BBC 5Live got into a bit of bother yesterday for asking if Paris St Germain’s domestic domination is turning the French league into the SPFL. PSG (60) are 21 points ahead of second place Monaco (39) in Ligue Un and could win the title next month. Celtic, of course, are only 6 points clear in the Scottish Premiership and will not win the title until April.
The pertinent point that 5Live were a bit clumsy in making is that PSG, who will win four-in-a-row this year, and Celtic, won will win five-in-a-row, are competing in one horse races. Karl Heinz Rummenigge made a similar point about Bayern Munich earlier this month (an example 5Live could also have used). Bayern are 8 points clear and also on their way to four-in-a-row.
Then there’s Juventus, who, like Celtic, hope to win five-in-a-row this season. Juve had a horrible start to the season but 11 league wins on the bounce have seen them close to within 2 points of Napoli at the top of Serie A.
Basel are 10 clear and on their way to seven-in-a-row in Switzerland, while Red Bull’s money will collect a third consecutive Austrian title for Salzburg this year.
Ajax are not quite there, having only won four of the last five titles, but Dutch football has been shrinking in competitive terms for over 3 decades (Ajax and PSV between them have won all but 3 titles in 31 years). Anderlecht, who have won three in four in Belgium, are also a little short of complete domination.
England’s different, no one has retained the title since 2009 and it’s not going to happen this year. Spain have seen a change of winner in the last four years and, with the world’s two biggest clubs, are likely to remain competitive, while Benfica and Porto are still nip and tuck in Portugal. These three are the outliers of Western European football.
Reality is that three of the ‘big five’ European leagues, and many others, are no longer competitive. Successful clubs know how to stay ahead of their peers, there are several formulas to help them. Permanently breaking this domination has never been more difficult.
Scottish football is not an uncompetitive outlier, it’s the new norm. The same questions being asked about Celtic are also being asked about dominant teams across the Continent. What football does about it is another story. Keep your eye on Rummenigge. He’s ambitious and wants to change things.
422 Comments- Pages:
- «
- 1
- ...
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- »
When will the reality dawn?
The name doesn`t matter.
Old cub.New club.
All irrelevant.
It`s the culture that is the pariah.The enemy of decency.
“The big hoose must stay open”……..Now he knew what really mattered.
When Ibrox closes , they`re gone.
Not before.
EddieinKirkichael
OC/NC cutting through the crap from SFM.
Roscoe 64
I try to avoid the OC/NC discussion. It’s not my club so believe what you like, but RFC were not a bowling club or a rifle club or a rambling club. They were a “football club”. That is so self evident that to deny it would be delusional.
So on that basis – RFC was a football club playing in the SPL in 2012 when something happened to the football club. It could no longer operate as a football club in the SPL because it had run out of money.
The football club was able to put a team on the park until the end of the 2011/12 season but in June 2012 the football club failed to obtain a CVA which meant that it could not start playing football in the following season because it could no longer afford to do so.
Recognition of this fact (which led to entering liquidation) is what governed and allowed what happened next.
The SPL did not vote RFC out. There was no RFC in the form of the football club that had ended the season in May 2011 TO vote out. To football, RFC had ceased to be a football club because, guess what? It was no longer able to play football! A football club that is not able to play football is not a football club. It’s not anything.
Thus a gap arose in the SPL for another club to take the place of RFC. Efforts to fill that gap with a direct replacement of RFC (note replacement not RFC itself) were resisted by fans of other clubs who saw such an event as making a travesty of the game.
Everything that happened from June 2012 had one single Prime Cause. RFC had ceased to be a football club playing football because of debt. Just like Third Lanark or Gretna.
There were no rules to cover what happened. Just consequences that had to be faced and damage to the game to be minimised.
