It was a league game at Tannadice, Hogmanay 1966, which ended the Lisbon Lions 26 game unbeaten domestic run, a record which stood until yesterday. Stein’s Celtic were comfortable and led with 20 minutes to go, but United scored twice in three minutes and before the Champions had time to realise they were in trouble, it was too late.
That’s how historic runs end.
It’s only this season anyone has paid attention to that specific record, such were the overwhelming achievements which unfolded in the months ahead for the men who would become known as Lions. With the League Cup already secured, they added the Scottish Cup and the League title, before becoming the first team to break the Italian-Spanish-Portuguese hegemony on the European Cup.
The serendipity of one of the Lions records falling while we celebrate the 50th anniversary of their great achievements should not be lost.
Season 66-67 wasn’t just about Lisbon. Celtic retained the league for the first time since the Great War – a 50-year gap without defending the league title! They won the treble, the (then competitive) Glasgow Cup, and finished off with a virtuoso performance at the Bernabeu. They changed Scotland forever; nothing would ever be the same again.
Hearts only offered effective opposition for around 5 minutes yesterday, but if/when we lose a domestic game this season, it’s likely to follow the format of St Johnstone’s visit last midweek. St Johnstone defended every Celtic attack bar one and created a chance which could have bounced off the post more generously for them.
All the pressure and superiority in the world are irrelevant in the face of the statistical certainty that, in one game, a dominant team will miss all their chances and concede one of the few they are called to defend.
More records beckon for this Celtic team, not just Scottish ones. Benfica’s world record 29-game consecutive league game winning record has proven impossible to match. But, there’s one team with a chance of doing so this season…………
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AULDHEID on 31ST JANUARY 2017 11:24 AM
If players have contracts then surely the clubs know when they’re running down and can plan accordingly?
I get the impression that the way the window works is fueling inflation of both transfer fees and wages.
Thindimebhoy
Sorry to hear things have gone the way of the pear. Always an unpleasant and unsettling experience. Speaking purely from my own experience having sat at both tables in a Tribunal over the years…
Tribunals are no win scenarios whichever way it works out. A horrid experience and a moot outcome for both parties is typical.
In terms of No Win: No Fee, a solicitor won’t take on the case on this basis unless there’s confidence in the Win. In which case, you’re cheaper paying time-cost.
If there’s reluctance to take the case, likelihood is you’re onto plums.
Most will take it on initially to try to settle with the employer and save the cost of preparation. In any event, settling is generally preferable. Escalating up to ACAS (if the employer agrees) is worth considering.
If you are intent on going legal, there are hundreds of solicitors providing these services, but you need to consider the real economies at play.
You can go to a cheaper generalist, but paying for best advice is the best advice I can give you, and the following two folk are among the best:
http://www.morton-fraser.com/our-people/lindsey-cartwright
http://www.bto.co.uk/people/caroline-carr.aspx
TBB
Moussa in London for scan .
If there are no ulterior motives, (and In the absence of any other information about Ross Hall scanning capability v Big Smoke Scanners) it seems that the timing of Dembele flying to London is ill considered.
Knowing that there will be huge speculation on the last day of the transfer window , if this not linked to a move for Dembele it seems to be distraction we could do without
Therefore I have to assume that there is an ulterior motive.
It may be part a “buy and lease back” option by Chelsea
… Chelsea would first wish to carry out a full medical before committing to £30-40m.
This would make sense as Chelsea do not appear to need him this season.
It would also be consistent with Brendan stating that he is not leaving…….just now.
It would be good business sense for us….if the price is right
It would once again demonstrate to all potential signings that we are a proven route / stepping stone to ‘big money’ in the EPL. which would facilitate the next Virgil, Victor, Moussa etc.
Works for me , and I claim it as a Deadline Day Exclusive if it happens.
The Onlooker
#YellowTie CSC
The Onlooker
If the figure being bandied about re Dembelé is accurate, then it creates a wee bit of a conundrum.
I think we all accepted the premise that when he signed, he would stay with us for up to two seasons.
In that time, we hoped he would develop into a £20m – £30m poind player, ready for a bigger league.
Again, if the figures are accurate, he has reached that stage in six months.
There is a strong argument for taking the money and, if Henry Oko comes in, then go again.
Lots of ifs, buts and maybes.
Personally, I would take consolation in whatever scenario occurs.
PS.
I don’t believe the “knee scan” yarn.
MedTim/Others
There is a bit of the Civil Service Sat Morning League history by Jim Finlayson at
http://www.sportfocus.com/webpro/ssmfl/dyncat.cfm?catid=29937
Boydstone only started in 77 after an unexpected vacancy arose and the overflow from SBD (who had joined another league ) was used to make up the numbers. They moved up the Divisions like the other NSB clubs mentioned between then and 1980.
ehhhh that’s a wee bit convenient that big Dembele has to travel to London of all places to see a knee specialist
but let’s not get too concerned as Craigy Gordini at Lennoxtown this morning
ernie lynch on 31st January 2017 11:29 am
AULDHEID on 31ST JANUARY 2017 11:24 AM
If players have contracts then surely the clubs know when they’re running down and can plan accordingly?
