Celtic Diary Monday March 4

Superman had his kryptonite, which rendered him useless, and prone to mistakes. Celtic have black and white striped jerseys, which render them useless and prone to mistakes.

However, a gutsy performance saw the team through to the Semi finals of the Scottish Cup, which gives us a chance to redress another one of our hoodoos, with at least one game, and possibly two , at Hampden Park.

Pre match in Paisley, manager Neil Lennon was faced with a press grilling over the decision not to punish old Rangers in accordance with their crimes, and remarkably, the line of questioning was a lot more intrusive than any questions faced by the actual guilty parties involved in the cheating scandal. The gaffer dealt with them calmly and professionally, despite what the papers said, and tried to move on to discussions about his own upcoming game.

All Lennon said was that they had been found guilty of making £47m worth of illegal payments, and that he was surprised by the punishment. The press then portrayed him as angry, and in one instance decided that he didn’t say what he was thinking-perhaps the most blatant example of the truth getting in the way of a good story!

So, with all the distractions, it was good to see, although with a below par preformance, the side get a wee bit of revenge for the league cup defeat by overcoming St. mirren 2-1. Crowd banter was quite funny as well, with buddies fans asking Lennon what he was doing for Paddys day, a direct reference to the date of the League Cup Final.

Lennon said, post match;

“Its another semi final to look forward to. I think thats five or six in a row now and obviously we want to improve on our record in the cups. Its a huge win and keps the season very much alive and competitive.”

This remark was intrepreted as “saving the season” by the Sunday Mail, with Mark Guidi showing just why he’s a top rated journalist. Guidi also referred to Lennon as a madman over the weekend…

All the cup quarter finals were fairly entertaining games, and with such fare on offer, it bodes well for the future, as teams begin to realise that the playing field is a little bit more on the level side since the demise of Rangers.

So, now all attentions will turn to Turin, and Celtic have a Herculean task of overhauling the three goal deficit, and Lennon may not be confident, but he wants the Celtic Park scoreline to look like it “flattered ” the Italians. Reallistically, that is probably the best we can hope for. But, as Lubomir Moravcik said at the weekend, “miracles don’t happen in football. but surprises do.”

A surprise for me would be geting an honest and strong ref. Then a miracle might happen.

Despite remaining silent pretty much all the way through the demise of former rivals Rangers, Celtic, in response to the grilling of Neil Lennon, issued a statement saying they were “surprised ” by Thursdays ruling that the Old club-the true club-gained no competitive advantage by bunging players an extra near fifty million notes.

The carefully worded statement said;

“Like many within Scottish football, including supporters and observers, we are surprised by the parallel conclusion that no competitive advantage was gained from these arrangements.

However , the implications of this verdict are for the Scottish football authorities to address since the rules breached were specificallyintended to defend sporting integrity.

Throughout this matter, Celtic has refrained from comment on the affairs of Rangers FC while the various tribunals and commissions went about their work.

We will continue to concentrate on our own affairs , and assure our supporters that at all times we will operate both within the rules of our governing bodies and the law of the land.

Our club is in a great place at the moment and we are enjoying a fantastic season, maintaining our position at the top of Scottish football and enjoying huge success and profile across European football.”

Charles Green called the comments “inappropriate and ill-timed”

To show how to release a statement appropriately and well timed, this morning he has released the interim accounts for his new club, or the company that runs them, or whatever spin he’s putting on their identity. While all the press, the tv , the radio stations and the supporters are proclaiming a victory, despite being found guilty on a ll counts, he has hidden away the news that the club/company/whatever is losing one million pounds a month….

No wonder they want to be fast tracked back to the SPL! Craig Burley and Davie Provan, blazing a trail for fine, balanced journalism, begged for them to be put back in the top league, while manager Ally McCoist claims he still doesn’t know how they ended up in the third division. (Me neither, they should be in the Juniors.)

Thankfully , though, with the likes of these three and their well thought out views, that shouldn’t happen any time soon.

Largely because its not just Celtic fans who are “surprised ” at the Nimmo Smith verdict (incidentally, nimmo Smith was the man who presided over the Lockerbie trial, which led to a man being imprisoned for life, purely because someone had to be)  and there is a real threat that fan power will make the final decision.

Paul Hubbard, as jb commented in the replies to Fridays diary question, was the man who invented the huddle. The quarterback would gather his team of deaf players around him so that the opposition would not see what their plays would be.

I was truly amazed by the amount of right answers, as I only stumbled on this when reading the new QI book about half an hour before writing the diary.

Anyway, todays little thinker…

The huddle is, of course, the pre match hurrah for the players, where anyone can say or do their bit. Who led the team , during training, after a huddle, in a bout of Cossack style dancing?