Someone made the point to me over the weekend, 30 goals, and counting, from midfield, rivals 53 from Henrik Larsson as a central striker. It is an unnecessary burden to compare Kris Commons to Celtic’s greatest player in four decades, even Henrik couldn’t compare to the memory of Henrik, but the history books will show for decades to come, Kris Commons is a rare gem, a Celtic player for the ages.
He’s the definition of a Moneyball player, he’s a great multiple Player of the Year and he’s ours.
Enjoy watching him.
Issue 20 of CQN Magazine, CQLisboN is out and enjoying great reviews. You can check it out here, for free, now….
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Stephbhoy was that paul george you mentioned,i lke him to can see him being a big hit at celtic, has he been injured or loaned out.as for hooper coming back forget it. useless at norwich. the striker at dundee utd i would like to see playing for us .
Awe_Naw_No_Annoni_Oan_Anaw_Noo
spot on….we have already had the ritual of the “make me a Celt for life” headlines. I expect NFL has known for a while and is planning accordingly. Snodgrass is a possibility or Stokes and/or Pukki in that false 9 position.
Anyone who sees VVD at Man U or Arsenal next season must be on stronger medicine than I am today.
CRC
Oor cheeky Charlie!!! :))
Brilliant.
Dunky… I’m sure you will, several times. And it’s K9
I think Lisa is a very important part of Celtic.VVDs girlfriend was also taken under her wing when she arrived here.She organizes night outs,charity functions,she is the leader of the WAGS.The glowing reports from VVDs girlfriend of how much she loves it here is testament to her work.
Both have been fantastic for the club.
A stunner into the bargain.
Asked last night but nobody took up my request. Could someone C&P James Forrests latest (On fields of green) article as my computer doesn`t seem to work with the website, it only gives me the header. Thank in advance to whoever does it.
Desertbhoy
TCR is organising the Buckie in Clydebank, for the train. :))
Reading back, and re the Kris Commons ” wouldn’t be playing for Celtic if he was any good”, there’s a kinda reverse argument to that if you like. Would Henk have played for Barca had he never played for Celtic? Celtic can be the making of players. A platform to display their skills and improve them as players.
I’d suggest Commons now has a confidence level borne out of being at Celtic Park.
I think Lisa does what Kris’s agent advises and what he is highly paid to do.
For Kris Commons to stay at Celtic he will need to accept a pay cut. I suspect he will play out his final year like Sammi did or accept an offer from elsewhere.
The club IMHO is unlikely to tell all players ..less money or go. Okay is Sammi gone …good we can now start giving you better deals.
WE OBVIOUSLY CANNOT AFFORD TO DO SO
HH
CRC – would that be with Michelle Mone?! ;-)
T4
paolosboots FC before PLC 15:29 on 5 May, 2014
would love the bhoy Snodgrass but think stupid money offer to play for a London club, money he cant refuse, will end our interest.
always liked hooper, would not say no, but am thinking we’ll be looking elsewhere
Twists
Henrik would not have played for Barca if he joined Celtic 8 years later than he did.
HH
The Celtic Way.
A couple of words from JF. My C&P is exhausted
POSTED ON 4 MAY, 2014 BY JAMES FORREST
The End Of Everything
Sometime on 11 May 2010, David Cameron was taken into a room in Downing Street and sat down in front of a group of his top military officers.
He was now Prime Minister, and he needed to hear this briefing before he did another thing.
Over the next hour, they talked him through Britain’s “continuity of government” plan, which would be activated in the event of a major disaster, military or terrorist strike against the country.
They gave him the details of Britain’s nuclear arsenal, where the boats carrying the warheads were and what they were tasked to do. They told him, in plain spoken language, free of any sugar coating or nicety, the better for him to understand it completely, exactly what those missiles would do if launched, and they told him under what circumstances that could happen.
What they did next, what they asked him to do, was something as ghastly as any leader, anywhere in the world, will ever have to face. Cameron was told to write a series of letters to the commanders on those submarines, one letter apiece, giving them their instructions in case continuity of government failed, and he and the key decision makers in London were killed or unable to give orders.
The letters were to be written by hand, and Cameron alone would have to decide what the final instructions would be. Did he give the order for the missiles to fly? Or did he realise that if things had progressed to that stage that no act of retaliation would put the world together again? Did he tell his men, therefore, to stand down, and try and get through it alive, without inflicting further agonies on the planet, and on the human race?
No-one knows, and no-one will ever know. Those letters were sealed, and are never to be opened save in such a dreadful event. Each was given to the commander of a Trident submarine upon its return to port, put in a special safe on the sub and there they stay until they are burned when the Prime Minister leaves office.
