Celtic were overflowing with fine performances last night but mostly this was a tactical victory. Ajax dominated possession against Milan and enjoyed lots at the Camp Nou, so Neil Lennon knew what to expect.
Despite playing at home against our lowest-ranked opponent, we never chased the game, allowed Ajax time on the ball, and waited for the opportunity. We had the intelligence across the field to outsmart Ajax, with agility (Forrest), combativeness (Mulgrew, Kayal) and experience in the box (Stokes) to get the job done. We also have perhaps the best keeper in the competition. Shhh.
At some point before the return game in Amsterdam, The Bore may consider that his team deserved to lose, just as Nir Biton deserved his red card. Lunging into tackles inside the box is a recipe for defeat. Take the ball or you take your opponents leg. The noises from Ajax after the game suggested some bewilderment at the defeat; a well-worn track for teams to leave Celtic Park after Champions League games.
I hope de Boer carries that sense of entitlement into the next game, if he does, he’ll have learned nothing and his team will lose again.
Celtic’s area for remedial action is also clear. Over three Champions League games they have not conceded in the first 75 minutes but conceded four times after that point. This is not a complaint, it’s hard to maintain the levels of concentration, not to mention the physical effort, late in a game, but the stats suggest that, at this level, we wilt before our opponents.
The Dutch are known as progressive and tolerant people but the behaviour of Ajax fans (I hear from the moment they arrived at Schiphol Airport) was deplorable, without question the most violent European fans in all my time watching Celtic.
Football hooliganism is nothing like it was in the 70s and 80s but it is on the rise across Europe. Remain ever-vigilant.
On a more prosaic fan issue…. We were not at a pantomime last night. The moment between Nir Biton lunging forward with his studs up and the referee producing a red card was filled by a “Oooh” from many in the home support.
As soon as I heard this I knew the card would be red. Biton may have gone without the sound effects, but we don’t need to authorise the ref to make a big decision.
All this and the Big Glasgow Derby coming up!!
Between now and Sunday you are going to hear lots about the collection on behalf of the Greater Maryhill Foodbank, taking place before the Thistle-Celtic game on Saturday. What a great cause to be a part of.
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Henriks buddy has just scored a screamer for his Hat-trick …wallop —-braw!
BT
Yip, ordering one on the 2nd nov. Even bought a badge last night. A really enjoyable evening made better, of course by the result. Really felt at home with them, and that’s saying something. You did me a real favour there kiddo. :)
Weefra HH supporting Wee Oscar.
…pf ayr..,
Hopefully you know that was not my intention but when you make statements like “factually incorrect” then I’m always looking to be corrected as I expect are most on here, I hope.
Anyone telling me I’m factually incorrect I expect a correction I can verify or I’m taking it personal like, innit
Doc, Jobo, Coewiebhoy, CRC, BT and Burghbhoy:
Thank you Bhoys met all of you with the exception of Burghbhoy; this gives me an idea, my new mission…:)
Cowiebhoy it is what it is all about, keeping the faith.
Torontony asked why I sign off ‘Until we meet again’…he thought it was to do with a song thingy, not Vera but something.
As I was explaining to Angelgabriel last night it is simply me saying what I want you all to do until we meet again if that makes sense! In other words:
Until we meet again, keep the faith
but I ain’t quite finished for the night.
Keep the Faith!
Hail Hail!
Zat man hat-trick!
I have a pal; he’s eleven years old; he also has the wisdom of the ages. Last night he reminded me of what being passionate being really meant. I may tell you the whole story later.
Hail Hail
Estadio
Just got tickets for Still Game!
prestonpans bhoys-hope you had money on it ,laughable stuff.I’m sure Stuart Dougal would say it was a stonewaller
I reckon players stats can be a bit obtuse. Seen so many games were the midfielders and defence knock it back to the keeper who skelps it up the park.
They keep their stats and no one bothers about the keepers stats.
Juve booting everything now
16. Woke up confident for the Big Glasgow derby on Sunday :-)
Hail Hail
Canamalar
no hassle
Wish I hadn’t said anything :-))
Justafan,
They lost, litmus test, dont beat yourself up with losers laments
….pf ayr..,
I know :o))
Canam….
