Well, just me to be honest.
The Celtic squad is out in Dubai, in preparation for the expected heatwave in February and March in another masterstroke which will condition them for the extreme conditions.
The freak weather has already started in the north of Scotland, as this picture, taken yesterday in Peterhead, shows quite clearly.
Go on admit it. you’re bored beyond belief at the lack of football. I#ll wager you even looked for a stream on Friday night to watch Hibernian and Dundee United. In a perfect world, of course, these two clubs would both be promoted, and Kilmarnock would drop out.
We can always hope, I suppose.
The team won’t be playing any matches while they are out there, despite talk of a glamour friendly with “rangers ” to promote the “new old firm” . Turns out the Ibrox club didn;t book the flights early enough, and when they went back up to full fare, it was beyond their means. They did try to borrow the money, as the fee for the game would have seen them make a tidy profit, but they couldn’t find anyone daft enough to lend it to them.
Rodgers thinks not playing games is a good idea, and since he’s been pretty much right about everything else, we’ll go along with that. He tols the Sunday Post;
“We’re not playing any games because we don’t need any,”
“There can be a commercial element to these trips sometimes, but this isn’t one of those cases.
“What we are getting is more training time, time that will allow us to reinforce our principles and work on different aspects of the game.
“The club have given me the freedom to look at the fixture list, and see how it would pan out.
“If we were to be successful as we wanted to be, then we identified this period as one for recovery with a warm-weather training camp.
“I said Dubai because you’re pretty sure it’s going to be warm. The club have helped with everything I’ve ever wanted. So it’s all gone to plan.”
There have been a lot of games so far this season, December alone saw nine, so its good for the players to relax, and maybe allow those little knocks and strains to heal.
“The players have had a lot thrown at them, physically and mentally, in the seven months that we’ve been here,”
“There has been a huge volume of games to deal with.
“So what we will do in Dubai is have a wee refresher before pressing the reset button and getting ready to go
again.
“The beauty of it is we’ll be fresh on our return, and maybe have a couple of players integrated to the squad.
A wee hint there that his activity in the transfer market isn’t done yet.
But we won’t be signing this guy, as was revealed on what some thought was the official twitter feed…
Celtic Football ClubCeltic are delighted to announce the signing of Saudi Arabian international Ran-Jusdiyed
Say it quickly, as one word…
This came on the back of an Aberdeen fan on another parody account claiming his club had signed Yerda Selzavon, a turkish player, which when said quickly is apparently some sort of insult up there. Sky sports fell for it…
Another, which to be fair, won’t be any less accurate than some of the scoops in the papers, was that “rangers ” were signing a Frenchman called Liqui Dayshun.
Still. at least its not just me who is bored.
I mentioned this to the dear lady wife, who said that one thing I could try to do is pay a little bit more attention to things that are going on around me, and she does have a point, so for the rest of 2016 I’ll try to concentrate a bit more.
There was another wee rumour doing the rounds yesterday which concerned a link between Wayne Rooney, the spud faced granny chaser at Manchester United , and Celtic. The player may well end up following Rot Keane and taking the chance to play at a big club before he retires. Although it seems unlikely, I did once sit about half a dozen seats away from at Ibrox when Keane played there, so never say never.
Turkish defender Hassan Ali Kaldirim is also on the radar, but we are unsure if thats the clubs radar, or the one the SMSM are using to make it look like they have their finger on the pulse.
Sports Witness is somewhat more reliable than our own papers, as they never seem to witness anything, including the liquidation of one of Scotlands top clubs. They did at first, but then covered the waterfront by pretending they didn’t.
It’s what they call balanced reporting.
From Sports Witness;
Celtic are interested in Fenerbahçe’s left back Hasan Ali Kaldirim and ready to step up in their pursuit of the player. Fotomaç claim Celtic boss Brendan Rodgers has been following the defender all season and is ready to offer Fenerbahçe €1.6m.
Hasan Ali will be out of contract at the end of the season and the Turkish international’s recent good performances mean he has a list of admirers across the Europe.
Fenerbahçe are currently using an interesting strategy for their contract renewals and the Turkish giants will not offer new deals to any player before their contract expires.
It’s probably wise Rodgers doesn’t introduce that at Celtic Park.
This strategy resulted in the loss of Gokhan Gonul to rivals Besiktas, but still Fenerbahçe president Aziz Yildirim has told Hasan Ali he’ll have to wait until the end of the season before being offered a new contract despite the attentions from Celtic.
However, they let themselves down badly when they finished the article with this…
….( Manager Dick Advocaat ) won’t want to lose the player to Celtic, but the Scottish club will be able to speak to him in the new year with regards to a pre-contract agreement if they fail to sign him this month.
The Turkish international has been on Celtic’s radar for a while and Fotomaç say if Hasan Ali decides to join the SPL champions he’ll earn £1.6m per year with a £1m signing on fee. The Turk would provide competition to current Celtic full backs Mikael Lustig and Emilio Izaguirre.
