News (confirmed by his club) that our next Champions League opponents Juventus have opened negotiations with Athletic Blibao striker Fernando Llorente, ahead of a possible free-transfer move in the summer, appears to put recent fantasy stories about Gary Hooper supposedly moving to Turin in the correct context. Liverpool, who several newspapers also ‘reported’ were interested in Hooper, signed a different striker this week.
The relentless pillage of Celtic player’s names used to sell newspapers is wearisome, probably more so to those at the club hoping to convince Hooper, and Victor Wanyama, to sign new contracts. Chances of re-signing Hooper if he thinks Juventus and Liverpool are about to bid for him: 0%. Chances if it’s relegation battlers from England: considerably higher. I see a new front has been opened today on Beram. We have to ensure another 28 days of this nonsense.
Llorente is a current Spanish international and played a huge part in Atheltic’s march to the Europa League final last season, but I would not be too concerned if Juventus tried to secure him this month. Moving to Turin is notoriously challenging for strikers and Llorente has never been based outside of the Basque country.
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SFTB – one of the problems I have in watching football and paying, as I do, for the privilege is that I am involved in a huge upward transfer of wealth from ordinary woring people to multi millionaire footballers and their agents. If footballers were paid their true worth and there were no agents fees and a limit on transfer fees football would be cheaper to watch, more competitive at the top end and in less of a rush to take money from loan sharks and bookies in advertising revenues. We might also be able to get rid of Sky!!
fanadpatriot
14:21 on 3 January, 2013
Why are there so many on here,desperate for our club to sell our best players.Sell Kayal and buy Dorrans,you couldn’t make it up.If Kayal remains injury free,he will return to his performances when he joined the club,this guy is a player.Keep what we have and bring in 2/3 young and ambitious players,and see us move on to another level.HH.
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Because football fans are fickle and very often ‘of the moment’. Most of us would have sold our 5 away goal european hero Samaras a few years ago and very few would have shed a tear.
Neil…
I also saw an advert for a holiday company who sold me a very expensive crap foreign holiday.
What is happening to CQN?
Philvis
I’m sure you’re a great guy. No really, I do.
I love your sharp wit and sense of the absurd but, deary me, some of your political pronouncements (while excellently expressed and often insightful) are sometimes breathtakingly crass.
I mean, things like ‘… we have too many people who see benefits not as the temporary safety net they were intended to be, but as an alternate lifestyle living off the backs of working people … We need to thin out their ranks a bit …’
How many people are you talking about? And what are their whole of life circumstances: how did they get where they are and how do we change their life chances (or at least the life chances for their offspring)?
Having experienced a longish spell of unemployment myself many years ago, I know how difficult and daunting it can be for someone to find a way out of a hole like that. With the double whammy of it often being the case that the longer you’re out of work the harder it becomes to get into work – while you watch your employed peers move on an up, often through hard work, but often, too, by sheer jammy-ness.
To paraphrase Kevin Bridges, I know a number of people who are not just unemployed, but are actually ‘as unemployed as f**k’. Good folk, but struggling with issues such as low self-esteem, poor health, low academic ability and educational attainment, poor housing and lack of good role models, or opportunities to make the most of the abilities they have to offer. (Before you ask, I’m not a social worker!)
Many of the people I speak of did not benefit from being born into relative affluence, with its manifest benefits, not least stable family life and access to opportunities most children in the UK can only dream of.
I sometimes reflect on this as being the unspoken cost of these prosperous times, here in the UK: tens of thousands of people who, in times not so long ago, would probably have been killed off by disease or in war.
Slightly off topic and in the passing, I was talking the other day with an acquaintance who works as a police officer in London about some of the repercussions of the riots and looting of 2011. In particular we got talking about the custodial sentences handed out to looters. Bearing in mind the relatively trivial value of most of the stuff stolen, the sentences were eye-wateringly harsh.
Anyway, it got me wondering how many stock market traders got banged up for looting our pension funds and sundry other investments back in 2008 … and the long-term cost their adventures had for their fellow citizens.
Likewise, I read that many of these self-same high priests of mammon (those now named as our banks’ ‘responsible people’ and numbering around 1,500 in London alone) are still averaging declared earnings of £1M per skull per annum
I wonder how many of them know what it feels like to be unemployed.
Of course, I’m sure they work very hard indeed, generating wealth for you and me …
And just in case you are in any doubt: I agree there are too many people out of work, but merely cutting benefits without there being suitable opportunities will simply produce more misery and heartache, with the cost of dealing with this merely passed on to future generations …
FF
Right, too many posts in one sitting. Head spinning, need some exercise! To the gymnasium…………
after a wee cup of tea.
