When the Champions League draw was made, I feared we would face Anderlecht at home on the final game after five defeats. This would not necessarily have been the end of our interest in European football, but it would have damaged the momentum in the club in recent months.
You will remember, ahead of match day five, we discussed that the Anderlecht-Bayern Munich game was probably more important to our season than the PSG-Celtic game. As it transpired, Bayern’s second half winner made all the difference to the second half of our season.
News last night that Celtic are the only group stage qualifier from the Champions Pot to still be in European competition offer some comfort; outcomes could have been a lot worse.
While European football is the custard in our doughnut, all I hear from is Celtic fans who are grateful it is over for a couple of months. We have an unbeaten record to further and two games a week until the January break.
It can be pretty horrible, a huge club stuck in a minor league without competition, but it offers us respite, an opportunity to recharge, experiment and return afresh.
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RAF bombs in early WW2 landed on average FORTY miles from their intended targets.
I’m sure The Germans weren’t that much more accurate.
But if you bomb industrial centres in civilian areas you will of course kill civilians.
War is hell. So is sleeping rough in the winter though thank God I’ve hevwr endured that.
HH jamesgang
James
Hi big yin.
So Much Things To Say!
Magical read about my mystical guru.
RNM CSC
JAMESGANG
I have no problem with Griff not celebrating a goal against Hibs, I wasn’t sure he had to announce that tho’ just score your goal and do a Henrik, back to the centre circle..
I hope he leads the line on Sunday we’re going to need him to step in and get the front line moving:))
Jamesgang
Totally agree with you. Everybody knows Griff is a Hibbee through and through. He wears his heart on his sleeve. I would never expect him to celebrate after scoring against Hibs. I’m sure he will try everything in his power to score against them because he is a professional footballer. A bit like Henrik when he scored for Barca against us.
Even the collective brain cell that is FF is scathing of the board and their PR ‘guru’ regarding tonight’s statement. Never thought that possible but they never fail to continue the fun.
I hope they don’t try and unsettle our Brendan!
Delaney’s, its nice to know that someone involved in professional football here , has no interest in ever being an employee at Ibrox.
Thankfully Tony Docherty is no petit merde or Neil McCann .
Good night all and sleep well.
I think that statement should now become known as the ” She wiz a lesbian Anyway ” statement.
Wur gonnae need a bigger cannon.
“Traynor should be shot out of a cannon.”
Not sure a canon of that calibre exists…?
Starry
TOSB
Hear yous.
DD great read isn’t is. So much things to say. I and I will see you through.
Asbestos. Lethal. Brutal. I know too well from my time working in lung health. Nothing scared me more.
HH jamesgang
SP/Fairhill Bhoy…..sorry bhoys….but if he was playing for my team….I’d fully expect them to celebrate scoring any goal….no matter their boyhood affiliations….Henke for Barca is a different argument ;-))
catandpigeonsCSC
H.H.
IMO,it will be Odsonne on Sunday. I don’t think it’s because Brendan worries about Leigh not trying against Hibs.
“I won’t celebrate if I score against Hibs. They’re my team.”
That’s a lot different from
” I don’t think the question is relevant as I’ve no intention of scoring against my club.”
My concern is that Brendan clearly has a problem with Leigh-or more importantly,how to fit him into the team. We are wasting IMO the best natural striker we’ve had in over a decade.
But…
Brendan sets the team up the way he wants them to play. And a Leigh Griffiths style of striker doesn’t fit the pattern.
I genuinely believe that Leigh loves playing for us. But he’s not playing enough,and he must be tearing his hair out.
Aye. I know. But I’ll betcha it’s either that,or kicking the cat every time he goes home.
No it’s no!
Traynor sets off to work tomorrow morning
http://d3ui957tjb5bqd.cloudfront.net/images/screenshots/products/107/1071/1071397/human-cannonball-copy-f.jpg
HH
CRC
Traynor and Level 5 will be ordering in succulent lamb to court Scottish media cronies and start re writing of history.
Damage limitation will be in full flow. Murty the new Mourinho on the cards
The teams we could draw in. EL
CSKA Moscow, Atletico Madrid, Sporting Lisbon RB Leipzig
Arsenal, Lazio, AC Milan, Salzburg, Villarreal, Dynamo Kiev, Braga, Atalanta, Lokomotiv Moscow, Viktoria Plzen, Zenit Saint Petersburg and Athletico Bilbao.