CG bought the place where football had been played by RFC. He even hired some of the same players whilst others, who had been contracted to RFC, were able to find jobs elsewhere because RFC were unable to honour the contracts with them. TUPE meant they did not HAVE to join TRFC. TUPE gave them that right, but it was the failure of RFC as a football club to honour their contracts that gave the players the right to walk away from RFC without TRFC, who had never employed them, getting paid a transfer fee. The players simply were not and never had been in their past careers employees of TRFC’S to transfer.
The 5 way etc was about allowing whoever bought Ibrox the ability to run a football club from there. Transfers of SPL shares, transfers of SFA Membership etc etc are all just deflections from the Prime Cause. RFC as a football club ceased playing football at the end of season 2011/12 because of debt.
The football club that started to play football at Ibrox from Aug 2012 started debt free because it wasn’t RFC.
Twist it, turn it, slice it or dice it, the football club playing football at Ibrox is not the one who ended when season 2011/12 did. Well not to me and I suspect many others, but as I said I’ve no concerns what you and fellow supporters want to believe, but don’t ask me to believe something that flies in the face of events at the time and which are being rewritten since to preserve a version of history that simply did not happen.
Auldheid on 27th January 2016 11:51 pm, with all due respect we know all that, we’ve read it all a hundred times, here, SFM, JJ site and various other blogs.
The one place you will never read it though is in the Main Stream Media, in the Herald as a news report, in the Daily Record, on STV, on BBC news or any other mainstream media outlet in Scotland.
Until that day no one outside of football fans will really know the truth, as I posted earlier why is it that the majority in this country believe the events of the Ibrox disaster were a tragic accident?
That could never be pevented or envisaged. No one was at fault, no Engineers reports were suppressed etc.
Why is that?
Nicholas winton.
Fantastic programme on the beeb.
Amazing story.
Summed up by one old survivor. Sent on a train aged 4. To England.
She said.
People still don’t understand. You need to live together regardless of creed or religion.
Save a refugee. Save the world.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Winton
WILLMACUFREE on 27TH JANUARY 2016 7:08 PM
Auldheid, hope I’m not interrupting your wee gless or two of Rioja, as you soak up the sun.
One thing concerns me about current discussion of the Nimmo Smith findings. Their authenticity or otherwise is being linked to the final findings in the BTC. If HMRC wins, NS goes wallop, so it goes.
I always thought NS was wrong of itself: wrongly commissioned, wrongly advised, fed wrong evidence, and deprived of available key evidence.
That being the case, surely it should be struck down, if that’s the expression, regardless of any appeal result in the BTC?
– See more at: http://www.celticquicknews.co.uk/spfl-not-uncompetitive-outlier-its-the-new-norm/comment-page-5/#comments
===========
The LNS Commission was an exercise in damage limitation that was cocked up deliberately or otherwise by the retention of documents that would have revealed not just that RFC had used unlawful but had actively lied to conceal the accompanying side letters from authority.
Such a revelation would have made it impossible for the LNS Commission to be established as it was never mind come up with what it did.
The omission and consequences have been pointed out to the SPL lawyers, the SPFL Board, the SPFL CEO none of whom has said there is a case to revisit. They simply did not have the appetite and it is an issue for them all not Celtic alone to address.
When the CoS came out with the common sense ruling the then unlawful nature of the ebts put the focus back on to LNS and rightly so but until the fat lady finally sings there can be no demand to act.
If the other ebts are ruled lawful finally I’m afraid football will want to put the matter to bed and ignore the unlawful ebts and their concealment and LNS will pass into the Celtic history of how the establishment got away with it.
My intention when realising a cock up had happened was to create the conditions whereby if the BTC ebts were deemed unlawful, LNS could not be used as an excuse not to revisit the issue as I was pretty sure that is what would have happened.
By discrediting LNS (and I think I have – even JJ mentions it as a sham) it has made it more difficult to use it as an excuse not to revisit if all ebts used were unlawful.
ERNIE LYNCH on 27TH JANUARY 2016 6:01 PM
AULDHEID on 27TH JANUARY 2016 3:04 PM
Ernie Lynch
You have no idea what they have to be careful of. Or don’t you read our papers?