I get the impression that the way the window works is fueling inflation of both transfer fees and wages.
================
A good footballer’s contract means nothing. The window was simply an attempt to allow clubs to better plan for departures.
An Tearmann on 31st January 2017 11:23 am
The lunchtime rush subsided when the NSB Sports Club was built in Boydstone Road.
The pitches at South Pollock were used any dry lunchtime for a kickabout. Many of the names mentioned became friends at those sessions.
Not sure where I stand on the Moussa situation. If there has been an offer of £30m+ it’s certainly tempting. We have maybe missed out on big fees for players in the past – Boruc, Kayal, Bitton.
Wouldn’t want to lose him so quickly though. Having said that it’s possible the player will want to go. If so might be better to take the money while it’s there.
I believe it has been common practice for Celtic to send players to knee specialist Andy Williams at the Fortius Clinic in London.
MWD
AULDHEID on 31ST JANUARY 2017 11:42 AM
‘A good footballer’s contract means nothing.’
##
I disagree. A club doesn’t have to sell a player who is under contract. And I don’t see how a flurry of activity at the end of a transfer window helps clubs plan for anything. It results in panic buying, which drives up costs.
MWD
I thought Dembele was heading for the Royal Kneesden? :-)
I cant believe Dembele is going to London for a knee scan just yesterday Brendan said he was unlikely to be fit for the Dons game but his knee was coming along nicely and he was likely to be fit for the St. Johnstone game.Now today he needs a knee scan in London ? there are lots of places in Scotland to get a knee scan . H.H.
AN TEARMANN
Did you get the music I sent you?
The Trance Europe Express stuff??
Link from We Transfer??
Hail Hail
SP
Thanks BRTH
Thanks VFR800
Thanks BMCUW
Much obliged
Maybe Chelsea want the knee scan before they part with the cash.
Sale and loanback would suit me fine.
Especially if it’s upwards of £30,000,000.
The boy has a lot to learn and is nowhere near the finished article.
For that kind of dosh we need to deal.
Where is Islam Feruz now?
Chelsea first team?
Anybody’s first team?
Plus that wee shite that went to Manu and disappeared down the plug hole.
Liam Miller for those of you with a poor memory or to young to know.
THINDIMEBHOY on 31ST JANUARY 2017 12:04 PM
I know Asim and he helped me get 5 figures when I was mad redundant about 10 years ago.
Top bloke and very good lawyer.
KTF
ernie lynch on 31st January 2017 11:48 am
AULDHEID on 31ST JANUARY 2017 11:42 AM
‘A good footballer’s contract means nothing.’
##
I disagree. A club doesn’t have to sell a player who is under contract. And I don’t see how a flurry of activity at the end of a transfer window helps clubs plan for anything. It results in panic buying, which drives up costs.
=================
I’m not arguing a case for the Xfer window, I only offered an explanation for its introduction.
Until all clubs observe a players contract you get what we now have.
The players that a club wants calls the shots.
This is a couple of years old but still imo applies.
Evolution Soccer – Revolution Soccer.
“The socialism I believe in is everybody working for the same goal and everybody having a share in the rewards. That’s how I see football, that’s how I see life.” Bill Shankley. Liverpool FC.
Football has experienced a curious phenomenon over the last ten years. Neither the fans nor the clubs can be considered the owners of the game. If we define ownership as the ability to dictate terms then it becomes self evident. The world’s best players and those who hang on to their coat tails now run the show and it filters down to the lower levels. These people are football’s new owners.
How has this happened for it would be impossible in normal business? It happened because the player’s paymasters, the support, set no price on their desire for glory and success. The paymasters have become the slaves of glory and football is paying the ultimate cost.
Along with the desire for glory at any price is the working man’s thinking that a player, like any working man, has the right to negotiate as high a reward for his labour as he can. As a left leaning Glaswegian who has had to strike for improved conditions in normal business, I subscribe to that notion and paid my dues to defend that right. However football is not like normal business. In normal business if a worker negotiates a wage that makes the company uncompetitive because the rise exceeds the income it will generate, that company will eventually go out of business. Thus a reality wage ceiling is in place. This is a good thing because it means the company can continue to offer employment to all its workers and continue to serve its customers.
However in recent football history the influx of TV and sugar daddy money has enabled a wage to be offered that goes way beyond the business’s ability to sustain, but unlike normal business, clubs do not, by and large, go out of business. They find ways of reforming and carry on, but at a cost to those players not in the top earning bracket, or to the workers in companies who served them. It has meant smaller squads, fewer players able to earn.
