HH
oot.
Sack Wilf and we’re fucked.
Don’t sack Wilf and we’re fucked.
Thanks Celtic.
PS Kevjungle – 100% correct on the soullessness of the supporter as customer construct. A sad state of affairs indeed.
Nancy has been hung out to dry since day one.
He became a sacrifice to the appeasement of the fans by this cowardly board.
Those who have played for us and are still alive must be ashamed of the insidious actions of the office bearers of this great football club.
HH
Timforlife – agreed. Guy has been hung out to,dry.
Rangers were just one of the companies within this portfolio & suffered as
a consequence,most famously with the quote,”for every £5 Celtic spend,
we’ll spend £10″…….For the avoidance of doubt, Ian Fraser is an award
winning financial journalist & not connected to any Scottish football team
The Fall of the House of Murray
As tycoon David Murray’s once-thriving business empire folds with a barely
audible whimper, Ian Fraser picks apart the disastrous sequence of
seemingly limitless borrowing and bad decisions that precipitated the
downfall
Sunday 18 January 2015
Sir David Murray’s metals-to-property conglomerate Murray International
Holdings (MIH) died last week, going out not with a bang but a whimper.
MIH and eight subsidiary companies – Premier Property Group, PPG Land,
Premier Burrell, GM Mining, Murray Group Holdings, Murray Group Management,
Murray Outsourcing and MMH NSS – are to be liquidated by Deloitte.
The insolvency practitioners will be seeking to retrieve as much cash as
they can from the firms’ assets and debtors before shutting down the
companies for good.
Since the credit crisis blew a massive hole in Murray’s business plans six
years ago, his bank, Lloyds – which completed its disastrous acquisition of
HBOS in January 2009 – appears to have treated him with kid gloves.
It had few qualms about pulling the plug on other HBOS customers who had
built up massive debts with HBOS, such as John Kennedy’s Kenmore, Jonathon
Milne’s FM Developments and Ken Ross’s Elphinstone Group.
But Lloyds was prepared to give Murray five-and-a-half years to disentangle
and dismantle as much as he could of his business empire, as well allowing
Murray Capital, a new private concern of Murray and his son, David junior,
to cherry-pick some of his most cherished assets.
The reason for this unusual leniency from Lloyds was ascribed to Murray’s
tough negotiation skills, and highlighting the number of dependent Scots
employees in a diverse group.
In his pomp in the 1990s and early 2000s, David Murray was viewed as one of
Scotland’s most successful entrepreneurs. He caught the eye of Bank of
Scotland’s former treasurer and managing director Gavin Masterton, and the
bank first lent Murray money in 1981.
Bank of Scotland went on to lend him the entire £6 million he needed to buy
Rangers FC in 1988. By 2008, as part of HBOS, it had provided him with £900
million of debt to bankroll his wide-ranging business operations, which
once encompassed commercial property, coal mining, metals trading and
football. This was despite the fact that, even at its peak, the turnover of
Murray’s group holding company never exceeded £550m.
HBOS senior bankers including chief executive of corporate banking Peter
Cummings and the late Ian Robertson, managing director of corporate
banking, gave Murray what amounted to an open cheque book.
Together, Murray and HBOS formed a complex web of joint-venture companies
into which hundreds of millions of pounds of the bank’s money were poured.
In most of these property deals, the bank was effectively lending up to 40%
of the money to itself.
Robertson, nicknamed “Robbo”, was infamous for “Robbo rollovers” – deals by
which the bank rolled over existing loans into newly created special
purpose vehicles, effectively making bad debts disappear in a puff of smoke.
One banking analyst said: “Property assets that ought to have gone into
insolvency, or into HBOS’s intensive-care unit – which would have required
the bank to book a provision for bad debt – were instead rolled over.”
The roll-overs are said to have compounded Murray’s situation after the
credit markets crashed, complicating his business empire’s problems.
However, one of Murray’s more astute moves in the past decade was to sell
his Murray International Metals business for £119m in 2005.
From the mid-2000s onwards, having witnessed the success that the likes of
Sir Tom Hunter were having in commercial property, Murray massively boosted
his group’s exposure to commercial real estate, snapping up provincial
shopping centres and office buildings from Edinburgh to London.