Each Prime Minister of the modern age has faced this awful task. None has ever spoken publicly about it, or as much as hinted at what he (or she) had written down. These ghoulish, awful documents are known as the Letters of Last Resort.
I understand the initial impulse that once caused someone to suggest their writing. There is a cold logic to those letters. They are the ultimate act of bureaucracy, the final act of box checking and “good government”, a last act or order. The irony, what gives them their grotesque quality, is that they would make no difference to the outcome. We’d already be dead, this country would already be destroyed, the government that would normally have issued those orders, one way or another, would be gone. They make the skin crawl because they are pointless.
On Friday night, I attended the Celtic Supporters Association Annual Rally, and it was a wonderful night where I enjoyed the company of a lot of exceptional people, caught up with some old friends and made some new ones. It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening, with everyone looking back on their great memories as Celtic fans in a convivial, family atmosphere.
Whilst I was at the CQN table, talk turned to the continuing crisis at Sevco Rangers, a subject which is never far away from the lips of Scottish football supporters. The Sevco fans claim this is a mark of obsession, that it proves they are “the only show in town.”
Actually, they are a circus. When the circus is in town people go to see it and they talk about it, but those people are not obsessed any more than we are. Furthermore, it’s not the only show in town either. When the circus rolls up everything else doesn’t come to a close. The rest of the world rolls on, as here so does the rest of football, and this weekend in particular with so many exciting matches and high drama in the leagues.
What I came to realise during my talks with my fellow fans is this; the “machine” at Ibrox is out of control and running all by itself. Whoever was in charge of making sure all the various bits were running right has walked off the site. The gear works are grinding against each other, throwing the whole thing off. Some of the capacitors are shot. Soon, little bits are going to break off and get caught in the works themselves, and the thing is going to blow.
I’ve been writing about the crisis at Sevco Rangers for the past few years without fully realising that it was a deeper crisis than I knew. It’s become apparent that if you picked up the phone right now and dialled Ibrox you would get someone on the other end. But if you pressed the issue and asked pointed, serious questions you would wait and wait and wait for the answers … and none would be forthcoming, and not just because they are keeping things close-hold.
There is no-one there taking the big decisions. It’s almost as if there has been a decapitation strike at the heart of Sevco Rangers, obliterating all upper management and leaving the whole thing in the hands of the boot room team. In truth, I should have noticed this before now. The signs have been there for a long time. I don’t know how I missed them.
We have the manager telling the whole world he’s not responsible for signings and the CEO saying they should never have been made. Who did make them? Who negotiated them? The manager has defended his signing policy, but disavowed knowledge of the finer details. He claims the wages to turnover ratio is “the envy of world football” (because every team wants to pay someone like Lee McCulloch £7000 a week for playing against car mechanics) but refuses to understand than when basic running costs – those required just to keep the lights on – are more than turnover on their own that the player wages are bleeding the club dry.
We have a major shareholder coming out in the press and saying the club’s finances are unsustainable, claiming they put the business in danger of administration. We then have the CEO slamming him for it, saying he wasn’t speaking for the club and that a second administration will, categorically, not happen … and then contradicting himself when he talks about the consequences of the club not selling enough season tickets.
The manager’s contract was staggeringly high, yet no-one felt able to cut it until it conjured up a media firestorm and the fans went nuts. He’s on half pay until they are back in the top flight, and then he, again, will be on a £900,000 salary plus expenses plus bonuses.
Everyone has known for months that the club was heading for the rocks. As if the overspend isn’t bad enough, the King situation and his demands, along with the split in the support, means they’re not just trying to curtail current levels of spending but they’ll have more worries on top of it. Any common sense approach to this crisis would have any other company entering administration and starting the long, torturous job of making real cuts. Not at Ibrox.
I’ve pondered this in a number of pieces before now, asking especially why the club didn’t enter administration before the season ended. I had no answer until Friday night, and yesterday, with the 1-1 draw at Dunfermline, Sevco Rangers ran out of time to take that course of action.
When the End comes, when the club is devastated by the next explosion, as it will be, either during this summer or in the first few months of next season, the submarines will be at sea already, and when the commanders open their safes they’ll find instructions which chill the blood. All that’s left will be washed away by what the administrators are authorised to do, whether it’s a sale and lease back of Ibrox and Murray Park or the dissolution of the club itself.
It’s much too late to avoid the annihilation of Sevco Rangers.