BMCUP
You are spot on about T&N — they tried everything to get out of paying up and they were part of the dreadful Us Mob you spoke of.
As an aside.
After the first night, My Grandad evacuated his family and were sent out to the Falkirk area where, to be honset, he and his sort were not made most welcome.
They were not there on the second night of the Blitz but moved on from Falkirk to Airth where they were made very welcome by people who simply would not believe the extent of the bombing he described.
However, after a few days he returned to Dalmuir and shored up the house in Burns Street (just round from DD) with plastic sheets over the window etc and went back to work at Turners.
Moral was very low amongst those who returned (some simply never came back) and shortly afterwards my dad, who was in his early teens, was taken on a special trip with a group of other boys as a special treat.
The man who toom the boys on the trip was a piano playing Partick Thistle fan who would later accompany my old man on the Piano while he sang at local concerts etc.
The special treat concerned was a trip on the “Penny Special” tram from Clydebank straight to Celtic Park, and this was the first time that my dad had ever been to the ground.
And so, out of the rubble and devastation of the Blitz, started my father’s lifelong love affair with Celtic Football Club about which he had read and whose players he knew only from the radio and the newspapers.
My old man always associated Celtic with survival. Survival of a culture, a people, of those whom others would oppress or discriminate against, of a positive outlook, of a belief that all things are possible and that people should have something or someone to cheer on and support, and the survival of the working man who should have the right to have a past time and hobby to follow away from the workplace.
However, deep down, he associated Celtic with his own survival from the Blitz. The team were a thrill, a cause for celebration, a great day out, a social glue which held together the very fabric of his generation and his people from Clydebank and Donegal who had seen war and who had experienced discriminination and really tough times before, during and after the war.
Perhaps it also explains why he installed in me a wee soft spot for the Jags and their supporters too?
James
As you know Clydebank is riddled wi asbestos.
My excuse for smoking.
Rather a doobie kills me, than probable asbestosis in Dalmuir. Pawns in their chess game.
LEFTBACKAGAIN
Aye. Indeed. Jimmy didnae believe me,so waited till one of them was at the bar and earwigged.
He came back wi the beers and told me that I was probably right,definitely foreign wi an even worse grasp of English than we had.
Cardiff is a fantastic place for a city break,if you ever get the chance. They built the city on a tablecloth. Everything you want to see is a stroll away.
If it’s further than a stroll,it ain’t worth seeing!!!
Europa League draw details for Monday at 12 …
http://www.uefa.com/uefaeuropaleague/news/newsid=2513543.html#/
Odds shorten on new Sevco Favourite
All this talk of asbestos related illness and death brings me back to my long held belief that what people should commemorate and remember each year as a society is not war deaths but those killed in or by their work or the work of their husbands and wives in providing the necessities of life for the rest of us.
My grandfather died from lung disease caused by his work in the mines – I guarantee there are plenty others who post on here who have similar stories.
Real remembrance of the sacrifices of our forbears would lead to massive change in society. So the day I see the ‘great and the good’ stand in solemn remembrance of the slaughter of millions of men and women like my grandfather on sites, in mines, shipyards, steelworks, factories and all the rest and the millions like him, the day everyone who appears on tv is asked to wear a shared and agreed badge to recognise them is the day I’ll know we’re on the right path.
If you’ve never been to Sumerlee Industrial museum you should make the effort. The gates on the way in say it all……
BRTH
Dalmuir West is little Donegal. Everyone I meet is called Gallagher/Gallacher and they all seem to originate fae Ramelton. Saw a few tonight. In Dalmuir the street round the corner fae me that was blitzed, when your dad stayed here, has been renamed Tommy Burns Street by the Dalmuir Tims.
HH
BRTH
You’re a veritable laureat.
Celtic and survival. I love that association. For me it’s always been the embodiment of the underdog sticking together to….survive and thrive.
HH jamesgang
The doom and gloom over the performance on Wednesday has kind of glossed over the fact that Brendan went with Edouard over Griff. Griff knows the score, he hasn’t been scoring of late with the exception of one dead ball free kick at Ross County, so he cant have too many complaints. The bigger picture now is who is now second choice after Moussa? I think Brendan will go with Edouard on Sunday. I know its early days but i really think Edouard has something about him, given a run in the team i think he will score plenty. Brendan has shown a lot of confidence in him recently, he wouldnt play him if he didnt trust him.
BMCUWP,
Has BR tried LG in the no10 role…..Odsonne up front….here’s an experimental 11….