The number of deals accelerated after Robbo’s successor, Ray Robertson,
former head of real estate at Bank of Scotland Corporate, assumed
day-to-day responsibility for his affairs at the bank. Both Robertsons had
such faith in Murray and his Premier Property Group they seemed willing to
lend millions with few questions asked, though it was the worst of times to
be investing in and developing commercial properties.
Things started to go badly awry when Murray moved away from calculated
risk-taking and started using HBOS’s loans for what looked more like
reckless gambling. This coincided from 2005 onwards with the adoption of
what HBOS insiders call “kamikaze lending to the great and the good” as it
sought to grow its corporate loan book by some 20% per annum to compensate
for a slowdown in other aspects of its business.
Even after property markets weakened, Murray seemed impervious to the risk
of a property crash. One month after the global financial crisis started in
August 2007, PPG had some £500m of development projects under way,
including a 175,000sqft speculative office development in Glasgow’s
Bothwell Street.
MIH was going to be able to defy economic gravity thanks to what Murray
described in the 2008 annual report as “the breadth and depth of the
group’s diversified portfolio and management team”.
When HBOS collapsed under the weight of massive bad debts and a
short-sighted funding model, and the bank succumbed to Lloyds TSB in
September 2008, the game was up for Murray.
He and other tycoons had been used to picking up the phone to HBOS and
receiving hundreds of millions of pounds within hours. That all changed
after Murray’s accounts were transferred to Lloyds’s non-core business
support unit (BSU), whose goal is to maximise value from distressed
borrowers.
One of the BSU’s first goals was to persuade Murray to offload Rangers,
partly because the club was such an obvious drain on resources and partly
as it was seen as a distraction for the hands-on Murray.
One ex-bank insider said Lloyds simply wanted out of football clubs:
“Rangers was just soaking up cash. You can’t build a football business on
overdrafts and borrowing, but that is what Murray seemed to be doing.”
Two-and-a-half years after ceasing to be Rangers’ chairman in October 2009,
Murray sold his 85.3% equity stake in Rangers Football Club to Craig Whyte
for £1. The club subsequently collapsed into chaos that continues to this
day.
Lloyds continued to allow Murray to do two massive debt-for-equity swaps
which, given the fact that MIH’s equity was by now as good as worthless,
were essentially free gifts. The first, in April 2010, saw Lloyds write off
£150m of debt in exchange for an additional 12% stake in the company.
Conditions included that Murray must liquidate three-quarters of MIH’s
commercial property portfolio by 2015; introduce greater transparency into
his business dealings; and stop using cross-guarantees, by which healthy
and profitable parts of his empire were used to support more anaemic parts
like Rangers. Such cross-support makes it more difficult to hive off
businesses to third-party buyers.
A string of disposals, including that of oil and gas business Premier
Hytemp and three shopping centres (sold for less than half their purchase
price), followed. Unusually, in what seems to have been a sweetheart deal,
the bank allowed Murray to personally buy back his private equity business
Charlotte Ventures, partly because the assets within it, which included a
stake in bus manufacturer Alexander Dennis, were seen as too high risk for
the bank.
Murray said the purchase of the unit, later renamed Murray Capital, was
“done arm’s length, at market value”. A second £118m debt-for-equity swap
followed in March 2012, the negotiations for which are said to have been
extended and heated.
Murray claimed the deal – which took the amount of debt that had
effectively been written off by Lloyds to £268.5m – did not dilute the
Murray family’s 70% voting power over MIH.
Talking about the winding-down of MIH, Murray said: “This has been a
consensual approach with the bank, and it has been an orderly, managed
process. It’s not been easy – it could have been easier to walk away and
not do it – but it was decided with the lender that we would work this out,
and we have.”
There are major assets which remain unsold, including Response, the
call-centre business. It lost a contract with BSkyB, but has since won one
for Scottish Power. In another unusual move, Lloyds let Murray and his
family, through Murray Capital, buy Murray Estates, which owns about 1200
acres of prime development sites across Scotland’s central belt for just
£13.9m. In addition to Murray Estates, Murray Capital also snapped up other
unwanted MIH assets.
