That Was The Decade That Was : Dreams and Decades End

And so we come to the most recent seasons of our Celtic Football decade.

The previous section That Was The Decade That Was : This Invincible Charming Man covered Brendans arrival and the magnificent Double Treble being secured.

What lay next in store for us…..well only God, or an impish Devil knew!

Feel free to add your comments and memories in the Comments Section below..

Liverpool history hinted that Brendan Rodgers could go a bit skewwiff after 2 Transfer windows.

We should have heeded that warning.

Player wise, it all seemed okay at first.

We appeared to be covering the side all over the park.

In the summer, we tied up Scott Bain as the Sweeper Keeper ( groan – Ed) , we secured Eddy from PSG reserves, we somehow brought back Izzy as cover for KT and we got the very decent Filip Benkovic from a certain clb named Leicester on loan.

It all seemed ok.

Then it didn’t.

We went and secured Youssouf Mulumbu who had seemed decent for Killie as midfield force but that one would never work out.  On loan we would also get an Australian starlet named Daniel Arzani but sadly he was not quite the next Patrick Roberts. The winger was signed much to Brendans surprise along with another winger in the Winter named Marian Schved that he publically came out and said he didn’t need.

It all seemed a bit strange to us watching on.

We also of course had the John McGinn, in out in NO DEFINETELY OUT debacle.

Departure wise we saw quite a few disappear including that guy Nadir Çiftçi who was still getting a wage, big Erik the Viking formally moved to FC Midtjylland and Charly Musonda, the waste of time that was, was officially cancelled!

Sales wise, early doors we saw Stuart Armstrong go to Southampton of course and that seemed to be that.

Then transfer deadline approached, Moussa seemed upset at Lennoxtown for some reason and then a few hours,  cue bedlam.

I was at a party on the Friday night, the phone buzzed and it read “Dembele away!”.

Sure enough, Moussa had left us to go to Lyon. Peter was over the moon at bagging £20m but fans were gutted. We know it was coming at some point but expected it to be a little later in his career.

And then the stories started.

Was Brendan really thinking of going to China and tried to take Dembele with him?

Was Brendan really working behind the scenes with Kieran Tierney in respect to the left backs departure, maybe to Everton?

We heard the stories and discarded them but feared there may, just may, be some truth in the rumours.

We would know 6 months later.

In the interim though, we had absolutely no interesting Friendlies and then shot ourselves in the foot by exiting the Champions League to AEK Athens who were half asleep and half fit. It was shockingly bad and we fell into the Europa group Stages much to everyone’s disappointment.

In the Europa we faced Red Bull Salzburg, Red Bull Leipzig and our old pals from the CH play offs, Rosenborg.

We managed to progress as second in that group but then fell to a slick Valencia side who beat us home and away.

Even though our days under Rodgers weren’t exactly covered in glory, We didn’t expect them to end there!

Domestically, again the League Cup would be won before the year was out.

Defeats for Partick, St Johnstone and Hearts saw us face Aberdeen in the final. A young fresh faced but bulked up star named Ryan Christie slotted a great goal home to win the match.

In the League campaign, we would meet with early defeats to Hearts and Kilmarnock and somehow Livingston became a team we just couldn’t beat.  The rest seemed straightforward enough bar a defeat to Hibs away but then came December trip to Ibrox.

The record books show 1-0 to Steven Gerrards team via a deflected goal but it is still the most incredibly tame and ineffective showing I have ever seen from a Rodgers side. There was talk of a flu epidemic that ran through the squad and resulted in the calamity that was Calmac at left back but to this day, no-one seems to know what went wrong!

We got to the Winter break and called on re-inforcements.

In came Olly Burke and Timo Weah to give us pace and enthusiasm up front. They started well and we went 6 victorious games without conceding a goal  and 8 wins in a row earned us some breathing room.

It was on the 24th February that a team called Leicester sacked their manager.

Celtic fans thought nothing of it. EPL Managers were always changing.

Then on Feb 29th, we saw Brendan at the King Power stadium taking in his new side facing Brighton.

Rodgers had left us for Leicester. Not Man United, not Liverpool, not even the English National team which he had long been linked too, no, fucking Leicester.

We couldn’t believe it but it was true.

In the middle of a Treble Treble, our beloved Manager…one of us…had fucked off and fucked us good and proper.

Then the stories re-appeared.