Totally agree!
But I’d have thought those complaining about it were doing the lamenting :-)
balhambhoy
19:43 on 23 October, 2013
I thought the Aberdeen Asset Mgt case went the right way right through which makes the Rangers judgment all the more perverse, wasn’t this judgment just about whether the Company or the employees themselves had to cough up. Obviously the fact that 3 serious judges reaffirmed the sham nature of the arrangements will be power to HMRC’s elbow in the Rangers case though. It will be decades before we find out what made those original two Scottish layers come to such a ludicrous and contrived judgment for Rangers/MIH but shenanigans would be my bet
++++++++++++++++++++++++
You are spot on but the AAM judgement is what created Rangers acceptance of the wee tax bill and it will not be decades before we find out what caused the ludicrous and contrived judgements of LNS.
Two words. Campbell Ogilvie (or more accurately his silence before LNS.)
A story of a Celtic eejit from 2005/6
http://enematic.wordpress.com/2011/07/
Hail hail
Estadio
canamalar prays Oscar can do it again 19:58:
We are so good because we are NOT the peepil. We are the Bhoys in green and white…:)
Keep the Faith!
Hail Hail!
“Impeach Grimmond McCrummoch”.
Justafan,
So why justify their whinging, honestly, who cares if they thought (like the scottish meeja) they were the better team ?
We gubbed them, end of :o)
We dont need to make arguments for their misguided stupidity, so, gonnae no ?
….PFayr supports WeeOscar
20:08 on
I know what you mean but as this company is based outwith the UK, trying to get accurate figs etc is hard. Anyway for me it’s clear, a bully tries to get his way and is stood up to. As aleays happens when you stand up to a bully they run away.
Here’s another good piece on the same subject by Robin McAlpine in Open Democracy.
There are three important lessons that we need to learn from the industrial dispute-going-on-catastrophe at the Grangemouth oil refinery. Firstly, industrial ownership in Britain is broken. Secondly, industrial relations in Britain is broken. Thirdly, London’s capacity to understand or take an interest in the rest of Britain seems problematic.
Let’s begin with the background. It is an accepted rule in Scotland right now that you write about Ineos (the company that owns the Grangemouth facility) with care. They have thrown around threats of defamation action (mainly towards the trade unions) with the abandon of the powerful who wish to silence those less powerful. People have felt unable to describe what they see. So allow me; if Ineos was a person, the characteristics would strongly suggest it was a psychopath. It has demonstrated no empathy, no interest in reaching mutual outcomes, no momentary doubt that any course of action it believes to be ‘necessary’ is anything other than a divine calling, no concern about what weapons it points, where it points them or who it points them at, and a chilling certainty from day one about the course of events.
As we shall see below, if you are reading this anywhere other than Scotland you probably don’t know all of this but there was no threat of industrial action against Ineos until Ineos made it virtually unavoidable. It began when Ed Milliband handed a report on the claimed irregularities on candidate selection in the Falkirk bye-election to the police. Since one of the key organisers maligned – and subsequently cleared – in that action is a shop steward at Ineos, the firm decided that if Ed Milliband can cast aspersions, they can act. Ineos suspended Stevie Deans on the grounds that it was believe he may have used a work email address to carry out some Labour Party business. (God help us all if using a work email for non-work purposes can get you suspended…) I shall refrain from elaborating further for reasons of care on specific allegations; suffice to say, there was more done to provoke the union.
Given what can only be described as the political suspension of Deans, what position did Unite have to play? To accept it? To leave open unchallenged the impression that any union activists is fair game with no defence to be mounted? If Ineos did not recognise that these actions – absolutely unrelated either to the subsequent claims about the plant’s profitability or the terms and conditions of its employees – was bound to push the union towards some form of response then it is shockingly naïve. And that is an adjective that has never been associated with Ineos.