FollyFolly – well put.
In terms of economics, I am a keen observer but not very expert.
So, as an observation, it looks as though the places where people make things that other people want to buy are doing well.
The places where people basically try to extract money from each other for smoke on the wind are not.
FF
Slightly off topic and in the passing, I was talking the other day with an acquaintance who works as a police officer in London about some of the repercussions of the riots and looting of 2011. In particular we got talking about the custodial sentences handed out to looters. Bearing in mind the relatively trivial value of most of the stuff stolen, the sentences were eye-wateringly harsh.
Anyway, it got me wondering how many stock market traders got banged up for looting our pension funds and sundry other investments back in 2008 … and the long-term cost their adventures had for their fellow citizens.
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Nail on head!
Jungle Jim @ 10.43
“Kev IS a Celtic fan and there are a great many who are similar in their reflection of the MSM in Scotland. It is our job to educate, not to abuse.”
When I was a younger man in the early 80s I visited a house in Carfin to advise a man on some matter or another. I arrived at his house and he showed me into his living room where he was trying to get a coal fire started in his hearth. I noticed that he had the usual fireplace set of brush and tongs on his hearth.
Anyway, I started my spiel and he did his best to follow what I was saying but then he got distracted by a red hot coal falling out of his fireplace. Instead of reaching for the tongs, he picked the coal up in his bare hands, burned himself and dropped it, uttering a string of curses.
Five seconds elapsed and then…. He picked the coal up with his still burned hand and tried to do the same again.
My spiel lasted for another 30 seconds as I tried to wind up and get outta there. That failure of one trial learning, which even lower mammals can display, convinced me that higher order concepts might be beyond him.
I fear the same is true of KevJ’s obsessive trolling. The Board and the players are his hot coals and, no matter how often he is disproved, he will return to the old ways, because he has been indoctrinated for too long by the Daily Record. He now gives his money to our enemy, the Daily Record, in preference to giving it to Celtic.
I fear he is beyond hope of education.
Regarding tax payments.
Lawyers, accountants, IT professionals etc … and big business send out invoices/bills plus V.A.T. They claim this VAT as part of what THEY pay in tax to the government. It isn’t. It’s simply a tax collected by them. But it augments the amount of tax they claim that they pay.
These same wealthy people do not count VAT on goods and services as part of the taxes paid by the little people, and so skew the figures. That’s right. The VAT you pay they claim as their contribution to the kitty. You see they generated it. Quite how one chooses to live without the businesses which generate these services like phones and electricity is something I haven’t yet figured.
There is a huge raft of the consultanate in London who pay not a jot in tax. Moreover, many of them also trouser the VAT charged.
Regarding Kayal, a fair few folks would be glad to take the money and run.
I probably would like to take the 5 million myself (if it is indeed on offer) but still cant help thinking that kayal is everything that SB was expected to be. You have got to wonder why EPL teams are not bidding 5million ish for our captain, because I would rather be left with Kayal than broonie.
Looking at recent celtic club captains it has been quite a few years now since we have had a captain of any substance. The Caldwell / mcmanus / pressley captaincy days were poor, so SB is probably a step up since then but none of them are/were Billy McNeil or even Roy Aitken.
Who was the last guy who held the captaincy that filled the jersey?
Thommy Boyd. Paul Lambert..
BurgasHoops@14:10
Sites such as CQN, Kerrydale Street etc give you all the Celtic news that you require. Why any Celtic fan would want to listen to such an anti Celtic, pro SevCo show bemuses me
Hence that all who listen imo are OF fans
Afternoon all!
Hope you have all sobered up.
Kelvin’s appeal turned down?! To be expected.
Day 3 of the transfer window – 28 to go.
Of course , by the end of the month we will have sold 6/7 of our best players. Well the msm are saying so – so it must be right.
Armageddon?!
HH!!
Captaincy is an over-rated concept.
The team leading the EPL is Man U.
How many seconds will it take you to discern who is their captain? How important is it then?
Real Madrid use their goalie as captain as do Juventus? They don’t see the need for a charging game-grabbing, terracing pleasing captaincy and they are doing ok.
I think Our Captain’s best spell of form has coincided with his very well documented hip injury, if you know what I mean.
Not an attractive purchase at this time.
ntassoolla – you don’t have to live without these companies – you have to Nationalise them. Communications, Transport, Energy, Healthcare and Education – as a minimum should be in the ownership of the people for the benefit of the people.
