I like watching a professional perform on the edge. We watched Anthony Stokes do just that at the Cup Final, where despite two superb goals from Gary Hooper, he was clearly head and shoulders above everyone else on the field. This has not always been the way for Anthony, so has too often failed to command a starting place, and live up to the form he promised all those years ago at Falkirk.
Celtic have put a contract in front of him but it will be considerably lighter than the contract Hooper has no intentions of signing. It’s very much up to Anthony now. Deliver and the riches will follow. Don’t bet against him.
Only just catching up on the somewhat demeaning promotion of a football club hiring a new team bus. Every time I see the coach/manager at that club, buses, or to be more precise, Blakey, from On the Buses comes to mind. These people lend themselves to parody so unselfishly.
Coach/Manager
Inspector Blakey
The fascinating part is, only one of the two above was trying to be ridiculous. You enjoy another day of being a Celtic fan.
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blantyretim
12:34 on 1 July, 2013
Thanks for the holiday wishes, hope you are soon recovered
gsufromanovercastsouthernontario
Hoopeddreams,I”ll say.I dont think my dander has been so high.
Just ordered a Hoopy the Hound head cover for ma new cobra amp cell driver…
soexcitedcsc.
‘Blakey’ McCoist?!
I like that!
Can just picture him on the ‘magic bus’, checking everyone’s tickets and pushing the refreshments trolley down the aisle.
HH!!
Bawsman
Paul67 – Lazy journalism
It could be even worse…..
Letter to Scotsman
Good Morning
I am writing to inform you that the article by Ewing Grahame at
http://www.scotsman.com/sport/football/sfl-division-three/rangers-spfl-status-will-not-open-door-to-europe-1-2984163
re Rangers exile from Europe for three years is inaccurate.
“Contrary to popular myth, that is not the result of any ban handed down by the authorities. It is, instead, a direct result of not having published audited accounts.”
There are no UEFA FFP articles which have to be complied with to get access to UEFA competition that stipulate three years accounts are required. NONE.
The requirement for audited accounts comes under Article 47 which is for Annual Financial Statements. It happens each year and refers only to the prior year not prior three years. Even for Interim Accounts under Article 48 it is only the last set.
The ONLY place in FFP that you find the words “three years” that form part of a licensing requirement with an exile for that time if not met is under Article 12 and the relevant bit says the MEMBERSHIP must have lasted at least three consecutive years. I have copied it below.
In fact there is perhaps a story that it is worse than that in the article in that the SFA membership began in August 2012 which means the three years does not expire until August 2015. However the licensing cycle for 2015/16 is decided by 31st May/1st June so technically speaking the required three years have not been met when a decision is made whether a club qualifies for a UEFA licence.
Given the financial import of this in terms of future budgeting where the Rangers hope is UEFA money will come back on tap in 2015 it would be as well to check this out as well of course as correcting the article and enlightening your readership in the process.
Auldheid
Chapter 2: Licence Applicant and Licence
Article 12 – Definition of licence applicant
1 A licence applicant may only be a football club, i.e. a legal entity fully responsible
for a football team participating in national and international competitions which
either:
a) is a registered member of a UEFA member association and/or its affiliated
league (hereinafter: registered member); or
b) has a contractual relationship with a registered member (hereinafter: football
company).
2 The membership and the contractual relationship (if any) must have lasted – at
the start of the licence season – for at least three consecutive years. Any
alteration to the club’s legal form or company structure (including, for example,
changing its headquarters, name or club colours, or transferring stakeholdings
between different clubs) during this period in order to facilitate its qualification on
sporting merit and/or its receipt of a licence to the detriment of the integrity of a
competition is deemed as an interruption of membership or contractual relationship (if any) within the meaning of this provision.
Gsu.
Hope you are on the mend.
Visited ny gean in 1999 and spent 1st July in Windsor had a firework display on the riverside with detroit tgen off to an irish bar where I argued wuth the singer re gis renditiin of the fields. Nova scotia singers no nothing…o))
MadRaRua
this is the link
http://www.celticfc.net/newsstory?item=4213
Work done —–off oot – beach time -way down south . . Spending time in the sea is good for the mosquito bites
All’s well with the world —-my 66 year old sis is safely home from her annual jolly to Glastonbury . Rock n Roll .
She said the Stones were OK but had been worried that Cocaine Eyes was heading for a full on guitar solo .
Hot ! —–way down south.
Just purchased a couple of lovely polo shirts fae the superstore there for the hols..
Away to Dunnes now for my jeans:)
Good afternoon Paul67 and CQNers
Thought these 2 comedians masquerading as coach/managers deserved to be together
Blakey and Sally
Turkeybhoy
Good show.
