Spartak Moscow have appointed Valery Karpin as caretaker manager. The former Russian international has had an active role in the club since 2008, variously as chief executive and manager. He took control of the first team when he replaced Michael Laudrup in 2009 until Unai Emeri’s appointment this summer when Karpin returned to his executive role.
He is an experienced pair of hands who is likely to stabilise things after the spirit had been drained from the club. Spartak are already out of Europe but will pose no less a threat than Inverness when they arrive at Celtic Park next midweek.
Neil Lennon will not be particularly concerned by the impact of Celtic’s defeat by Inverness on Saturday on the league table but the experience will still be arresting. Celtic have won three of five away games in Europe this season, losing the other two by a single goal, but there is clearly still work to do when faced with a home challenge in the SPL. Valery Karpin will be keen to prove he can exploit this.
Celtic have established credentials in three areas this season: they can defend adroitly when setup to do so, they are a major threat at set-pieces and they are an effective counter-attacking side. Any other attributes remain a matter for conjecture.
The first instruction against Spartak should be ‘stick to what you’re good at’.
The first ever CQN Annual is now shipping direct from the UK. Order yours here.
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hi bada
del boy french wid be better
HH
Dontbrattbakkinanger
10:15 on 27 November, 2012
Caught a brief bit of Shortbread last night- it seems after his EBT triumph ole Jabba is also an expert on rugby.
Any day now he’ll be appearin’ on Antiques Roadshow, Question Time and ole Beechgrove Garden.
…………………………………………….
Many a true word spoken in jest Dontbrattbakkinanger, I have it on good authority that Jabba is indeed a collector of vintage three-tier china cake stands and has a amassed a large collection.
From the looks of him he must empty the wares on them in restaurants then take the empties home with him.
Quality product from philosophy Football.com
http://www.philosophyfootball.com/view_item.php?pid=870
Big Nan:
I can point you to some bad events. That, that is past, was despicable, the parallels with the present – and close to us all – are even more so.
” weet weet weet
10:32on
27November,2012
hi bada del boy french wid be better”
Mange tout mate.
Mange tout.
Bonjour mes amis.
First post so be gentle
Is there any truth in the champs league bonus rumour that the players are on 200k to get into the last 16.
That basically wipes out the financial benefits of qualifying for the next phase.
It would also explain the performances in europe being far greater than the league.
We have too many players that think the domestic scene is too easy.
Losing to Kilmarnock in the league cup final and then to Hearts in the Scottish cup last season is proof enough that we have a mentality problem in this team.
The excuse being trotted out about Europe is a distraction suits players with that mental flaw in their makeup.
I dont think the way the team is set up domestically helps either .We cannot keep playing two wingers it rarely works.The centre mids are exposed trying to cover the space that is left. Inverness were running through us at will on Saturday. We looked a shambles.
I hate to have a go at Paddy Mc C but when he comes on the opposition know we are desperate. I think we are more likely to lose a goal than score one when he comes on.
I hope that we can change our performance levels enough to keep the fans coming but where I sit they are losing the passion.
Appologies for such a negative first contribution but I think my mood reflects the current feeling of the season book holders.
A E
weet weet weet-Are you the JS i worked with at Yorkhill mate?
Radio4: 3 hour special on ‘the welfare state’. Funny, that.
How many hours will they devote to Trident? Illegal wars? Corruption at every level of society?
Oh no. Just the ‘criminal’ spending on social cohesion.
One day……
Apologies if posted already – but a very good read…
Busting the talent myth
WATCHING Celtic against Benfica, I couldn’t help, but notice the shortcomings in the physiques of most of their players, or the alarming gaps in their blanket defence where Mark McHugh would normally be.
Now that Jimmy is bringing his show on the road, all that will soon be a thing of the past. The Celtic players may brace themselves for new experiences. Alarm clocks going off at 6.30am. Burning stomach muscles. Intensive sprint work. There will be no hiding places, as Jimmy makes them confront their deepest selves.
In January 2011, shortly after he had been announced as the new Donegal manager, I found myself standing beside Jim McGuinness in the queue of mourners at Michaela Harte’s wake. We were five hundred yards back from the house and as the crowd shuffled slowly forward, he told me a fascinating story.
A few years earlier, a young man who had come into a fortune as a result of a business transaction contacted him with a proposition. He explained to Jim that he no longer needed to work and wanted to have a serious crack at Gaelic football. He had played a bit of football and regretted not sticking at it.