It is a curious socialist philosophy that supports a player’s right to get as much as he can from the game, but ignores the consequences for his fellow players/workers without whom there would be no game.
A good analogy is in order here. Modern football is like a description of a scene from hell where a visitor looks into one room and sees an emaciated group around a table on which is set a large pot full of stew. They cannot eat because their arms have been set straight at the elbow and elongated so that they cannot get a spoon in their mouths. It is a miserable place. Then the visitor goes upstairs and enters a similar room with occupants similarly handicapped, but where everyone is well fed and contented. “How can this be?” he asks his guide. “Well downstairs all their energies are spent in the nigh impossible task of feeding their insatiable hunger, whilst up here they simply feed each other.”
The thankless job of managing the downstairs room falls to the custodians of clubs, but their hands are tied by the players’ real paymasters, the support, demanding the custodians throw more food into the room, rather than teach the occupants the benefit of feeding each other for the good of all.
Not all players and agents are greedy men, John Kennedy’s magnificent gesture to give his testimonial money to famine relief is a demonstration of this, and there are other players who also carry out charitable acts. However, overall, it is players who exploit the support using the support’s desire for success to demand from custodians wages that starve lower reaches of the game. There is more than enough finance to satisfy both players and supporters needs, it just needs to be distributed more equitably.
Hopefully this phenomenon will end when the unconscious paymasters – the support, who should be the owners, waken up and realise that they are being exploited, not by the custodians of clubs, but by their fellow workers the players. When this realisation finally dawns about who currently owns football a consensual wage ceiling might emerge to allow football to again become the people’s game. There is no natural ceiling to ensure wealth generation is preserved or that the wealth created is more fairly distributed. One must be created.
At some point the age old class struggle of exploited worker versus owner will be repeated, except the battle will be between a more aware and responsible support and the new owners of soccer, the players.
These are not to be confused with the players of the past, fellow workers of their time exploited by then club owners. Players like Bobby Evans, Willie Fernie, Jimmy Johnstone, Bobby Murdoch etc. These guys and their fellow professionals were working men all their playing lives.
Those days, however, have gone.
Outside a couple of fringe/youth loans, don’t see any significant movement today.
The Dembele rumour is a creation of the media to create hype on a dull window. Remember that their job is to sell you news products, not report the plain facts.
Jamie McCart to ICT on loan
GLASSTWOTHIRDSFULL on 31ST JANUARY 2017 11:47 AM
Not sure where I stand on the Moussa situation. If there has been an offer of £30m+ it’s certainly tempting. We have maybe missed out on big fees for players in the past – Boruc, Kayal, Bitton.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Spooky,do you work at GCHQ? I just said as much to my sister earlier!
Right that’s me off to talk up my observation post at Cork airport, completely pointless but then again so is most of the speculation on transfer deadline day.
Anybody fancy covering for me about 6.00pm so I can get my dinner :-))
Take up not talk up. Bloody auto misdirect
BMCUW
Don’t tell me you thought that was really a pen sitting on your table….. :-)
new article posted.
..
THINDIMEBHOY on 31ST JANUARY 2017 10:17 AM
Could someone recommend me an employment lawyer ?
Been recently dismissed and I am now looking for an employment lawyer can’t go into details but I believe I have a strong case so someone who would consider a no win no fee arrangement would be ideal.
I live in Glasgow
Cheers
..
If it at all Possible Do Not Go with Any No Win No Fee..
I had a case where Employer (Manager and CEO) admitted Full Liabillity in 3 Trials .. MRI’s clearly showed My Injury countless independent Surgeons from both sides.. concurred ..
Yet my. Case went on Nearly 11 Years .. My last trial in the Supreme Court.. I had QC.. Junior QC and my Lawyer at Circa $18k a Day.. 4-6 days they said.. Lasted 11 Days.. 4 days arguing a ‘Point of Law’ I was sent home for that Part.. They (My No Win No Fee) had tried many times to get me to take a Deal.. unfortunately (For them) by this time it wasn’t about money for me..
Nearly 11 Years for a so called Open and Shut case..
Second last day of 3rd Trial my 3 Briefs Practically begged me to take a Deal..while arranging weekend golf trips with the Insurers Lawyers..【ツ】 their bill by then was $476,000 I told them in Court to ‘Go F@ck themselves’ and gave the QC 2 Barley Sugars as he would get tired with Low blood sugar in the Afternoons.. lol
Basically they didn’t give a Hoot about the Law.. My Case.. All the Work we all had done.. Nothing.. they Just wanted Paid.. and by taking the case the Full road I was gambling with there Wages..
In the Year after my case was Finished I was advised by my Bank.. A Government agency and my Super Annuation fund.. to Sue my Lawyers..