The Murray Estates portfolio includes a 13-acre site at Ratho Station on
the western edge of Edinburgh, a 26-acre site near Edinburgh Airport, a
300-acre site at Torrance Park in North Lanarkshire, the 135-acre Kingdom
Park site in Kirkcaldy and the 675-acre Garden District on greenbelt land
adjacent to the Edinburgh City Bypass near Gogarburn.
The latter offers scope for a £1 billion development of 3500 homes, a
showcase garden project called Calyx and a new community stadium. For many
years Murray has been piecing together so-called “ransom strips” to the
east of Edinburgh Airport’s approach road, with a view to galvanising a
wider development project called the International Business Gateway.
Things are already moving fast for the some of Murray Estates’ development
sites. In November, Fife Council granted planning permission for the
construction of a £500m residential district at Kingdom Park over 20
years. The same month, pre-construction work got under way on a £60m
mixed-use development for phase one of Torrance Park in Holytown.
In its 2013 annual report, MIH said funding difficulties meant it was
unable to develop the Murray Estates sites itself. MIH added it had
considered selling the land in a piecemeal fashion to other developers but
then “received an unsolicited approach from the Murray family in spring
2013 to acquire the majority of assets in the portfolio of Murray Estates”.
A spokesman for Lloyds said the Murray Estates deal included an
“anti-embarrassment clause” which enables the bank to secure a share of the
upside should Murray Estates’ projects come good, but declined to give
details.
The MIH 2013 accounts noted: “The transaction completed after protracted
negotiations and was supported by advice from two independent firms of
chartered surveyors … plus significant potential additional consideration
based on profits realised over 10 years.”
Intriguingly, even though Murray Capital (formerly known as Charlotte
Ventures) also banks with Lloyds, Murray made clear Lloyds did not fund the
£13.9m acquisition. He added that the non-embarrassment clause is geared to
enable the bank to get a bigger share of gains if projects are sold or
developed quickly, saying: “It was put in place to stop us flipping things
for a quick gain.”
Overall, Murray has been shown far greater leniency than other failed
property tycoons after Lloyds/HBOS was bailed out and commercial property
prices crashed. One ex-HBOS insider has suggested that it was because he
was “one of the great and good, like Tom Farmer and Tom Hunter”.
All three have been knighted, with Murray receiving his – for services to
business in Scotland – in June 2007. The source added: “Sir David never had
the great fall, the humiliation that some of the other over-leveraged
property tycoons were made to feel.”
His businesses’ outstanding debt to Lloyds stands at up to £346.7m, and the
bank has, to date, written off £268.5m through debt-for-equity swaps, which
suggests that the collapse of his business has left a £615m hole in
Lloyds’s accounts, and that two-thirds of the money Murray’s businesses
borrowed has been lost.
And because of the 2008 bailouts, it is effectively taxpayers who are
picking up the tab. Meanwhile, he has walked away from the wreckage of his
failed group with some of its most promising assets under his belt.
It is perhaps unsurprising that Murray presents the winding-up of his
erstwhile business empire as a sort of triumph. Writing in the MIH 2013
accounts, he said: “In the prevailing economic conditions since 2009, the
delivery of the numerous asset disposals and debt-reduction programme
represents a significant achievement and a very credible performance.”
He said: “It’s not been without some casualties but we’ve done the best we
could. The proceeds from the disposals have been optimised, enabling us to
secure continued employment for more than 95% of the group’s 2008
workforce and minimising losses to other stakeholders and creditors. One of
the reasons we have come through this as well as we have is that we had
some prime assets and some good trading businesses. All the small
creditors have been paid in full and everyone’s been paid their redundancy.”
Lloyds refused to comment “on the grounds of customer confidentiality”, but
others might see Murray, along with bonus-crazed bankers in rescued banks,
as the ultimate pet of the sugar daddy state.