HOOPY!
http://celticsuperstore.co.uk/stores/celtic/products/product_details.aspx?pid=126748
Nice one Paul but where’s Olive? HH.
B/tim -mini-BT may enjoy the ole Cocoa Bean chocolate factory,which is outside Castle Douglas, at Twynholm.
Ooooh. I ‘ate you Butler!
We really need to stop reminding the zombies how inept their manager is. He is doing a fantastic job burning up their remaining cash on SPL players to cover his tactical naivety.
BT – Cheers mate, it’s good to have a Monday off without having to call in sick / a bit rough:0)
I’ve been following your recovery from afar and fingers crossed you’re up and running aboot soon, keep yer chin up amigo.
slainte O Canada
tony
Dbbia.
Not as much as Mrs BT would. ..o))
Cheers Tony..
Has the good ship austerity landed? The observation re McCoist (and Smith) not being able to handle small squads might have seen his departure were it not for the pay off amount required. Even then……
Kenny Shiels anyone?
Michael Grant
Chief football writer
Monday 1 July 2013
It is a simple question with an answer which manages to be both surprising and somehow all too familiar: which Scottish club has signed the most players this close season?
The answer is the same club that has suffered the greatest financial implosion of them all, but can still look as though money burns a hole in its pocket. Rangers.
Two questions regularly being asked around the game right now are “where are Rangers finding the money” and “are they heading for trouble”. At the time of their £22m share flotation in December, it was well enough known that the club was losing £1m a month. That was a staggering revelation and a damning indictment of the business model implemented by Charles Green’s consortium. Rangers shifted a phenomenal number of season tickets last year and the take-up for the share issue was impressive, too. But for the new regime to be haemorrhaging so much cash every month beggared belief.
Ever since, there have been plenty who feared – and just as many who hoped – the club was sleepwalking its way back into insolvency. To them, it still looks very much as though Rangers must be living beyond their means and repeating, albeit on a much smaller scale, the failures of judgment that got Sir David Murray into such catastrophic trouble in the first place and left him passing the buck to Craig Whyte.
In fact, there have been cost-cutting drives since the share issue. Carlos Bocanegra, Dorin Goian and Neil Alexander have just been moved out, taking around £45,000 off the weekly wage bill. Although Craig Mather is the interim chief executive picking up most of the money Green was on, Imran Ahmad will not be replaced as commercial director, which amounted to a considerable saving. Neil Murray, Tommy Wilson and Pip Yeates left as chief scout, reserve coach and physio respectively, with only the scouting role earmarked to be filled again (because a good scout will eventually pay for himself many times over). Some other staff around the club have also gone. Around £1m has come off the maintenance bill.
But it still costs around £1.5m per month to run Rangers and it works out that only around £1.1m is coming in. Season-ticket sales for the coming campaign stand at almost 28,000 after the deadline for renewals last Friday, with the figure expected to reach around 36,000-37,000 after they go on general sale. That amounts to about £10m to add to the £7m-£8m left in the bank from the share issue. But the fact remains: Rangers are running at a loss, and at a loss taken seriously enough within the club for jobs to be under review with the likelihood of a number of redundancies around Ibrox. They have to put a brake on spending. Mather has been asked by the board to cut costs and, inevitably, one of the routes he must go down is a cold, dispassionate look at which areas are carrying some expendable fat.
To those of us on the outside there seems to be only one answer to that: the playing department. Rangers have a squad of more than 30. This summer they’ve signed Scotland’s No.3 goalkeeper from Kilmarnock (giving him a substantial wage rise), two of the best players from two top-six clubs (Motherwell’s Nicky Law, Jon Daly from Dundee United), a Honduran internationalist (Arnold Peralta), and experienced former players Steven Smith and Richard Foster. None of those could remotely be described as extravagant deals and the wages are lower than the outrageous £6000-per-week plus bonuses given to Ian Black. But it still amounts to a considerable outlay for sledgehammers to crack a nut. Rangers are still only in the third tier, remember.
Although moving on Goian, Bocanegra and Alexander (Kane Hemmings has been the only other departure so far) means the players’ wage bill will come down, it is still way above the target figure of around £4m. Ally McCoist has wanted a centre-half all summer but signing an eighth new player, which would increase the size of his squad by four bodies since the end of the season, would be impossible to justify if staff who have been a part of the furniture for years get a tap on the shoulder and their P45.