DeVries
Ralston….Bitton….Ajer…..Tierney
Broony…………….Ntcham
Hayes……………..Griffiths…………Sinky
Odsonne
FTSFA
tinhatsCSC
H.H.
*Tuesday
EMBRAMIKE SAYS ” YER TEAM’S DEID…BEAT IT!”
There’s a few teams there I think we could handle:)) I hope for once the draw is kind to us, we’re away in the second leg it seems too!
On a lighter note……. that statement…… oh my aching sides.
They’ve shot themselves in the foot so many times it’s a wonder they are still standing.
The cynical side of me reckons mcinnes was never a realistic target for Sevco. They created the perfect situation in which keeping Murty in post is an acceptable option for their core market of easily conned mugs. Job done.
They’d have been in trouble if mccinnes had believed the promises and paid his own exit fee…….
The concomitant risk of Dave Kings impecuniousity must be a pain in the arse for Sevcoites.
Couldn’t agree more ref remembering those sacrificed for industry and ‘progress’.
And 11/11 should spend as much time remembering the innocent civilians murdered by war, and the naive young men from all nations.
HH jamesgang
Re the Luftwaffe
Our own ‘forgotten blirz’ In Greenock – May 41. The town and hillside covered with bombs with the shipyards all but unscathed. I don’t know if any lessons had been learned from Clydebank seven weeks earlier but decoy fires were set in the hills and thousand sheltered in railway tunnels, greatly reducing casualties, which still left almost 300 dead and thousands injured. My Grannies house had the front windows blown out when a bomb landed in Thomas Muir Street. The youngsters inthe family were evacuated to Giffnock – for the rest of their lives they wondered what they had done to deserve that!
As for asbestos- the yards were full of it, the guys who worked with it were called ‘white mice’ – campainged for a lifetime for compensation as Lithgiw and his Tory lackies just waited for time and death to reduce the compensation bill. The war covered a multitude of sins!
BRT&H
There’s a mission statement,right there.
“My old man always associated Celtic with survival. Survival of a culture, a people, of those whom others would oppress or discriminate against, of a positive outlook, of a belief that all things are possible and that people should have something or someone to cheer on and support, and the survival of the working man who should have the right to have a past time and hobby to follow away from the workplace.”
It’s why I get annoyed wi people who say that politics has nothing to do with Celtic. Our founding fathers made a political statement in 1887. Our fans have sheltered behind,and espoused,the same ever since.
Of course,Celtic is about football. But being a Celtic supporter is about more than that. It’s about being a Celtic supporter,and if you’re a Celtic supporter,you know what that means.
I dunno,I’m just forever grateful to my Dad for that wee day in Oct 67,and every day since. And I’ve made sure I returned the favour by introducing a fair few in my time.
We’ve had some rough times-my Dad took me to the games when most of the Lions were still playing. I took people mainly in the early 80s. My best mate had been a fan for nearly twenty years before he saw us win three titles,his lad was ten before he saw us winning one.
But still über-Tims.
Was our generation spoiled? Probably. Your Dad and mine could have traded stories about The Famine Years,and so could many more. OLDTIM67 for one. But we had our own Famine years,and we didn’t have a Coronation Cup or an unexpected double or a 7-1 in the sun.
Sod it,Famine years? They had it easy!!!
SP,
It’s always great to dream about a draw who we think are beatable….I’d take Braga….over 2 legs…..us at our best ;-))
FTSFA
H.H.
Jamesgang,
Do you thing Freedom Tower is an appropriate name for a monument honouring the 11/11 dead….is a bit jingoistic for my taste…..
H.H.
JinkyRS
You would not believe the amount of folk who lost their life or limbs or eyes in Dalmuir and Bishopton armaments factories. Apprentices were guinea pigs in the yards too. Asbestos poison is the tip of the iceberg in Clydebank.
ROBERTTRESSELL
My maternal Papa and I shared a bedroom till I was about 10yo. Born in 1892,he was a big big man in a period when Scots were usually stunted through decades of slum-living.
He tunnelled under the Somme in WWI. That was what he was. A miner.
He was still a big big man when he was in his 80s. I loved him to bits,but I didn’t know he was dying from silicosis. A wasting disease on the lungs from the mining.
He must have been a sight in his prime,he certainly was in my youth.
I know exactly how much his National Coal Board pension was,btw. It was heartbreakingly pitiful.