If You think You have a Good case.. try and get the Funds somehow.. or Read Forums on No Win No Fee.. it’s Shocking..
Ps.. For the Record.. My Lawyer was a Italian Girl and we fought like an Old Married Couple but after it was all Finished (And she got Paid) Ha Ha.. She actually called me and spoke for about 20 Mins and said she was Proud of My stiking to my Guns and Principals.. Pps.. I still twitch Alex Higgins stylie when I see a No Win No Fee Advert ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Ppps.. Sorry for the Rant.. but I would hate for someone to go through what I went through for Justice.. Fighting a Enemy within..
Summa of AmbulanceChasersCSC
Hi Auldheid,
Small world eh?
Thanks for the link,some interesting stuff.I wonder if the Windsor team the author writes about is the one based in the Windsor Bar at Bridgeton Cross.What a shower they were.
We played them in a midweek cup tie at Queens Park.
It was shortly after they had beaten Cowglen and the result was in the Rangers News that Windsor Rangers had beaten Cowglen Celtic!! i don’t think that went down well with the bluenoses in the Cowglen team.
They brought a large crowd of knuckle draggers for support with full regalia on show.
It didn’t do them much good as we beat them 2-1 with yours truly getting the winner (ah the memories).
A full scale riot ensued with many a dull yin administered.
I know Pat McLuskey well and knew big John McIntyre (who sadly passed away at a very young age) and Joe Pirret as well.I bumped into Gordon Smith last time back in Glasgow.My wife thought he was absolutely charming and wouldn’t believe he was an utter thug on the park,as well as being a more than decent player
we should have been strengtening this window for qualifiers… Dreadful for a club with money to spend… then to let Christie go when LG is injured and Now Dembele is just stupid. We cant do much about getting some players out that don’t want to go.
Auldheid,
A few more memories for you.
Before The Alhambra became to go to pub,it used to be downstairs in the Alpen Lodge in Hope Street for the Saturday morning players.
We asked the then owner to lay on some grub (pies etc) as we were always hungry after the games.He did so then told us he was moving to the Alhambra,so we followed. Andreas then took over and started doing a wider menu with spag bol,steak pie etc which went down a bomb and was very unusual in Glasgow in those days.
He then started booking bands for a Saturday night which we all were happy about and some of the better pub bands in Glasgow at that time were on show.A wee change from The Howff and The Maggie which were 2 of the better known music venues.
Re your Saturday morning football stories, Steven Cafferty was a mate of mine back in the day. Remember him cutting a plaster off his broken leg to play in a game. He stays in High Wycombe now. My good lady always swore by the moussaka in The Alhambra too.
Summa of Sammi
Thanks for your info your case was definitely a very long haul I don’t expect my case to be quite so complex and lengthy
Yes I am in 2 minds about a no win no fee but things are tight at the mo.
I can do it through my union with the unions lawyers but I have lost faith in the union and the way they handled the disciplinary hearing. They suggested I showed some remorse and this would give me a slap on the wrist written warning etc how wrong they were.
I told the union how can I show remorse for something I did not do needless to say I was found guilty and dismissed . I am glad I denied the allegations based on prosecution statements that were never cross examined because their witnesses were never called. If I had showed remorse and put my hands up for this I could still have been sacked and then I would have had no chance to fight this after admitting culpability.
£40m…… Uncharted territory for Celtic. Why now? Why this player?
I have seen the comparisons with fees for Virgil, Fraser and Victor.
Celtics ambition in the transfer market is to get interest from the top end of the EPL rather than the mid range teams. While Celtic have received the sell on benefits the larger fincial gain in recent times has been to Southampton. Celtic want to get the premium price directly. The aim is to cut out the middlemen where we can.
Our ability to identify and secure the best quality potential will determine that top flight interest. The club seems focussed on seriously following this strategy, a strategy it should be said, which also anticipates participation in the CL groups.
Our participation in the Spfl will almost never be enough to convince suitors to pay full price. As a strategy I approve but…..It must also be measured and organised to achieve yearly entry to CL groups and regular appearances in the latter stages. This means NOT selling out solely on the basis of the size of the transfer fees. There first has to be a significant level of quality players either already recruited and at the club or available to sign.Celtic have to be strongly determined.
The CL will look different in the future and Celtic seem to be manoeuvring to make obvious to the big hitters their competitive European credentials. We are determined not to be overlooked. It’s the smart move but a real challenge and not guaranteed to work.
As far as MD is concerned he is probably untypical of Celtics ongoing scheme. The reason the price has rocketed so soon was because he was already on the radar of the big EPL clubs who thought they had time enough to attract him once his Fulham contract had run down. For quite understandable reasons the thought of him ending up at Celtic never entered their heads. Their assessment of the player is probably as much based on his development at Fulham as what he has achieved at Celtic.
HH