So let us assume that this was an intentional provocation. The union balloted and threatened strike action. The response of Ineos? To close down the plant. Switching off a refinery is a big deal and it may now take more than two weeks to get the plant operating again, if Ineos ever decides to restart. Thing is, the union had called off the action. This plant was not closed down by a union; it was closed down by the owners. Immediately after that they claimed the industrial-action-that-never-was was costing them a fortune. It is at this point that suddenly we are regaled with a PR drive which suggests the company is in severe distress and that employees must take significant cuts to pay and conditions. To cut a long story short, it goes to ACAS, the union claims a deal was close but/so Ineos walked out. It imposed a new contract on workers and told them they had three days (individually, not through the union) to agree the new contract or workers would be sacked and the plant (or half of it) closed down.
A majority of workers rejected the deal. So today Ineos decided it was closing the petrochemical half of the plant (the bit it claims is loss-making) and keep the refinery open – but only on condition that workers sign away their right to strike in the future. And accept the imposed contract. That’s for the profitable bit of the business, and it is far from clear that the rest of the plant is really as loss-making as is claimed. Ineos is majority owned by Jim Ratcliffe. In 2008 when the company was in some financial distress (possibly the result of finance strategies) it requested a one-year delay in payment of a VAT bill. The UK Government refused, so he paid for the relocation of his entire central staff to move to Switzerland. This is not a man who likes losing. It means that Ineos’s financial situation is opaque – even business analysts (no friends of the trade unions) have been raising doubts as to how confident we can be in the claims that individual bits of the business are not profitable. What is certainly the case is that if there is financial distress it’s not due to wage bills which make up only 1.6 per cent of costs. Is it worth mentioning that Ineos hasn’t paid tax in Britain since 2008? You may well have assumed that anyway.
Of course, this is my interpretation of what has happened and as always it’s worth noting that I am not likely to have sympathy with aggressive management techniques. However, I find it virtually impossible to believe that Ineos did not begin with the desire to provoke strike action for which they had prepared extensively (both in terms of business planning and PR strategy) and it is certainly hard to see anything in its behaviour that suggests it wanted a peaceful resolution.
And so to the three lessons. First, this is a facility that provides 80 percent of Scotland’s fuel – and it is in the power of one man to close it down at will. It is to the great credit of the Scottish Government that (given its limited powers) it has put pressure on the company, has looked to find a buyer if Ineos won’t agree to operate the plant and has refused to rule out public ownership. While this last course of action is unlikely, it is another sign of the SNP shifting away from the free-market orthodoxy of British politics. This is not a facility (virtually a monopoly industry) about which we can afford to have no views or opinions about ownership. There is now a serious debate in Scotland about whether our key infrastructure is safe in private, often foreign, hands. The behaviour of Ineos has intensified that debate. Britain is in denial about the importance of the ownership of the economy. It is most obvious in the monopoly utility sector but the Grangemouth dispute shows that it’s not just the power and phone lines that keep us moving. Should one man be able to cripple Scotland? The last time he tried to break the unions petrol stations ran dry. The energy companies have put this issue on the agenda UK-wide through their actions. In Scotland at least the questions are spreading further than this. Ownership in Britain is broken. We are one of the few countries in the world where key infrastructure is mainly owned overseas.
But not as broken as industrial democracy in Britain. It’s not like we’re a bit bad; we’re truly awful. The European Participation Index (EPI) has calculated the participation of workers in 27 EU and EEA countries by combining the aggregate scores of their plant-level participation, board-level participation, collective bargaining coverage and trade-union density. Britain scores 26th out of 27, second bottom with only Lithuania worse than us. In Denmark (for example) 65 per cent of companies with more than 500 employees have voluntarily committed to having a third of management boards made up of workers and have cooperation committees made up of half-worker, half-management and these manage day-to-day matters in the company. And here’s the thing; all the countries in the EU with the best indicators of social and economic development come in the top half of the EPI league table and all the worst performers come from the bottom half. Studies have shown that like-for-like companies are 19 per cent more productive if they are unionised. Britain, of course, lags the average productivity of advanced economies by almost 20 per cent. At some point we will wake up to the fact that Britain is a basket-case when it comes to industrial democracy and our economic performance is poor as a result. Remember, we live in the second-lowest pay economy in the developed world.
