The Celtic board last night were considering the option of having a full time ambassador stationed near UEFA headquarters to cut down on air fare expenditure every time the club is called to account for the behaviour of supporters who seem blissfully unaware that the use of pyrotechnics is banned.

If you want to see fireworks, go to an organised display where its safer and won’t cost the club thousands of euros in fines. Apart from that, the day will come when the club are ordered to play behind closed doors or several hundred miles from Glasgow when one of the UEFA high heid yins decides that the fines aren’t working.

Insanity, they say, is doing the same thing over and over whilst expecting the outcome to be different.

Then again, the UEFA match delegate, a Mr Crawford Wilson, head of the Antrim FA in Northern Ireland, has a first name which is a surname, so its only fair he should shoulder his portion of the blame.

The Scotsman decided to use a colour theme to describe  the clubs European efforts this year,

Celtic’s European journey… from Red faces to green shoots. 

If only I could think of a colour which would give a fitting end to Mr Wilson’s match report that we hear also mentioned old ladies beaten up on trams, protestant churches burnt to the ground and a rather embarassing rendition of Go Home British Sodiers at the Arndale Shopping Centre.

The Scotsamn article, written by Stephen Halliday, contains an excellent summation of the campaign from manager Brendan Rodgers…

“For us to impose our style, calmness and quality on the game on Tuesday shows we have grown and developed and that’s what this season was probably going to be about in the Champions League,”

. “The whole campaign has gone from that first game in Gibraltar to getting draws that could easily have been wins at two really tough places in Monchengladbach and Manchester City. A year further down the line, hopefully we can make the next step.

“We have to find a way of being different because the scale of our budget compared to the others at that level is night and day. So collectively we have to be different in terms of a game model and way of playing that can disrupt an opponent. Listen, there are different ways to play football, but my teams have always, in the main, been aggressive when they defend, press the game, never give the opposition a minute’s peace and when they have the ball they show the courage and bravery to play the game to a high level, technically and tactically.

“Slowly, we’re starting to see that, the sort of beginnings of that now on the bigger stages. It’s okay doing it in other games domestically, but can you go and impose that in the biggest jungles in the world? We’ve got to have that confidence and there’s no doubt about the confidence in which they played the game against Manchester City. More time working together will improve it, we’ll make little adjustments here and there to the squad which will allow us to improve. 

“I was never really worried after the game in Gibraltar. It was a nice little wake-up for the players. There had been a lot of good work that had been done over the pre-season but that showed me there was still a way to go with these players, in terms of belief that they could actually go out there and lose a game like that.

“It can happen, of course, with the astro pitch and everything else. But it sharpened the teeth in many aspects of what we wanted to do. I said at the time, when it was supposedly embarrassing, that I knew when we got home we would win the tie. It also told me a couple of wee things early on about the fragility of the team. When I first came in, I knew there was very little time to work tactically with the team. It was about creating a mindset to at least believe they could qualify. There was lots of negativity about it. So our first thing was to create a mindset and say ‘come on, we can work and work well.’

Then we rolled out the tactical element of it and from that period at the beginning where we had them set up to work and press, now we can offer much more to the game in an offensive manner. “One year down the line we want to be better prepared in every facet of our approach to qualifying. I don’t think it will make it less stressful or less pressurised but certainly we will enter into it knowing that from day one at pre-season that I will have a fitter bunch of players and then we can roll out other aspects.” 

Off the field, reports continued to flow in as the carnage caused by Celtic fans became apparent…

Celtic fans who damaged pub Christmas tree among 14 held over Manchester trouble

There were also problems on the Metrolink ahead of the match, with one passenger saying a fan let off a firework on a carriage heading to the ground.

From the sun..

European football’s governing body has also charged the Hoops over crowd disturbances. 

Well, whatever the fine, it looks like a wee bit of crowdfunding again, this time to raise money for the homeless in Manchester-or, indeed , the homeless looked after by ex Manchester United and Celtic player Lou Macari.

Every time they fine us, we’ll just help the disadvantaged.

That’ll teach them.

But its bye the bye now, and attention turns to Friday nights clash between glasgows two biggest financially stable clubs as Partick entertain Celtic, live on BT sport.

Glasgow derbies are not noted for the fun aspect, but they are better when the basket of assets from Ibrox isn’t involved.

Scott sinclair won’t make the game, but he should be ready for the Dundee match on the seventeenth, which will see a rare trip north for the Lennon CSC, which has been badly hit by the fixture computer utilising the other days in the week, especially this time of year.

Its the little things they do that piss us off the most.

Speaking of which, it appears that the spat between Mark McGhee and Chris Davies came about because the practice nets were in front of the disabled fans, and the Motherwell coach objected to Celtic players ignoring this and practicing anyway.

This idea of shooting towards disabled fans or kids must have come from somewhere, and if I can remember which Diary I suppose i’d better delete it before the lawyers come calling.

See.

It annoyed us, and would have annoyed Barcelona. Motherwell put out the best performance of any team in Scotland against Celtic this season, and its all down to making life uncomfortable for the visitors. But oh no, we want to be nice to the opposition, and instead hired a pipe fucking band to herald the arrival of the Catalans.

Just saying.

Another example of disdain towards opponents was spotted by Roy Keane, whilst we were all too busy patting ourselves on the back. This was noticed by former Celt Roy Keane. ( Technically, he is a former Celt, probably by the flimsiest of technicalities..)

“Their squad probably isn’t as good as maybe Manchester City think or even the manager,’ 

“Obviously they knew they were already through but they showed a lot of disrespect to Celtic and Celtic were the slightly better team and could have gone on to win.”

“I thought the defending from Manchester City was absolutely shocking. They showed a lot of arrogance towards the game last night and perhaps disrespect to Celtic.”

And we’re back with the European campaign, simply because these stats are worth a mention..

Pass completion in the Champions League:

Scott Brown: 95%

Toni Kroos: 93%

Xabi Alonso: 92%

David Silva: 86%

Luca Modric: 86%  

For those of you who prefer the story behind the statistics, read this, by tictactic, which predicted how Brendan would make a difference at Celtic..

tictactic

Another Celt gets a mention, in the same breath as Gerd Muller, Lionel Messi and Eusebio..

Kris Boyd would have been on that list, but some of thousands of goals were shared between two clubs, and therefore don’t count.

No doubt he’ll have something to say about it in his next column.

The picture from yesterday, where Chris Sutton was carried on wires to score against Ajax,

prompted a few other explanations, none better than this..