2015 saw Celtic win our fourth consecutive league title, a feat achieved only twice before in our history: 1908 and 1969. The 1908 win came during Willie Maley’s team’s imperious 10 titles in 13 seasons. The 1969 win, by one of our greatest teams, preceded our second run to the 1970 European Cup final, where we lost to Feyenoord in Milan.
It was only on reflection that we realised 1970 was a turning point for Celtic. Jock Stein’s teams eliminated the champions of Italy, Portugal and England that season, a far more testing journey than the team of 1966-67 endured. Until that point, only Celtic and Real Madrid outside those three countries had won the European Cup, but Martin O’Neill would be manager the next time Celtic eliminated a team from what we now know as Europe’s major five leagues.
We knew nothing of that in 1970. Indeed, Celtic won a further four consecutive league titles, but others were laying better foundations. Our model was copied, improved upon, and eventually rendered irrelevant. Celtic travelled to Milan for that European Cup final in 1970 with the whole of Europe expecting to them win. We were the top team in Europe, clearly heading in the right direction. Or so it was thought.
The reality was that we were facing the wrong direction, we just didn’t know it.
There are parallels between 1970 and now. Four in a row is appreciated by those of us who craved a quarter of this achievement in the 1990s, but our domestic dominance is such, that we all look to Europe for that extra fix. Now, it’s not a European Cup final defeat we’re lamenting, we’ve been exposed by lesser-resourced teams as we bombed in the Europa League.
Apart from the fourth title, and five-in-a-row looking a comfortable certainty, the other portents have us heading south. Two seasons of Champions League football have been followed by two of Europa League, with performances dropping each consecutive season. What we don’t know is whether what’s happening on the surface is indicative of the foundations we’ve been laying for 18 months.
Herein lies the issue: the fruits of Ronny Deila’s labours are not evident, not on the surface, anyway. There are some positive portents: he’s improved Nir Bitton, blooded Kieran Tierney and given Leigh Griffiths the stage his talent needed, but this season spaces in our defence have been as wide as the Clyde, and just as worryingly, the transfer success hit rate has been abysmally poor.
Fixing the former problem should be achievable, Ronny has taken teams to the Milan, Amsterdam and Istanbul and defended professionally (if not successfully), but fixing the ineffective transfer strategy will be more difficult. It’s not clear why we’re misfiring, or whether we can amend our ways. Throwing more money at the problem may improve things, but the problem is not fundamentally finance, Malmo and Maribor both operate on a fraction of our expenditure.
There are mitigating circumstances for our recruitment woes. Unlike Malmo and Maribor who take time to develop teams, we’ve been buying first team players for years, and the market has moved away from us at a remarkable rate over the last five years.
A decade ago only a few teams in England could outbid us, and they didn’t compete directly for talent with us anyway. We’ve now living in an era when Stoke City sign top internationals from Bayern Munich, and England is not the only league which is drifting away.
Mitigating circumstances are all fine and well, but that’s the challenge for Celtic. Work smarter, find the untapped scouts, be better than those with more money than they know what to do with.
2016 will bring another title and possibly one or two cups, but as 1 January approaches I’m hopeful the lessons learned in the transfer market since 2014 are put into practice.
Have a fantastic New Year.
764 Comments- Pages:
- «
- 1
- ...
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- 20
- 21
- »
Top Google search query today is;
“Can you die of a hangover?”
———
if you are still capable of googling the question then you havent drunk enough
get the voddies poured and get smashed
FeckYourMinimumAlcoholPricingCSC
Good evening friends
*** LAST MAN STANDING WEEK 4 ***
If anyone knows the whereabouts of those mentioned below please give themn a wee nudge and remind them they’ve still to pick their team for this weekend.
Thank You ;-)
Marspapa
twinbrookbhoy
Angelgabriel
Zico Maltese Bhoy
Good evening again friends
*** CQN COUPONEERS ***
If anyone knows the whereabouts of those mentioned below, please give them a wee nudge and remind them they’ve still to make their selection for this weekend.
Thank you ;-)
Blantyretim
Greenlion2
Lennybhoy
PFayr
Pogmanthonyahun
The Token Tim
Happy birthday Francis Albert Sinatra.
Looking forward to the court cases getting underway not just because of what it might reveal but because they will remove one of the excuses/reasons used by MSM not to use the material that Charlotte Fakeovers released which was it’s provenance.