– See more at:
http://www.celticquicknews.co.uk/football-costs-a-get-it-up-you-from-kilmarnock-and-aberdeen-giving-excuses-to-fail/#sthash.PzlciE9O.dpuf
Our squad is currently reduced
Scmichael
Sinisalo
Doohan
Donavan
Trusty
Scales
Tierney
Murray
Simpson-Pusey
Nygen
McCowan
Engels
Hatate
Bernardo
McGregor
Yang
Kelly
Maeda
Forrest
16 outfield players with Ralston doubtfu[, Balwisha and Tounette at AICON, Inamora and Shin in Japan, CCV, Saracci. Johnston, Jota, Iheanacho, Osmand injured
We need at least 2 B team on the Bench,
Nancy options are limited
One of the great ‘coming of age movies’, ( time of change in your life) “Stand By Me” was released in 1986. It was based on a novella written by Stephen King (originally called ‘The Body’) and tells the story of how four youngsters set out, on an adventure if you will, to find another young boy, Ray, who they knew, or at least knew of, who went missing after going out to pick blueberries. Set in small town America, ostensibly in the North West, where you do not have to go far to find rivers, forests and…..long haul railroads. It is funny, and it is dramatic in the way the trek, the journey affects each of the young searchers, individually and collectively, ways that will influence the rest of their lives. And the stories and experiences they share en route. They eventually find the runaway kid……dead. And shocking as it is that is not the most shocking part of the story. No that comes later as told by the narrator ‘Gordie’ played by Richard Dreyfus, now a writer, and a parent as he reminisces about those earlier days. (Think ‘These Days’ written @ sixteen by Jackson Browne). Think also of the loss of River Phoenix, who played ‘Chris’ in the movie.
It was directed by Rob Reiner, son of Carl, son of Irving, a Jewish watchmaker from Austria.
Rob, like River, and Ray before them…..is now …’the body’…
RIP Rob, River…and Ray
CelticMac
Fecking paragraphs and sentences pls
That diatribe just gave me dyslexia!!!
Celtic Mac on 17th December 2025 1:12 am
One of the great ‘coming of age movies’, ( time of change in your life) “Stand By Me” was released in 1986.
It was based on a novella written by Stephen King (originally called ‘The Body’) and tells the story of how four youngsters set out, on an adventure if you will, to find another young boy, Ray, who they knew, or at least knew of, who went missing after going out to pick blueberries.
Set in small town America, ostensibly in the North West, where you do not have to go far to find rivers, forests and…..long haul railroads.
It is funny, and it is dramatic in the way the trek, the journey affects each of the young searchers, individually and collectively, ways that will influence the rest of their lives.
And the stories and experiences they share en route. They eventually find the runaway kid……dead.
And shocking as it is that is not the most shocking part of the story.
No that comes later as told by the narrator ‘Gordie’ played by Richard Dreyfus, now a writer, and a parent as he reminisces about those earlier days.
(Think ‘These Days’ written @ sixteen by Jackson Browne). Think also of the loss of River Phoenix, who played ‘Chris’ in the movie.
It was directed by Rob Reiner, son of Carl, son of Irving, a Jewish watchmaker from Austria.
Rob, like River, and Ray before them…..is now …’the body’…
RIP Rob, River…and Ray
Tony Bloom carefully selects small clubs with no real history of success, the benefits are
(1) Time, to develop without pressure
(2) Financially, data analytics plus targeted modest investment can reap bigger rewards
(3) Supporters are on board, nothing to lose as the club have no great recent history of success plus the club can proceed largely under the radar, not fixed in the glare of the SKY/TNT MSM spotlight that elite clubs are subjected too
WN IMO is an appointment for a Tony Bloom small club gamble, this appointment for Celtic is the wrong man, at the wrong time in the wrong place, the immediate pressure to succeed (3 huge games in first week) in a hostile media frenzy environment with a section of the fanbase at war with the executive is not for a Wilfreid Nancy, inexperienced philosophy orientated coach, it has completely overwhelmed him, he may soon need rescued to save him and the club, that would require the courage to step into the spotlight and display real leadership ……………………….aye there’s the rub
It is undeniable the fact that Celtic have dominated Scottish football in the 21st century, Dermots contact book with the likes of MO’N Strachan, Rodgers etc playing a major role in that success, he done the deals, set it up then passed it over to the clubs executives to caretake on his behalf, the execs knew that the managers had DDs ear and a phone call away from a rollicking
Kat Abughazaleh
@katmabu.bsky.social
· 5h
The blockade of Venezuela is a disgusting echo of U.S. imperialism in Latin America. We were lied to about Iraq and WMDs, and an entire generation paid the price.