McGuinness told him that he would work with him, but only if he was prepared to follow his instructions to the letter. Terms were agreed and the work began. For a budding manager wanting to put his sports science and psychology skills on the line, this was an irresistible experiment.
As Jim put it to me, “He was the perfect guinea pig. I had a blank canvas to work with.”
McGuinness harnessed his only client to a gruelling regime. Over the course of the next year, early morning weight sessions, running, core-work, afternoon skill sessions and intensive psychological work transformed him into a lean, mean Gaelic football machine.
“He’s a senior inter-county footballer now,” said Jim. Tantalisingly, he refused to be drawn on his protégé’s identity. Those two hours I spent in Jim’s company that dark evening in Ballygawley persuaded me that he was an extraordinary human being. I knew as I drove back to Belfast that Donegal were coming after the big boys and coming soon.
It is not in the least bit surprising that Celtic’s hierarchy have also seen his abilities. What is genuinely shocking though is that such a huge professional club have never had a sports psychologist.
As Neil Lennon put it when he stood before the cameras with the Donegal man, “Jim has a skill set that we don’t have here, in terms of the psychological side of the game. Nowadays it is a huge part of sport.”
You don’t say Neil.
Judit Polgar, the first female chess grand master is in England next week in the run-up to the London Chess Classic in December, where she will compete with eight of the world’s top male grand masters.
Lennon nor anyone in Celtic’s back room staff will have a clue who she is. McGuinness however knows all about her, since she herself was part of an experiment that has become the foundation stone of his approach to sport. Her dad is Laszlo Polgar, a world renowned psychologist who destroyed what is known as, the talent myth.
In the 1960s, his ground breaking idea was that success was achieved from hard work rather than natural talent. The world’s psychology community rubbished the notion, one eminent expert saying he needed to be, “Healed of his delusions.”
So, Polgar proposed an amazing challenge. He publicly announced that he would marry any woman who came forward and turn any children they had into world-class achievers.
Soon after, a young Ukrainian woman called Klara wrote to him offering her services. She later said, “I thought he was crazy.”
In April 1967 they married. Within a year, Susan was born.
“I need Susan’s achievements to be dramatic,” said Polgar, “So I can show people their ideas about excellence are all wrong.”
He chose chess. When she was three, he started her on a big chess board, just fooling around with pieces. By the time she was 14 she was the number one female chess player in the world.
His two other daughters Sofia and Judit followed suit. Judit has defeated Kasparov, Karpov and all the other legends. She is widely considered the greatest ever female player.
Polgar did it with his daughters. McGuinness tested the same experiment with the young man from nowhere, before repeating it with Donegal.
Winning an All-Ireland with that group of boys is perhaps the most extraordinary sporting achievement I have seen. It took only 18 months, start to finish. After all, this is a county with one of the worst coaching infrastructures in Ireland and a very weak Board who initially rejected McGuinness for the job, only taking him when they had no option. They have no recent tradition of any kind, at club, underage or schools’ level. Yet out of nowhere, they simply destroyed all-comers in this year’s championship.
Make no mistake, it was all McGuinness’s work, no-one else’s. I have seen their training. Jim personally supervises every second of it. He is the fitness scientist, the psychologist, the planner, the tactician, the motivator. He puts them on the rack in every sense and yet they do it with all their hearts, because they believe in him.
For €150,000 per annum, Celtic are getting an unbelievable bargain. Lennon said this week that he will predominantly work with younger players but if he feels there is a first-team player that would benefit from Jim’s skill he would, “Have no hesitation in using him.”
You can take it that as he sees Jim’s methods working, Lennon will be using him a lot. For all their tradition and fanatical support, Celtic are a half-assed outfit. McGuinness will change all of that. He is starting off on a part-time basis, but this will become permanent as he transforms them into a modern, progressive club.
He doesn’t have a soccer coaching badge, but he’ll accomplish that with his eyes closed. Interestingly, he was a superb amateur soccer player and won a Donegal Premier League title with Kilmacrennan Celtic in the 90s. He won’t be long catching up.
Dermot Desmond knows a thing or two about good investments. McGuinness will quickly turn out to be one of his very best. Donegal will not hold onto him in the longer term, so their Golden Era will be shorter than it might have been.
Celtic, however, are holding the tail of a real tiger.
Let’s Parler Franglais by Miles Kingston essential reading for Joey Barton,
Tres funny et tres informative, c’est not to be missed. C’est well worth la money.
If you look dispassionately at our performances this season it’s all perfectly clear.
Win the league with minimal effort. Who cares about it except as the entry point to Europe.