The provenance defense is that because of uncertainty around how that material was obtained MSM could not use it. It probably slowed down Res12 progress by a year.
Now there will be arguments that this was an excuse (bullshit) rather than reason (the truth) but I do know that Ch4 legal advisers stopped Alex Thomson broadcasting some of what CF made public in 2013 and that advice is still lurking in the background.
So it will be interesting to see how those who were supplied with what CF has revealed will respond as the trials unfold and thereafter.
As a reminder these are the football and media organisations who have been provided either the LNS material or Res12 material or both from 2014 onwards and not acted on it.
The SFA (the wee tax bill that they said was not in their files) Aug 2014. Res12.
The SPFL via Harper MacLeod with wee tax case letters not provided to them by RFC Administrators re LNS
The SFA in 2015 when SPFL lawyers passed on the missing papers on LNS not provided.
The BBC in 2014 where up to 4 journos were sent by SFM the same material as SPL on LNS
STV on LNS where 1 journo has at least taken an interest but not so far made any headway .
The DR in 2014 (2 journos) and more recently one in 2015 have the LNS material and are sitting on it.
The Herald 2? journos in 2014 on LNS from SFM. No action.
Clyde SSB at least one in 2014 on LNS . No action indeed public reluctance on Twitter to look into the matter.
The Scotsman in 2015 who at least did engage, did not refute but did not publish.
The Guardian in 2015 on both LNS and Res12 who have taken an interest but not as yet followed up.
Ch4 provided with updated narrative in late 2015 but for reason already provided are waiting for the court cases to avoid any prejudice risk.
The Times in 2015 who were supplied with LNS material by SFM but so far with no public reaction.
In a sense there is a media time bomb waiting on the provenance fuse to burn out.
I’d be looking to do some bomb proofing if I were those outlets/journos in terms of getting their excuses or reasons ready.
The latter should be very interesting.
Yup it could be an interesting New Year as long as we keep our eyes on the ball.
The truth that will let us all move on.
Also contacted were the New York Times , 442 and When Saturday Comes.
FOGHORN LEGHORN on 1ST JANUARY 2016 11:06 PM
Top Google search query today is;
“Can you die of a hangover?”
>>>>>>>>
Depends what you’re hanging over ….
Good evening one more time, friends
*** YOU DON’T ASK, YOU DON’T GET ***
If anyone knows the whereabouts of those mentioned below, please give them a wee nudge and remind them that ole Jobo would love a wee signed photie ;-)
Thank you ;-)
Yanet Garcia
Rachel Riley
Hayley McQueen
Holly Willoughby
Christina Hendricks
Auldheid
HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU, SIR….HH
Happy New Year CQN. May your lum reek. HH
Night Night all, and HH to everyone. HH
Hamilton Tim
(More a point to pass on than to answer)
It is difficult not to conclude that Scottish Football, in terms of the SFA and SPFL, is more than prepared to do everything they can to accommodate a club whose ownership could best be described as “questionable” if not “criminal” and whose sources of funding as “dubious”, in order to operate at a level no other Scottish clubs in the same division can hope to without them too breaking financial licensing rules and incurring a level of debt that cannot be serviced from non dubious sources.
At present this applies to the Championship but what guarantees do we Celtic supporters have that if TRFC get promoted TRFC will be stopped from operating in a similar manner?
Is it not time the Celtic Trust and Celtic Associations should express reservations to the SPFL and the SFA about their concerns at developments over Ibrox way and ask those at Hampden exactly what is being done to bring TRFC into line with the sensible sustainable policies their opponents are now adhering to as governed by National Club Licensing rules?
Questions like what level of license in the finance category is required to operate in the top tier (hint its above Entry Level) and if a club is not at that appropriate level what steps will both SFA and SPFL take to make sure that club are living off money generated only by football and football related income?
We might not be able to prevent promotion but we can take steps to educate ourselves on the rules in order to minimise the potential damage the unbridled operations of TRFC could cause Celtic (and other clubs).
If I cannot stop a cheat sitting at my card table I can at least do my best to make sure he knows
a) that I know he cheats and
b) that I will be watching his every move like a hawk, rule book in hand.
I think a few wifes and mums typed that in today.
HH
Someone break the blog?