It’s gone way beyond steel crime.
#####
And this is all going to change once the various civil and criminal court cases ( and any ensuing appeals) have been finalised, is it?
Is that when the Celtic board will make a statement?
==%=%%==
I see absolutely no point in making any statement now. It would generate more heat than light and make Celtic the prime mover when in fact what should come out is evidence of a system of governance that has totally failed Scottish football not just Celtic.
That evidence should be inarguable and have every club driven by their fans asking their clubs what they intend to do to ensure never again.
I have no idea if the Celtic Board will make any statement but I think not to would be the biggest self harming mistake in our history.
I want to add. Three years ago it was about football rules being broken and the fear for the security of Celtic staff and fans. Time has moved on. What we thought were breaches of football rules were driven by more serious breaches of law.
Have you read the indictments? Do so. Apart from the same folk in the indictments appearing on the evidence that caused Res12 to be adjourned, some of the indictments themself relate directly or indirectly to Res12 and LNS. Join the dots.
Time does not mean something said in the past was a lie or an excuse, time just allows a deeper understanding of what actually took place to emerge.
I doubt Celtic’s silence was based on knowing this would end up in court, but if BRTH is looking in he might want to comment.
Say what you like about the SPFL, their wiki entry looks pretty factual to me.
One of the main criticisms of the SPL was the dominance of the two Old Firm clubs, Celtic and Rangers. No team outside the Old Firm has won the Scottish league championship since 1985. Until Rangers were ejected from the SPL due to their liquidation,
there was only one SPL season (2005–06) where both clubs failed to occupy first and second positions, with Hearts finishing second behind Celtic.[9] Whilst other European leagues were dominated by a few clubs in the 2000s, the Old Firm dominance in Scotland dated back to the beginning of Scottish league football, with a few exceptional periods.
I wonder if the entry will be changed sometime soon.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Premier_League
Midnight one more night without sleeping
Green door what’s that secret your keeping?
What signings are being processed deep in the bowels of the Celtic Park underground bunker?
You know the one I mean. The one that has a direct rail link to Glasgow City Chambers.
Who is in and who is out?
A playmaker with a proven scoring record?
A flying winger with a decent number of assists to his name and a stranger to the physio team?
A taxi for Boerigter, if he can be found?
What about Blacket, Janko and Mulgrew? Are they better off being farmed out?
Will we see a double shuffle with Ciftci out and that cheap proven striker coming in to replace him?
Ach I can dream can’t I?
Rebellious Celtic fans won the Hampden riot 1980.
Snobby Celtic fans….didny.
Rebellious Celtic fans sacked the board 1994.
Snobby Celtic fans….didny.
Snobby Celtic fans sent a ‘statement’ to the hun-herald.
Rebellious, canny Celtic fans….didny.
Snobby Celtic fans gorged on jelly & ice cream thinking that the huns had died.
Rebellious, canny Celtic fans who, knew that there were no rebels left on the board after, Fergus chased them all….didny fall for the deception.
Snobby, conceited, stuck-up-themselves Celtic fans think that, if you dont keep up yer unconditional seat at the back of the bus….you’ll kill Celtic ?
Rebellious, canny Celtic fans know that, Celtic killed themselves when, they tucked their tails in and meekly attended the ‘shame-game’ govt summit…the custodians sold what was left of Celtic’s soul…that…day.
The hun-establishment know’s this as well…that…is why the huns will never die whilst, Celtic supporters are on the outside of their club watching swivel-eyed-serpents calling the shots, bending over for the evil orc huns.
Celtic FC / PLC died when they reigneded in Neil Lennon…after attending the govt sumit.
A house of cards…sailing on a rudderless ship….
The ole jelly & ice cream went down a treat….eh ?
….zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…….
And no one dare, disturb the sound of silence. (Paul Simon)
It seems that Police Scotland, the Scottish Parliament and the local media wish to ensure that football games, especially ones involving Celtic, are played in a silent but hostile and confrontational atmosphere.