Celtic had been showing interest in free agent Lex Immers-which isn’t that far away from being a made up name-but he’s opted to go to Brugge after being freed by Cardiff. I think the hacks have read the revelations about Rodger’s signing policy and ginger hair before coming up with this one.
Moussa Dembele has revealed why he wants to stay at Celtic, and it has nothing to do with West Ham losing 5-0 at home to a Manchester City side who failed to beat Celtic in two attempts this season..we hear Dembele looked at the result and giggled uncontrollably.
Well, he hasn’t revealed it as such, but what we hear is that he is awestruck by Brendan Rodgers, and loves working with him. He is extremely focused on his development, so much so that he skipped the clubs Christmas night out , which is why you saw him in that Celtic tracksuit at an Italian restuarant after the League Cup final.
Everyone else went to London on the swally.
Eoghan O’Connell is going out to Kilmarnock on loan, though quite how that will make him a better player is beyond me. Mind you, he might learn how to kick players and become the no nonsense defender we need. He’ll certainly be busy in that defence, as crowded as it is, which will give him plenty of practice.
Another loannee, Kris Commons, is the subject of interest from the USA, which will annoy Hibernian fans. championship clubs from England are also looking at him, so when he evebtually does go, at least he can pick and choose.
A report in the Independent newspaper caught my eye, and managed to make me angry and cheer me up a we bit at the same time…
A man who was the subject of a “vile” meme has spoken out after finding thousands of supporters online.
Craig Byrne, 30, from east Glasgow has Apert syndrome: A rare genetic condition where a baby’s skull forms short from front to back but wide from side to side, the facial bones are also affected and fingers and toes are joined or webbed.
On Tuesday, Mr Byrne’s brother Thomas saw a photo of his brother on Twitter being used as a meme. The year-old photo, where Mr Byrne is smiling at the grounds of Glasgow Celtic’s football team and wearing his team’s shirt, was shared by a Twitter user with an offensive caption.
As the incident occurred late at night, Mr Byrne’s father Thomas said his family, who were all “very upset” over the tweet, desperately tried to get the person responsible to delete the “foul” tweet, which had amassed hundreds of likes and retweets, before his son saw it.
Unfortunately, Mr Byrne did see the photo after the man who posted it failed to delete it despite requests from Thomas – who also claims he alerted the police and the charity which supports people with disfigurements, Changing Faces.
“I was very upset,” My Byrne told The Independent. “I woke up [and saw it] and thought I was dreaming.”
The tweet was eventually removed following the efforts of Changing Faces and the account was suspended.
Mr Byrne went from having 47 followers on Twitter to 4,500 as support for him poured in from all over the world: “I felt people supporting and backing me. I feel so much better now,” he says.
Mr Byrne, who says he has not experienced bullying like that before, believes he was picked on because Celtic beat Rangers FC, who the perpetrator of the tweet apparently supports, over the weekend given the well-known history of animosity between the clubs. He says he believes he is “bigger and stronger” than the man who targeted him.
He is without a doubt the bigger man, and his strength should inspire all of us.
As for the guy who sent the tweet that caused the harm, hopefully the police catch up with him, and the arresting officers are called O’Connor and Murphy. Or something similar, you get the gist.
Whilst I’m certain that Mr Byrne would not advocate violence or retribution towards the man responsible, I’d like to make it clear he’s a bigger man than me.
Known as Beetroot Burney on twitter, the lad would appreciate your support, so give him a follow and a few words of encouragement if you haven’t already.
And if john Paul Taylor is reading this, the lad dreams of leading the Celtic team out at Celtic Park….
Over to you, JP..
By the way, a wee email or two just in case John Paul doesn;t see this would possibly help, if any of you have a bit of spare time.
The incident highlights another difference between the support south of the river and ours.
We tend to respect people whereas they abuse them.
speaking of that lot on the south side, their PR machine has gone into overdrive again, to keep the hordes from thinking for themselves-not the most difficult task in the world.
Loan signing target Jon Toral -the one who wanted to make a decision after playing against Ronaldo-might not be the game changer he’s been touted as…
He didn’t get to play against the Portuguese superstar, which might be why Granada, where he is on loan just now, went down 5-0 and he never got the chance to change the game.
but no doubt he’s used to that by now..
They’ll wake up one day, you know, and then no one will buy papers at all.
Picture from Friday….
Caption for the picture..
Caption: Protestant school teaches sex education
Oh, by the way, thanks to everyone who pointed out that the lady with the Sevco banner was at the wrestling, and not at the darts as I had wrongly stated.
Like we pride ourselves on accuracy here…
today, we have a couple of real legends, and they are being watched by a couple of jolly SFA guys, and I wonder what they are thinking, or saying….