AULDHEID,
I know that it’s very early in your morning and I and many others appreciate the sterling work that you have done and are currently undertaking, but, and this is a big but, Celtic PLC has thousands of shareholders who feel equally concerned about the corruption, financial licensing rules, dubious ownership, rule breaking, stealing, cheating and general disregard for any form of abiding by the accepted rule book. We as shareholders are governed by a very well paid board of directors, most of whom will have direct access to not only the dubious characters at the Championship side but more importantly, to the dubious characters that are duty bound to govern the laws and regulations of the game in Scotland. Why do our said well paid board members not express those reservations on our behalf and if or when they do, why do they never communicate with their shareholders.
I have no issue with the trust or any of the associations getting involved in this, God knows, someone has to, but it should be coming straight from our custodians, anything else in my opinion, is a complete abrogation of their responsibility, not to mention their fiduciary responsibilities to each and every shareholder, regardless of their holding.
Auldheid and the Res 12 Champions
I hope the clock is ticking inexorably towards a full MSM expose of all the info you have all gathered.
Obviously you cannot reveal all the info or indeed the nature and content of your dealings with Celtic representatives.
Howevva, doffs chapeau to Kojo,
This can’t all be allowed to sit bottled up in the dark forever.
Is it possible to put a drop dead date on all the data you have acquired, say 12th July, which coincidentally is a date on which I’d love to tell loads of folks to drop dead.
Should Celtic, the authorities and the MSM still be suppressing the facts, then is it possible to publish it in either book form or serialized on CQN.
Come to think of it would this not make a great addition to the burgeoning CQN library?
I am assuming that the material is bullet proof and would not lead to legal action?
Even if you were sued, think of the publicity.
It would be the sensation of the decade.
The Lady Chatterley’s Lover of the 21st century.
(For the youngsters ask your gran and granddads)
Wishing it were me
Dean Ford on the Glasgow Road.
https://youtu.be/QQtat8hn-18
“The very word secrecy is repugnant, in a free and open society. For we are, as a people, inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret proceedings and to secret oaths”…
“For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence – on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day.
It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations. Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried not headlined.
Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed.”
God Bless America and hopefully the residents will learn how Powerful their Constitution is – Stop the War mongering in its tracks.
och aye the noo, aye most definitely End Times.
Protectionism isnae so bad after all is it Gordon Brown?
democracysucks.CsC
Back in a harmonious Time
When your team takes the field in green and white hoops
It’s a Wonderful Life
https://youtu.be/uMXz3TQOS_c
First match of 2016 this afternoon and as usual I am looking forward to attending
Unusually I do not have my usual trip of a few kilometres today .. leaving warsaw at 8:30 am for a 1700 km journey. Barring a major deasy i should be at cqn corner around 2 pm.
Mon the hoops
Partick Thistle, the Jags, the Harry Rags, last lost a game on October 31st, when they were thrashed 4-0 by Hearts. They were at home too.
Since then they have won 4 from 6, beating ICT, Ross County, Dundee United and Kilmarnock and drawing with Aberdeen and Dundee.
So they may feel that they can make a game of it at the home of the champions.
(Stop laughing at the back)
We are far too strong for them, on paper.
Unfortunately we’ll be playing on grass and Thistle will be intent on avoiding a humiliation.
In depth defending requires full concentration by everyone and strict conformity to the defensive plan.
Hopefully we will get an early goal, opening the flood gates.
If not we will need encouragement from the stands, a wee bit of guile from the likes of Bitton and Commons, if fit.
A return for Griffiths would be greeted enthusiastically by everyone in Celtic Park and throughout Celtic cyberspace.
Verdict. A massive hangover for Partick and a joyful start to 2016 for the hoops faithful.
Tontine Tim
earlier mentioned the 5-1 game against the dead team in January 1966.
It brought back great memories of standing in the Celtic end freezing my petunias off on a freezing cold misty afternoon.
The game had been in doubt due to the heavy frost and freezing mist.
The playing field was sanded and Big Jock had scoured Glasgow surrounds and laid a cover of straw to try to ensure the park was playable. He failed as it was like a skating rink.
Nevertheless the Boss had got his way and persuaded Tiny Wharton that the game should go ahead in front of at least 60k fans.
(The aforementioned number is a Kelly count and as such is subject to much speculation.)
He would have used all his powers of persuasion with reason as Celtic were unbeaten since September, and except for a draw against, guess who, PARTICK THISTLE, we had won every game and were scoring for fun.
Rangers scored early and Big Jock would have been doubting the wisdom of his efforts.
But Yogi had one of those days when he was unplayable.
He was dancing on the slippy surface in a pair of trainers while everyone else was slipping and sliding the contestants on Come Dancing.