All that’s left are whatever Letters of Last Resort have been prepared somewhere, the documents which set out the precise terms in which the investors from London and elsewhere are getting their investment back. These people are not in the habit of shrugging off losses. They will have a figure in their minds, a ceiling, on how high the debts will be allowed to get before they stop carrying them, and they pull the plug. They are watching a boardroom at war with itself and the outside world, and although they are not directly involved in the day to day running – something they must now sorely regret – they are the ones providing the money to keep it going.
The time for putting together a plan to turn this around came and went many months ago, probably around the time McCoist was allowed to sign all those players. If a plan existed for calling a halt to the madness, and entering administration voluntarily, creating the conditions for a “soft landing”, the time for activating that plan expired yesterday, at full time at East End Park.
A voluntary administration depends on near unanimous support around the boardroom table. Those who have been agitating for this option – and it’s believed they include Graham Wallace, despite his recent comments to the press – have been over-ruled by others. Those others have their own plan, but it too requires a wider level of support than can be mustered. Add to this the King group, and the shareholders who back them, and even an Emergency General Meeting might not sort out this shambolic lack of control.
Besides, calling an EGM at this point would result in every institutional shareholder bailing out. Those who’re keeping the lights on would be calling in their debts, and that would be the catalyst for a complete meltdown, a day too late for it to impact on the current season rather than next.
The Sevco Rangers board is split, and not just down the middle. It is fragmented, and the decision making process is a jumbled mess as a result. There is no “continuity of government.” It is an unbelievably, anarchic shambles. Those charged with “running things” are unable to make major decisions, and so they’ve allowed the entire institution to stray over the final line, the point of no return. They are stuck with the current “plan”, the one that was cobbled together on the back of a fag packet, the one that leaves the club leaking money like a sieve.
What you are seeing is anarchy, in which McCoist is doing as he pleases, in which everyone knows the taps need turning off but no-one has the out and out authority to do it, where another CEO has awarded himself a 100% bonus not dependent on any verifiable targets, where they haven’t been able to get a credit card company to take their business for season tickets and where they are paying off low-level staff who’s total wage costs probably don’t add up to half what they’ll need to pay their new director of football when he’s finally appointed. If it looks chaotic that’s because it is.
The idea of Cameron sitting down to write his Letter of Last Resort seems grim and ghastly when we look at the state of the world as it is today. Yet, it speaks to decisiveness, even after the moment for it, and the need for it is gone.
Government endures when it is strong, when it speaks and acts clearly, when it has authority.
It was not always so, in every part of the world. During the 15th and 16th Century, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was run by a parliament in which every member had what was known as the liberum veto. It gave even the lowliest legislator the ability to block any decision with which he was in disagreement. It’s from this time period and this manner of running things that the pejorative term “a Polish parliament” comes … it refers to an institution where “responsibility” is so de-centralised that literally nothing gets done, because no-one can make decisions.
The result was over a century in which foreign governments would bribe individual legislators to block motions which sought to strengthen Poland and its empire. The country was plunged into anarchy again and again and it lost all its imperial strength. Its economy collapsed, its army was emasculated, its people were starved and enslaved.
By the time the liberum veto was abolished, much of their territory had been assumed by their neighbours, the country’s finances were in ruins and the divisions within it had resulted in near political, social and economic paralysis. If that sounds familiar then it should.
A new series of calamities are going to strike Sevco Rangers, and they will make those that have come before look like what they are; foreshocks. The big quake will rock them to their unsound foundations, and it’ll all come tumbling down.
Yesterday was more than just the end of a season.
It was the beginning of the end … of everything Sevco.
Brace yourselves for one Hell of a close season.
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ADMINISTRATION 2, EDITORIAL, RANGERS
TAGGED ADMINISTRATION 2, ARMAGEDDON, DEBTS, DIVISIONS, FOOTBALL FINANCE, GRAHAM WALLACE, POLISH PARLIAMENT, RANGERS
Hooper back at Celtic?
I would pay for his Taxi myself.Terrific striker for us.Averaged 30 goals a season.Hooper Stokes,Griffiths,with Commons behind.Awesome.
Why not,he loved it with us.His ambition to get to Brazil,no bad thing,was instrumental in him leaving.
Great wee striker.
delaneys dunky
16:25 on 5 May, 2014
Desertbhoy
TCR is organising the Buckie in Clydebank, for the train. :))
………
Yes, have been lurking a few moonlighter shifts and saw the arrangements….
BlootrainDalmuirspeshul
Moon howler even.
Twists N Turns
Spot on.
Henrik received a milder version of the Lubo reaction, when he signed for Celtic, was known to have run around a lot in dreadlocks, and generally underachieved.
Celtic’s perfect platform, provided him and us, with with seven magnificent seasons where he became among the elite of strikers, and signed for Barca
and Man U.