Ten Men- the most overrated player of all time-https://twitter.com/MarioBaloteLAD/status/286829643779170305)
When I walked into the lounges yesterday they were screening the sevco game.
BT said that the Chairman had a saunter through the lounges,I wish I had seen him,my first question would be,who would be stupid enough to screen that game.
In fact he should have queried the screening of the game himself.
We have unfortunately missed (in my opinion) a great opportunity to reinforce the midfield with a wanyama-esque presence, and get Victor’s replacement in place before he finally leaves.
genk have signed Senegal midfielder Kara Mbodj – 23 year old holding midfielder. (Can also play at the back). Arsenal had been looking at him hard. he is bigger than Wanyama (6’3″) and quick. he has recently cracked into a good Senegal squad, and has a couple of caps. Genk have got themselves a great buy. I am very surprised we didn’t go for him, as he fits the profile perfectly, and we clearly scout hard in norway (Lustig).
blantyretim
14:42 on 3 January, 2013
Thommy Boyd. Paul Lambert..
========================
Neil Lennon?
https://twitter.com/MarioBaloteLAD/status/286829643779170305)
I think if we get an offer of £5m for any of our players other than Big VIc and The Wall, PL will accept it with glee.
Right, gotta go this time.
Philvis must be away counting his money to make sure none of it has been sponged from him.
Or he’s away to get some stats to prove us all wrong….. he could be some time.
SFTB
i hope you’re not inferring that Billy McN was an over rated charging game-grabbing, terracing pleasing captain. :-)
do you think we dont actually need a captain nowadays then, other than to toss the coin at KO
Tom Boyd, Jackie Mac, Paul Lambert, Neil Lennon.
HH!!
Milan playing friendly at Pro Patria this afternoon. Patria Ultras racially abusing Milan’s black players. Patria captain asks them to stop. Abuse continues. Boateng of Milan picks up the ball and wellies it into the Ultras. Milan players walk off the pitch. Game cancelled.
Milan manager Allegri says they will do it again no matter the competition
http://www.onfieldsofgreen.com/crossing-the-line/
Gavin McCann on how bigotry has TUPE’d over to the Newco!
Oh, if anyone sees Neil Lennon or Peter Lawwell will you let them know I am available on a free transfer, will play for £1K a week and have at least a season left in me. I’ve been on fire at 5 a sides lately and think I am ready for the step up. I would easily fill hoopers boots or John Hartsons old shorts if there aere any left about the place.
Philbhoy
I remember many posts on CQN, when Aiden was being transferred, suggesting they would drive him to the airport if an offer of £1m to £3m came in.
Our fans will always want to punt their own personal scapegoats for less than they are worth.
I note many people touting an approach for Gary Mackay Steven, United’s talented but diffident and inconsistent winger to replace our injury prone scapegoats. I wonder if they would care to guess what percentage of United’s 21 league games he has appeared in this year?
Ten Men Won The League.
Hence that all who listen imo are OF fans.
i’m glad you’re opinion counts for zero with the guys abroad then.
oldtim67@14:48
It will be interesting to note the club’s comments if we are drawn to play SevCo in any of the Cups in the not too distant future. Failure to recognise the game as the first ever against the new club, will result imo in a sharp decrease in SB sales
Tamrabam
On Billy- that was a different era where your top players were pretty much ever-present but, even then, Billy’s main duty was to be Jock’s voice on the field. Our best players did not need Billy’s help to be great but they appreciated his aerial prowess and his defensive ability, in his prime, as much as his captaincy. I can recall a couple of games where he changed our fortunes by scoring with his head but few where I can recall him changing it with an armband. Though he did guess well for the Lisbon coin toss at Benfica.
On your second point my answer is yes. I prefer a team with several natural captains, like the current Celtic team, bit I can still recall a few games where Scott Brown’s drive has made a big difference.
TMWTL
The club did describe the game against Rangers in April as “the last ever derby against Rangers” so I would hope they would call any future match as the first ever match against Rangers International Football Club.
Mort
oldtim
as richie said yesterday why not show the Barca game rather than sevco…shocking…
bt / oldtim
Were there many people actively watching it yesterday?
Mort
Bada Bing
Balotelli is a total liability. While Mancini’s reactions are wrong, you can see he’s at his wits end with the player
I agree he is vastly overrated as a footballer
Mort
not thay i am aware of, tbh I looked up when I walked in then noticed it was them, just ignored the tv after that..