Time and time again in the first half he pounded Ritchie in goal and Rangers players must have wondered how they were still ahead at half time.
We had more of the same from the St Pat’s alumni in the second half as he terrorized the Rangers defence and delighted his adoring fans and not a few of his doubters.
In the end we won 5-1 the highlights being a hat trick from our octogenarian Mr. Steve Chalmers, a rare goal from “Bridie” Gallacher and a Bobby Murdoch 20 yard thunderbolt ably assisted by Tiny Wharton who dummied a pass and let it run to Bobby.
So much for Rangers being at the height of their domination 50 years ago.
I went looking for the goals from the 5-1 game and I found YouTube posts by Willie Collow.
I sincerely hope he is a CQN poster.
If he is a sincere thank you.
Celtic 5-1 https://youtu.be/GxLgmfB73sI
One of Stevie’s goal is missing. I’m sure it wasn’t deliberate.
and as a wee bonus, here’s a 10 minute treat with Celtic goals against the Zombies from the 60s
The first minute is pure Hooped porn, and then it is sheer poetry.
https://youtu.be/HiCeGkchN8A
If these don’t put you in the mood for your visit to Paradise you’re heartless. ;-)
Auldheid 1st January @ 11.16pm
Have you thought about contacting Andrew Jennings the reporter who
has been investigating corruption in Fifa ..
Wonder what he might make of the documented evidence you have
detailing Corruption at the SFA ..
May I add my own thanks for all the work yourself and others have
done and hope that 2016 will be the year that Justice is finally achieved..
‘GG on 2nd January 2016 5:13 am
5 scored at Firhill.
Seems like every time we visited.
Wee Bobby Lennox`s career was started (restarted) with a hat trick from outside left under Jock`s tutelage.
HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE… here’s to 5IAR and another treble !
CQN Saturday Naps Competition
Lads, for those in the CQN Naps Competition, please post your selection here :
http://www.celticquicknews.co.uk/there-will-be-goals/comment-page-18/#comments
All the best,
fleagle1888
(Beirut CSC)
GG
Those you tube clips where smashing
Wit a start to the day
Thank you
HH
Good morning friends from a dry calm but under-a-blanket-of-dark-clouds East Kilbride.
But, hey, it’s Matchday!
Auldheid
I’ll bring it up at our next meeting.
Happy new year to ye.
Good Morning Cqn, and a very Happy New Year to everyone, especially my pal Minx 1888, great to see you posting again, due to a very overindulgence of Alcohol over the festive season l will be tea total today, so stand by Cqn corner l might make my debut there, Hail Hail to the Famous Glasgow Celtic
JOBO ALERT !!!!
Celtic, hope I’ve not cursed them.
4 nil would be nice, a Griff hattrick and Rogic to score
Although 1 nil will do.
Happy New Year to all…… Well almost all.
I’m not as Saintly as most of you are :)
Auldheid
My personal feelings are that this is an issue, not for supporter organisations, but for the club’s themselves.
Must dash I have a funeral to go to.
God Bless Liam, RIP.
Marspapa –
for the avoidance of doubt is that your week 4 LMS6 pick?
Sorry Jobo
Yes most definitely :)
That’s why I d rather read than post haha, I’m not so good at getting my point across.
Auldheid,
Your perseverance on exposing this cabal of cheating is to be admired. I think we will all be surprised at the extent of the cover up as well….maybe worse than the cheating.
No doubt you have “assurances” from Celtic a nod and wink here and there as well.
In your heart of hearts do you trust Celtic ? No need to answer.
Good Luck for 2016.
Antipodean red
Hope your job is going good and keeps you busy . Darwin seems to be pretty tough weather at times.
A lot of people looking for work so I’m delighted to get onto my current job.
Morning all.
Brightening up down here. What’s it like in Parkhead? After all the rain, is there any danger to the game?
I was at the ’66 5-1 game, only a boy mind, with two of my uncles. It was an early kick-off and I didn’t eat much before the game. I stood at the front of the Celtic end and near the end of the game I went to push through the crowd to find my uncles and I fainted. Some guy lifted me up and I was passed over the crowd to the front and put on an old brown stretcher. I woke up under the stand with the ambulance man giving me smelling salts. I dived up off the stretcher and legged it down London Rd to find my uncles waiting with a ‘where have you been’. The 5 second half goals at the Celtic end were fantastic. Video posted brought back happy memories, first time I had seen the goals again.