I was disappointed for St Johnstone at their exit from the Europa League last night but not for Scottish football, or our coefficient points. Saints are a provincial club in a very rural part of Scotland. You only have to travel through the hills to Perth to realise that pocket of Scotland, with its tractors, knitwear and wellie boot shops, has no God given right to beat a team from any municipality anywhere.
They have done very well for the last couple of seasons, from a tiny catchment area, but managed to reach Europe by pipping Dundee United, who ironically were good enough to have key players poached midseason.
St Johnstone don’t have potential superstars, they are also the oldest team in the league, which gets you through a long campaign but they are never going to sparkle. Or earn Scottish football a hatful of coefficient points.
Dundee United were decimated by the loss of those two players midseason, and were done no favours with the shadow of uncertainty which enveloped backroom and boardroom for months, but they, Aberdeen and Celtic are the only Scottish clubs capable of getting their act together to the extent required to reach European group stages. For everyone else, Europe is strictly a July pursuit, so don’t stress about it, and Tommy Wright is well within his rights to talk up his own club.
If Scottish football wants to get all introspective about last night, we should concern ourselves with concentrating resources on clubs who are independently financially viable: Dundee United, Aberdeen, Hearts, Celtic, Hibs and maybe Dundee. If more of our sponsorship and TV money went to Aberdeen and United and less to the thirty-or-so hangers on, they would be better placed to consolidate their development work and compete in Europe.
Celtic are five days away from their opening competitive game of the season, so I would think tonight’s friendly against Davie Moyes’ Real Sociedad will be the last strenuous exercise the players go through after what will have been a taxing first few weeks of preseason. After this workout it should all be about recovery before the visit of Stjarnan on Wednesday. The usual caveats apply to Nadir Ciftci, if he looks like he couldn’t run upstairs, he’s about where I’d expect him to be right now.
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Love wee BGFCs enthusiasm
Real dominated first 15 minutes
Sounds like we’re getting done up here
Some poor passing from the bhoys.
Ginger
I vaguely remember the days
Broony trying to make or leave a mark
Poor so far.
No real shape to team.
Very disjointed
FFS ,talk about papering over the cracks !
http://i.imgur.com/AB7cer0.jpg
Nice tidy touches by real.
Celtic TV so annoying with the ‘radio’ style commentary.
Is it Celtic TV or Celtic radio ffs
….aye surname is Meldrew
Pfayr are you bhoys going to Hamilton races tomorrow night? HH
Huns played 3 x 30min games against Spurs youth team haha my 7 year old nephew plays 3 30min games on a Saturday morning, they can’t even get a team to play them in a real game of football, joke club
Corner Celtic
Keeper saves from ML header
Unlucky Michael
Craig saves low to his right
Sign behind the goal
FAMILY SECTION NO SWEARING PLEASE
Bobby Madden reffing in the continental style.
Allowing flare players to flourish. This approach will not be used in SPL.
The gaps between our players to big.
Lack of movement off ball limiting passing options
LG very lonely figure up front
Hello this is WEE BGFC. Naw I don’t want to continue to sign up for an I phone gift!!!!!!! Really un like these fake streams. COYBIG
HH
WEE BGFC
Macew
19:43 on 10 July, 2015
Ron Bacardi,
Apologies for butting in, and giving my age away at the same time. Dumbarton Harp to the best of my knowledge played on a park known as Meadow Park, situated close to Dumbarton Central station an d very roughly around where aggreko have their premises.Played on the pitch in my youth, not sure when the Harp went out of business, but the name lives on in the local Celtic Supporters club.
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All the Young Dudes. Carry the news.
A wee bit of handbags incolving. Yes Scott.
Stream fur the game …..HH
http://www.onsball.net/file.php?f=136
Armstrong seems confused as to who he is supposed to be picking up….
Stuart Hodge doubtful offside flag. Hmmmm
Hutchybhoy
Aye .. You ??
Graffiti
Paul gets into trouble when links to live game streams are posted
Wee BGFC,
You’ll need to download Puffin web browser to get streams to work on iPhone, not that I would ever encourage not paying for game, no me no siree
30 minutes. No goals. No football from Celtic so far.
Awful. Press this Celtic team and they cannae play. I’d guess our CL opponents will be watching.
Craig kicks it long and we have not height or strength.
Only Nir, Virgil and Denayer had the composure required and 2 will be gone soon. If we replace them with SPFL players we will toil.
Ronny worries me and I was a big fan.
gg
Twice Hodge from the lodge has made dubious decisions
Good defense ML
Con….Performance is lacking composure.
Pro … George mccluskey doing commentary.
Terrible eh?
Frankly Mr Shankly
Apologies ! Paul ,delete my last post please …. HH
gg ——– Cheers. HH
Corner Celtic after LG and Stefan combine
Guerinca
That’s what European teams do to us ….our European results speak for themselves
Boyata up strongly for corner.. Heads over
Hodge.. We’re paying that bassa