Finally, if you come from Scotland it is hard once again not to be shocked by the myopia of London. On Sunday when our media was absolutely dominated by a dispute that threatened to cut off 80 per cent of Scotland’s fuel (and large proportions of the fuel supply to the North of England too), not a mention was made on the main BBC news bulletins. Apparently the Westminster parlour games of Nick Clegg pretending to be a little bit cross with Free Schools is of greater national significance of the possible collapse of both oil supplies and one of the last major industrial sites left in Scotland. Across the whole piece coverage has been negligible. To my shock, a new news anchor on BBC today asked the correspondent in Grangemouth “there’s clearly great anger – is it directed towards the management or the union?”. Even the correspondent on the ground looked shocked – it was a question that could only come through the London looking glass. Workers all reported that the manager that broke the information to workers was smirking throughout as he told them they were going to lose their jobs, their houses, their childrens’ Christmas. Angry at their union? Does the BBC no longer have any understanding of working people at all? Do they all live in a Spectator-tinged alternative universe? Today at PMQs no mention was made. When there was an emergency question, David Cameron left the chamber. The Scottish Government has been all over this dispute; London appears to have done nothing other than press its ‘randomised industrial dispute quote generator’.
What is there left to be positive about in the British economy? People genuinely talk as if this might be the future, that we may need to accept total dominance of employers with no recourse at all by workers. This is a vision of Britain where we’re all like Mexican immigrants waiting at the side of the road for a truck to drive up and its driver to say ‘one day of work – you, you and you’. But, as is par for the course in Britain with its far-right media and utter lack of understanding of how the world works beyond our shores, people seem to think we’re normal. Yet one more time, the Grangemouth disaster shows one thing above all – Britain is not normal. Not at all.
http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/robin-mcalpine/whats-really-happening-at-grangemouth-and-what-it-tells-us
Eddieinkirkie,
Sadly, in the global era, the trade union is dead in any industry that is not locally reliant.
In times of difficulty, or to increase margins, companies can up ship + relocate to 3rd world or developing nations. Capitalists will play poker with this, however, a UK workforce cannot compete against China, Bangladesh, Africa etc. and have to realise that they are only of value if they can do something that others cannot.
While the ideals may seem heroic, anyone who still believes in Socialism in first world countries should probably be sanctioned.
Football hooliganism
There was violence before ,during and after last nights Marseilles v Napoli. French polis stated that some of those arrested were Sampdoria Ultras who had travelled in order to join up with Marseilles Ultras who were planning to have a rammy with some Napoli Ultras. There is a long history of aggro between Napoli and Sampdoria Ultras.
Watching Real v Rube with my elderly Inter supporting neighbor. The penalty absolutely delighted him (and me )
Well I never!
Replay shows penalty given against Juve for holding in the box.
justafan
20:27 on 23 October, 2013,
Where from mate?
Ok guys, just starting to watch a re-run of the game. Laters. :))
Weefra HH supporting Wee Oscar.
Kris Commons @kcommons15
Juventus holding players in the penalty
area……….never!! Same old
Canam…
Blimey! I was only asking.
Dubaibhoy-”If I signed off the accounts it has been in good faith.”
20:42 on
It’s cheaper to process the oil that is produced in this country here. If it could be done cheaper elsewhere the Chinese wouldn’t be champing at the bit to buy out Ideos and wholley own G’mouth
As things stand – ourselves and Napoli are the only pot 4 teams to have registered a win. Punching above our seeding if not our weight !
Sipsini
Glasgow
?
!!Bada Bing!!
20:17 on
23 October, 2013
Fantastic praise for Henke from Fergie, but intersting to hear that our absentee landlord was active in retaining him.
Hurting hun on ssb saying its the worst Ajax team he’s ever seen. If he said it once he must have said abt 6 times. But he fancy them to beat us over there. He probably saw the worst Brechin City side ever at the weekend!!
Oh the pain!!! HEEEE HEEEE
Rubentus down to 10 men. lol!
Ha Ha Juve
Down to 10
Eddie,
The Chinese have got other agendas than mere profit.
Big chibman Chielini sent off.
Terrible decision against Juve – good!