Throughout the vast majority of his career, McCoist knew only big squads at Rangers, lots of players, options for every position. It is those who are most ingrained in the club’s customs who are bound to find it hardest to adjust to austerity, even after the destruction of last summer’s exodus and the Scottish Football Association registration embargo. Frankly, he has already built a squad which should be comfortably good enough to win not only SPFL League One but the SPFL Championship, as well, without the need for further additions.
But if he does try to land a defender, it surely isn’t going to happen until more players have been moved out. Rangers know they are still losing too much money, just as McCoist knows the manager doesn’t operate within a bubble. When it comes to pressure to make savings, no-one’s exempt
BT,
had a bit of a setback myself. Had to go back in for a closed manipulation to get the knee loosened up again. Working hard at the physio, specialist tomorrow for reassessment
keep well
gsu
Paul, that was a laugh out loud in the office when I scolled down and eventually saw the two piccies.
Initially, I was so disappointed when I heard that Sevco had a new coach, until I realized it was in fact a bus.
As you say, they are beyond parady.
mighty tim
petition signed
Loved the picture captions, Paul. Blakey was pretty good at acting ridiculous but being naturally ridiculous is something you’re born with as in Sally’s case.
The Frank Spencer of Scottish football.
Auldheid,
Looks like he’s been reading your spreadsheet :-)
More than a year after their demise, they’re still stuck in the first stage of grief
DBBIA/DABDACSC.
Promotional video for the new ‘hun bus’.
Now showing down at the local ludge and bowling club.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5Wxj6_ieNI
HH!!
unionbearBhind
13:01 on
1 July, 2013
Thanks for the link
Was that pic of Fat Sal not taken just after he’d heard the rumour about Greggs going on strike?
FF/Vanguard Bears unveil Miss July
” aaah’l get yoo (Gerry) Butler……..!”
Have the SPFL made a ruling on points deductions for teams going into admin? Or will it be decided upon as and when it happens (ie depending on who the team is)…..
Ole Olive…Ally wid!
Auldheid,
I’ve had Shiels stuck behind my ear for succeeding FerrsPlease.
He has the background credentials and will be good for hunnish hyperbole in the old ST selling soundbites.
And, he’ll be cheap.
On the beach ——-
” The world is turning , I hope it doesn’t turn away ”
Mrs S of T met one of her pals . She is heading to Edinburgh shortly — enough to earn me the gig of checking something on Trip Advisor .
Whilst doing so – I found this –
” Do not be surprised if you see guys in funny uniforms drunk out of their skulls ,staggering round the place later in the day “.
Now which Edinburgh summer event is that ? “.
Auldheid
13:24 on
1 July, 2013
Has the good ship austerity landed? The observation re McCoist (and Smith) not being able to handle small squads might have seen his departure were it not for the pay off amount required. Even then……
Michael Grant
Chief football writer
Monday 1 July 2013
……………Around £1m has come off the maintenance bill.
How can they cut £1m from the maintenance bill? Has Ibrox and Murray Park got smaller. Have they moth balled parts of the buildings?
They must be no longer carrying out maintenance that was deemed necessary in the past. This will explode in their face one day and hopefully no one will get injured as a result of them scrimping on essential maintenance areas.
GlassTwoThirdsFull
13:32 on
1 July, 2013
Auldheid,
Looks like he’s been reading your spreadsheet :-)
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Aye but I did spread it as far and wide as I could – ouch!
Funny thing is I’ve been waiting for feedback that says its 99% crap but apart from tweaks here and there that did not affect the bottom line too greatly it still stands.
What is interesting is that if the start point this sesaon is £7m in the kitty the figure calculated in the sheet is £12m after deducting expenditure from income.
The impact on the bottom line if they go into this season with £7M as the start point is a red line of -£1,137,757 becomes
-£6,998,171 and the following season (which they would not see on that basis) of -£14,170,552.
They have to enter administration again, budget on a basis of gates of 30,000, pay wages that 30,000 plus any extra income can support, tear up all the contracts as Hearts are doing and do what they should have done, and cut their cloth, although they were planning then on a parachute into the SPL. That did not work and reality is now biting.
The thinking Rangers supporter should abstain from SBs, bring admin closer and wipe out share value in the process in order to stiff the spivs now in charge, although one guy will not make that much impact I guess.
DBBIA @ 13 39 .
Miss July is more attractive than the normal walker .
Been more than a decade since I saw a walk but I have fond memories of seeing a couple of bible carrying babes urinating in a lane off the top of Byres Rd .
Guy I was with couldn’t resist a loud ——
” Thank **** I’m gay and catholic “
I just had a look at the thread (say no to comparison) in hunmedia…couldn’t believe what i saw…an advert with broonie in the full Celtic kit.
I kid you not.