The Offensive Behaviour Act provides a keen constabulary with the means to arrest fans for perceived offensive behaviour. Behaviour it seems which is ill defined and open to subjective interpretation by a force anxious to justify their deployment with arrest quotas entirely in keeping with their overtime budgets and electronic equipment expenditures.
Living in a country which enshrines the right to free speech in its constitution, I am saddened when an ill conceived law effectively stifles the right to express an opinion, embrace a political view or sing songs praising an ancestral heritage and its struggles for freedom.
How would singing La Marsellaise or the Red Flag be construed?
Apart from with bewilderment on the part of the assembled forces.
The worse part of it all, is that for many the arrest comes with a knock in the wee small hours, and will mean months of disruption as the law does it best to make life difficult for the victim with delaying tactics and blatant obstruction of justice.
It seems that in their unseemly rush to, in the words of one of the bill’s authors, “Even the playing field” the ruling party has created a monster.
And yet, like a fart in a lift, no one seems to want to own the effects of justify its costs.
This is a blight on our otherwise world wide reputation for lawfulness and is met with disbelief when I relate the effect of the law on my local friends and neighbours.
They think I’m exaggerating and being paranoid.
Am I?
Ah….
When my father and his father went to Paradise it was all quite simple….
Now the same song is played, but pointed inwardly.
Aye. That will help……
https://youtu.be/nDbeqj-1XOo
G’Night Y’All
Roll on the Slicin & Dicin with the auld Ruler.
CQN takes a quick report from Melbourne
The Aussie born English girl with Hungarian parents lost in two sets in the semi final of the Open tennis.
The hopes of a nation are now pinned on the Dunblane Hero tomorrow night.
And it’s a good morning from me.
GG
Best piece I have read on Offensive Law. Alex Massie, The Spectator..
Scotland’s free-speech opponents remain as hypocritical as they are illiberal. Shame on them. – http://bit.ly/1OYJabM
GG
Naw, yer no.
Wilting. Later. Night.
ZBYSZEK 1037
Thanks very much,I’ve mailed that to my sister.
Breathtaking imagery on the links you posted,his mind must have held all those tortured images for that time. I hope she goes to it.
Coincidentally,a mate of mine as a a in Kilwinning was called Kolodziej. His father,I think,was a pilot in the war,his mother was French. He and his siblings spoke some amount of languages between them!
Here’s one for WEEFRATHETIM,as a fox gets its comeuppance.
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/lifestyle/outdoors/watch-stunning-footage-tooth-claw-7258604#cZG0mdA7TpmOoVsf.97
Good morning foes from a damb, pretty breezy and more chilly than of late East Kilbride.
My old dad said when park went onto the sevco board that he wouldn’t purchase another car from him
His threat of 20k ? To herald is only a couple of cars, therefore no more cars from parks for this family
I also agree with timbhoy3 get rid of their buses when contract is up
Have I broken the blog?
Must be your aftershave B T :-)
I found this article in my archives this morning, it covers a lot of stuff about the myth that has suddenly appeared recently, I’m glad kept it, it’s a long read, but the facts are as plain as you can get, even a Hun could understand them, ……ehhhhh hold on, maybe no.
https://scotslawthoughts.wordpress.com/2013/05/14/the-death-of-rangers-fc-guest-post-by-johnbhoy/
Christian Wulff
Christian Wulff – @aHellofaBeating
Kristoffer Ajer to @fvn_no; ‘Anything could happen (in this window). I’ve got good dialogue with Celtic so we’ll see when or if I go there’
blantyretim is praying for the Knox family,
Your comments on Parks cheered me up I’m not the only one!! I constantly get pelters from my wife,who grew up in Blantyre by the way,about how I do research before any purchase and do not buy anything from a known sevco or tory supporter.Pisses her off but I do enjoy it…………:-) I even now have a list of coffee shops I will refuse to enter.