Here we are again.
We cannot let a wannabe dictator drag us into another forever war.
http://www.axios.com/2025/12/17/t...
President Trump designated Venezuela a “foreign terrorist organization” Tuesday and formally ordered a blockade of all U.S. sanctioned oil tankers servicing the country.
Why it matters: Trump’s newest escalation, backed by a giant U.S. armada
The FIFA world peace award recipient is just another American war criminal on behalf of the oil companies
Who could have guessed
I will watch tonight’s game and I’ll be concentrating on only one player, Liam Scales.
Dundee Utd, will adopt the proven tactic of suckering Celtic into coming forward at a snails pace so their defence can ready themselves by manning their defensive positions in their own 18 yard box before Celtic arrive.
Jim Goodwin, like so many managers in the SPFL, will have instructed his players to harass and bully Celtic’s dangerous players, leaving Liam all the room he wants to take his 5/6 touches before passing sideways, or, more recently under Nancy, hitting the odd misdirected long ball pass.
I live in hope of seeing a two-touch Scales tonight.
Well, you never know.
I listened to Wilf’s presser and didn’t feel he said anything alarming.
He’s quite a self-possessed dude.
Out of interest, I put some of the transcript into an AI-generator which rendered a snatch of Wilf’s presser in the voice of Ange; it made perfect sense anaw. This is just a link to the tool.
https://sendfame.com/text-to-speech/ange-postecoglou-ai-voice-c8f878
IWWTFTM CSC
(In Wilf We Trust For The Minute)
Quadro
Impressive
LR67
just one more reason not to watch Infantinos tourney
That said, would love to see Iran or an Arab Country do well
Morocco have a few gimmees !
I don’t really care if WN is ‘self-possessed’. He may be entirely confident and sure of himself. If so, that is worse than showing signs of uncertainty after three defeats in vital games. He doesn’t understand our players, the opposition or the league, nor the Europa League To remain self-possessed in the face of such total managerial inability is delusional.
I really hope I am wrong but I don’t see a different outcome tonight. I think many fans are sitting tight at the moment, but bad performances tonight and Sunday and I am assuming full blown revolt has to start.
Good morning CQN.
Game day.
Bring it on, warts and all.
The latest weather front is speeding up just a bit.
With a big slice of luck … the worst of it might push through before kick off.
Would be nice to play the game without rain.
A minor point only … among a myriad of problems.
But players are human.
If it rains when you are out there playing?
If you are down? It soaks and drains.
If you are up? Quenches and invigorates.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/c0l9e8p17reo
“Discovery list”
Interesting.
Back to Basics – we could try the same here with a Santa List. I’ve got Yamal and Willian. That means the huns can’t speak to them.
Celtic Supporters we seem to be getting dragged into ,with comments regarding Wilfried Nancy, which some of its justified, but and its a big but ,our players are in a title race,that for me is a big priority, the sneaky ones over at ibrox are on our tails,The team needs all of our support starting tonight up at Tannadice hopefully with a win,the Wilfried Nancy situation will take care of itself,
top marks to chicago for discovering lewandoski – a hidden gem !!!
DeniaBhoy @ 09:26
😅😅
someone could sneak WN onto the Hun’s Discovery List !
We are beyond the brink.
Day 200
Chairbhoy on 16th December 2025 10:08 pm
You’re spot on regarding a ‘City Airport’ investment scenario. The original underlying attraction of DD’s investment in Celtic was gaining entry into the EPL. That would have delivered transformative growth.
It didn’t happen and seems no more likely to 25 years on.
There is though an enduring objective to ‘change the playing environment’ and the Euro breakaway represents a new possibility. DD was always antipathetic towards ‘Atlantic’ style proposals but a Europe-wide elite league set up is a different prospect.
Saying that, the current stash (probably nearer £50M by June 26) is a drop in the ocean compared to the funding that would be required to support a Euro Super League team. To my mind, that would be an equity project and there would be no shortage of uptake.
But yeh, the prospect of that occurring could explain the hoarding behaviour, if the prospect was real. That said, we’ve had the same answer to this question since I first asked it an AGM more than 10 years ago: “in case the sky falls down”.
🤷♂️
new article posted.