Most of the pitches in the spl are rubbish. The officials are rubbish. The sfa is staffed by rubbish people. The msm spout rubbish.
Europe is where we at least get some respect and the officiating is at least not bent to the extent it is domestically.
We only attract the really decent players we have because they’re guaranteed a shot at the European stage while playing for a club with a legendary reputation at all levels, except domestically.
So why should the team do more than the bare minimum in a league where the level of derogatory dislike and dismissal as one half of a spurious ‘old firm’ is the endlessly tub-thumped rubbish.
We are lumped in with a lumpen mindset even though nothing could be further from the truth.
The only exit we have from this is our participation in Europe. These days that is where it’s at, and everybody knows that.
A shame, but it is the truth.
Alec Eiffel, Good opening post pal, you will be a welcome addition to site if you keep that up, very interesting article Lukas, I enjoyed reading it. For last couple of days got the feeling that the site was getting as jaded as the team, this morning its looking a lot fresher, onwards & upwards.
Matthew Lindsay @MattLindsayET
“Lionel Messi broke his leg training with Barcelona this morning according to reports from Spain. Expected to be out for up to nine months.”
Matt Lindsey provides the latest demonstration of lazy journalism in Scotland.
Wrong again.
If anybody interested
Tom English @TomEnglishSport
At midday today I’m hosting an online chat about Rangers, HMRC, EBT, FTT, ABC, XYZ and, well, you get the idea. http://www.scotsman.com/scotland-on-sunday/webchats …
miki67 There is a modicum of truth in some of what you say but the reality is that the real problem with our SPL form has been at home, on a good pitch in front of our own supporters. I know I keep banging the same drum but my theory is that our squad is too small for the number of games we are playing particularly when you take into account our injury statistics. By 31/12 we will have played approx 36 competitive games including 9 European Games. For most of that period we have had an average of 16 or 17 fit outfield players available for selection at any given time. Lenny has opted not to delve into The Development Squad to ease the pressure and we are ending up rushing lads back from injuries and playing lads who are not fully fit and persisting with players who are suffering a temporary loss of form. I do believe in Lenny and I believe in our squad, when the European demands subside and or we get the likes of Izzy, Stokes & Forrestt back we will kick on and peace & joy will return to Paradise.
soukous
11:16 on 27 November, 2012
Let’s Parler Franglais by Miles Kingston essential reading for Joey Barton,
Tres funny et tres informative, c’est not to be missed. C’est well worth la money.
____________________
It’s a boot in the bum for you, soukous.
At least try to make a bit of effort.
………….. C’est well worth l’argent
bmcuwp
8th for the killie game in flans good enough for me
aye bada thats me.
wiz just thinkin about a wee chubby pal of ours that asked a school sec to fax him by fax using a fax machine.
remember
HH
Lukas – thanks for posting that mate, a good read.
The more I hear about McGuinness the more excited I get about his appointment. Turning ordinary players into extra-ordinary ones is the Holy Grail for us as we can’t buy the ready made options.
Fingers crossed…..
corkcelt
>>>>>
I agree with what you say.
I think I’m just having a bad/angry/frustrated/fed-up/cold filled day.
The thunder is back….it just seems to come and go. And I’m not privy to all the background/back room machinations.
And I do defer to the season book holders and the fans who go to every game, week in, week out.
It’s easy for me to sit in the warmth and bang on.
And in some respects I feel spoiled, in that I love the spectacle and razzmatazz of the international European leagues.
At the very least it gets us away from the despicable (for me, anyway) lumping in with Bigot Inc. F.C.
Even though they are like a skeleton hulk, washed up on a distant shore, we still have to tolerate the stench emanating thereof. They are well on their way to completely wrecking the game in Scotland. And this time, instead of failing to do to it from the top down, they are embarking on doing it from the bottom up, with all the help in the wrld from the msm.
Aye,still phones twice a week,canny shake him aff :},going to sort a date next few weeks for a wee Christmas drink in town if you fancy it,ID,CD and me meeting up ?
T’rankers : “you can put lipstick on a pig….it’s still a pig.”
B’rac O’Bama.
sound great bada bing.
hope he’s still got his stash of viagra,not for me you understand,fur ma da
HH
Wee boost for us for tomorrow night with the news that Grainger is out for Hearts
Has been playing well for them at LB this season
Personally, I don’t like all these fitness regimes in sports.
I preferred it when they all had beer bellies.
While we are sur le subject of franglais, I found an interesting phrase created by Miles Kington when I searched the BBC website:
“A man is accused of driving his car “avec toute la finesse d’un Rangers fan”
new article posted.