Moussa Dembele tweeted the equivalent of “I told you!” and later Danny Mcgrain would let slip that the heartwarming”You’ll be here, Youre Danny Mcgrain!” story that Brendan had spun us was pure and poor fiction.

We had all been hoodwinked. Charmed by a rat.

The guy knew his football sure but he also knew how to play a crowd. And how we bought it.

Hoop Line and Sinker.

As Peter sat counting his £10m compensation, the club once again turned to a True Celtic Man to bail them out.

Up, once again, stepped Neil Francis Lennon.

Lenny , along with John Kennedy and Damien Duff would steer us through the rest of the League without any issues. We beat The Rangers when it mattered then rested our team in the run in so we would be fresh for the Scottish Cup Final and a chance at The Treble Treble.

Our date with Destiny was a great anniversary for the Lions, especially poignant as we had lost Big Billy and Stevie Chamlers that year, and on May 25th 2019, Celtic defeated Hearts 2-1 to claim the Scottish Cup and the Treble Treble.

The Bhoys enjoyed an open top bus from Hampden in the cold wet rain, poor Dedryk Boyata was frozen, and sadly due to a Police motorcyclists “honest mistake”, the bus never made it to the Gallowgate where thousands lined the streets celebrating.

It was fine though, it didn’t stop the partying.

A Treble Treble..after the Rats Rat….truly unbelievable.

The Treble Treble had been and gone.

The after affects of the Rodgers departure also rumbled on but for most Celtic fans, he was dead to us and that was that. Leicester would go on to impress in the EPL for this latest season but every Leicester fan has been warned to not get suckered in too deep.

Back to the Celtic and we finally went deep on purchasing defenders.

In came the classy centre half Christopher Jullien who would soon impress once settled and beside him we had the very decent Hatem Elhamed on the right.

We also went and bought a “mercurial” defender in the shape of Bolingoli. An enthusiastic fellow but one the jury is still very much out on this left “winger-wing-back-defender”. We also purchased Taylor from Killie and Mortiz Bauer as cover for the left and right berths.

We also brought in a young ray of sunshine named Jeremie Frimpong. Frimpong would soon claim the right back berth after Elhamed got injured.

Up front we landed a great loan deal for Mohamed Elyounoussi. The Norwegian on loan from Southampton should great skill and execution out on the Celtic left, forcing Scotty Sinclair to slide into the shadows.

We also acquired a certain someone else on loan, but more on that later.

And then came the exits.

First we saw Dedryk Boyata and fans favourite Mikel Lustig go along with the terminally depressing Marvin Compper and Scott Allan. The real sale of the summer though was our Bhoy going.

Kieran Tierney was the epitome of Glasgow Celtic.

KT was the Bhoy who lived the dream and then suddenly, he would be gone.

Arsenal handed over £25m and the deal was done. Our Captain and Legend in waiting was away. It was gutting but after Rodgers, we had a numb shield around us and just shrugged “Fuck em” and moved on.

The Team moved on and we headed into Europe. And calamity awaited.

Somehow we played Cluj without our star defenders and totally threw our chance at the Champions League away.

It was terrible and to this day, Scott Brown handling the ball is still a “WTF?” moment.

The Europa though gave us decent ties against Quality opposition.

We surprised a lot of people in football and the Media by topping the Group with ease. We won home and away to Lazio which really made people sit up and notice! A wonderful campaign would see us rewarded with a play off tie against Copenhagen come Feb 20th.

At home, we secured the League Cup with a magnificent “rope-a-dope” performance to silence Steven Gerrards blue brigade. Jullien would slot home the goal so we won 1-0 but in reality the result was Morelos 0:8 Fraser Forster . The Grand Wall had returned after falling down the charts at Southampton and thankfully for us, wanted first team action and a return up North. The big man has bolstered our backline and single-handedly destroyed Morelos in the final with save after save and even a penalty block. As Jullien conceded “This final is all about Fraser…its his win!”

In the league we are top..for now,

.We had  a brilliant 2-0 win in Ibrox but a terrible 2-1 defeat at home at Years End hardly  sees us smiling as we now face the prospect of chasing down a genuine threat from the team in red white and blue who hold a game in hand

We welcome the chase.

But that’s still to come!

As for looking back, what a decades its been and no mistake!

Hail Hail one and all, (bar one)

Desimond