Kris Commons was going nowhere in the English First Division, and has become a better player at Celtic.
Tom Molach
don’t think we could actually afford a left back good enough to compete with izzy. people moan about his defending, but our formation and style of play requires others to fill in when he’s up the pitch. an apprentice would be fine
hh
Just tried to pay for my season tickets.
My son is a University Student – his ticket came in at adult price £451.
So I call Celtic and ask for the student price only to be told that he needs to relocate to North Stand Upper to get the £199 price.
Given that he has had the same seat since the stadium was built he is horrified.
The fact is that there are seats free every week and the sensible financial thing to do is not renew the 3 tickets that I have and buy on the day.
Can this really we what Celtic want from fans or are we really just consumers ?
Seville67
Desertbhoy
I prefer moonlighter!
BSR
So are Man U and Barca sniffing around Kris ?
HH
Seville67
That is very poor treatment from the Club. I would e mail someone in authority at Celtic Park.
GG
Thank you very much for the JF article. Much appreciated.
———————————-
Turkeybhoy 16.32
You`d pay Hoopers taxi? Methinks you`re talking Fry`s Turkish Delight. You would cough up a grand to see GH back at CP?
Estimated Trip Price
Distance: 608 km
Duration: 6 hours 42 mins
Start Price: £2.65
608 km x £1.61 : £976.92
Waiting time (estimated 0.00 min): £0.00
Overall price (estimation): £979.57
Delaneys Dunky
15:39 on
Not sure if the brothers are in the scrap buisness but their old man certainly was.
Seville67
That reminds me of when I had my UB40 and had to be in the stadium. 1 hour before kick off to get the discount.
Leopard spots etc.
HH
Seville 67
I guess you first point of call should be the fans liaison officer, John Paul Taylor I believe. You are at least entitled to an explanation of that decision.
Awe Naw. I have a few questions are you saying that every Celtic player when it comes to signing a new contract is being offered less than there old contract ? If that is the case why ? and how do you know this ? H.H.
Eddie
The Holy Loch?
Awe naw
Kris Commons will have suitors who will be willing to match or improve on the salary that he will be offered from Celtic.
Celtic will want to reduce their wage Bill whilst Sevco play in a different league.
Commons will most likely not be a Celtic player in 12 months.
Any player who does not fit our financial profile will be gone.
That’s the way it has to be.
We are a buy them low , sell them high , selling club.
The club have been openly telling us that for the last couple of seasons.
TT
JFH
No. I dont know.
Its only from deduction. As I have posted already.
Name a top performer (I.e a player in the top wage category) Broonies new contract included. That has got a pay increase or had his contract renewed on current terms ?
HH
Awe_Naw
The SPL is held in such low esteem I reckon all our stars will stay under the radar. They are even scathing in some quarters of Fraser Forster, one of the favourites to go, they think Joe Hart is better purely on the basis of where he plays, and he’s clearly not.
There’s no dispute though we will buy cheap and sell on, especially whilst it remains a one horse race, and a semi level playing field.
The guy from the ticket agency read out a pre prepared script.
Really not commercially smart.
Seville67
TinyTim
Is that not what I have been saying ?
Agree with every word you wrote.
The only way that Kris will stay is if he is s mid to low range player as far as his salary is concerned.
HH
seville67
16:36 on 5 May, 2014
Reminds me of when I was made redundant with my two lads at Uni.
Called the TO to see if there was anything going….
Result? A 7% discount for the boys, no discount for me but we had to take the most expensive seats in 405. No other option.
Result? Three books not sold for the past four seasons. My uncle tells me that apart from CL games a bum has never stressed the seats.
Unvelieveable madness from the club, IMO.
Tinytim
His suitors will be Championship clubs or EPL relegation fodder.
Which is an indication of Scottish footballs ever decreasing circle. Mainly due to operation save the old firm.
HH
why is it everyone and their granny is saying celtic are downsizing and offering players less than their worth?
simple fact is hooper and victor were offered better terms, but rejected because they wanted more than we can afford. Wilson wanted to be with his children and we got 6 million + for a bit part player in ki.
foster (signed up), ambrose, izzy, kayal, Henderson, stokes all got and signed terms. can anyone honestly tell me Sammy deserved an increase in wages after this seasons showing?
p.s. being sensible and pragmatic is necessary when dealing with players or your club will end up deed
CRC, 16:14;
Please tell me he didn’t say ‘missionary’…
VVD ….imperious in the SPL
Unfortunately we were less than impressive in the CL …I’d be surprised if we got a bid from a big club