Tony D
Just to let you know that your Links are appreciated – especially on a `slow` morning. I am going out now but I will be reading that link when I return. It is good to have a list of very simple facts available when dealing with those who believe it is, legally , still the same Club. If I am dealing with a half decent guy, I accept that emotionally they are the same but that is as far as it goes. Santa Clause exists emotionally !
Cheerio for now,
JJ
Lol, they just ban everyone, and that makes it all go away, lol.
Vanguard Bears understands that Parks Motor Group has withdrawn £40,000 worth of advertising revenue from The Herald newspaper due to persistent and unwarranted attacks on the Club by its article writers.
Only last week, a Rangers Director voiced Club concerns regarding biased reporting with Herald Editor Magnus Llewellin.
These concerns were totally ignored, and Friday past saw a deliberately inflammatory article with the headline “Crooks at Rangers” appear in the aforesaid newspaper.
VB welcomes this move, and that of other Rangers-friendly companies who previously have withdrawn financial support to this newspaper, which clearly has no intention of being impartial.
TONYDONNELLY67 on 28TH JANUARY 2016 8:54 AM
Hey,Tony.
Thanks for the link.
Keep them coming.
Hail Hail
Our market and completion is the 2nd and 3rd teams in Europe
Our CEO has failed at that level due to every signing has to be a young project
Hence gubbings from Malmo , Molde legia Maribor etc. not good enough
We spend enough money but throw it away on projects
Are we going to allow another CL shambles ??
SydneyTim on 28th January 2016 9:19 am
Are we going to allow another CL shambles ??
I most definitely am. Come on, join me, its much more fun
My friends in Celtic,
Understandably, we as Celtic supporters are fed up with all the lies, deceit and downright cheating in our game. But the very last thing we need is for Celtic to get dragged into seemingly never ending court cases. Unpalatable as it is ,I think I agree with Auldheid and it is better to wait a wee while longer.
And a quick observation reading back. Celtic do not get mega TV money, most of our revenue is generated through the gates. I find it slightly amusing that some of the supporters advocating or currently withholding financial input are quite vocal on who we should be signing.
Of course it is their prerogative, but if Carlsberg/ Celtic did irony.
Hail, hail to all, especially to those who continue to make the effort.
Good Morning Bhoys a nicer morning here in Central Scotland The Rangers are an angry club the loaf wants to enlighten the authorities that you cannot send any of his players off. Park withdraws money from the Herald group as they havnt been saying nice things about them. Also anyone who doubts that it is the same club they chastise yes no doubt about it they are an angry and ugly mob. H.H. :- )
ST and your plan that will guarantee we don’t?? We all have opinions/ideas but bigger teams than us have stumbled in the CL. I do not have the answer,neither I suspect do you but I look forward to hearing your plans/ideas. H H Hebcelt
BMCUWP 6.37
Did your mate grow up to be a French Polisher?
(a very old Broons gag)
Celtic40me ahh my old sparring partner. Good to see some of the auld yins on CQN. Indeed it’s a roller coaster of laughs But time for a change as its clearly not working with the income at our disposal compared with those money machines at Molde:(((. Poor use of money all round
Morning Timland from a damp hun free mountain valley.
GP
If you are intimating that I am vocal about who we sign and withhold money, just say it.
But see if you actually read what I post instead of making up what you think I post in your head, you will see that I never suggested such a thing.
I SAID, if you want change withhold your cash, if you don’t care about the corruption keep on paying you dues, a major difference to what you are suggesting.
My choice would be to withhold your cash from the other clubs, they will get a voice soon enough.
HH
SYDNEYTIM on 28TH JANUARY 2016 9:44 AM
Celtic40me ahh my old sparring partner
i wouldn’t put it like that
Greenpinta “unpalatable as it is I agree with Auldheid” I’m sure he can defend himself but i think that is a shocking sentence,you may or may not agree with his views but you cannot deny he is one of the most articulate, sincere and switched on posters on this blog. Unpalable – never. H H Hebcelt