After the break, its back to business in the world of football, and no-one is more delighted at the news from Old trafford than Leigh Griffiths, as it takes the focus off his singing career, and on to the end of former Celt Davie Moyes’ tenure at Manchester Utd.

According to virtually everyone, Moyes is about to shoot through the door quicker than Oscar Pistorious after the Glazer family finally lost patience with his piss poor performance in the chair this season. Neil Lennon is 4/1 to replace him…

( Actually, as I type this, they’ve sacked him shortly after he turned up at work this morning. Lets hope he didn’t put a weeks petrol in the company car. When Old Red Nose told the fans to stand by their new manager, it seems instead they stood behind him, and all pushed at the same time. )

So, its to a replacement…I don’t think you can get a price on Ally McCoist, and frankly, theres something wrong with you if you ask for one.

Now, what else has happened since Saturdays diary ?

There was the Motherwell game, neatly summed up with the following sentence..

” fucking hell, fucking hell, yes, yes, yes, fucks sake. ”

Which was pretty much all I said during the game.

If the league hadn’t already been sewn up, that would actually have been a fine advert for scottish football. Despite Motherwell claiming to start the game with three at the back, they actually had ten plus the keeper, but moved forward on the break fairly rapidly, helped by a Celtic defence hampered by the holiday brochures tucked in their shorts.

But it made for great tv, and if you turned the sound down so you couldn’t hear the commentators, even better tv.

The high spot was Leigh Griffiths goal, where he pounced like a true number nine onto  a ball played into space before cutting it into the net to put Celtic ahead for the first time in the game late in the second half. If you watch it again, you’ll see him briefly hold his leg in the air to time it right before connecting with the ball. Superb.

Then he ran in front of the support cupping his ear. Presumably asking them to listen to his new single.

And then there was Anthony Stokes curling one in from near the bye line, reminiscent of a Kenny Dalglish goal for Scotland many. many years ago.

Summariser Neil McCann doubted that he meant it, but you can see from the way he struck the ball that he did.

Motherwell scored three times which was easily the best tally of any domestic opponent this term, and happily,  a number of scouts watching Forster and van Dijk may now look elsewhere.

Celtic didn’t turn up for the first half, and made up for that by turning up about five minutes early for the second half. Manager Neil Lennon explained;

“Our first half performance was poor. It looked as if some of the players were on holiday already so obviously I had a few words at half-time,”

“What was said is between me and the players but obviously they could tell I wasn’t happy. We sent them out early as a few of them were just going through the motions and that’s not what I expect from a team.

“Even though psychologically the league is won, we are here with an obligation to the supporters who have come here and I think I got the exact response I was looking for.”

So, there will be no points tally record, and no goals conceded record this season. Ronnie Cully, in the Evening times, asked the question that was on all our lips after the game

No, not that one .

Cully wrote;

”  All of which begged the question to a clearly-annoyed Lennon, does it take defenders longer than other players to get going again after they have been given some down time?

“I have no idea, but it looked like that on Saturday, from our two centre-halves, in particular,” was the instant and heart-felt response.

“I thought we were very sloppy in the first half.

“We corrected that after the break and played pretty well in the second half.

“Look, I can’t be over-critical. Efe and Virgil have had a fantastic season, but I just wasn’t happy about the manner of the goals we conceded.”

“The record for least number of goals conceded in a league season has gone now, and they have only themselves to blame for that.

“You can’t just walk out there and be as sloppy as we were. You have to be switched on, and Motherwell had a lot to play for on Saturday.”

“In the end, the dressing room was disappointed that we didn’t win.”

He then added all the usual about finishing as strongly as they can, and the fans deserving to be entertained, but everyone had gone by then.

Stefan Johansen, the combative midfielder, added his tuppence worth;

“Motherwell are a good team and all respect to them,” he said. “They were leading 2-0 at one stage, but we came back. I think we should have won but we didn’t do it for 90 minutes, and Motherwell didn’t give up.

“Our first half performance was pretty poor, but in the second half we controlled the game and we’re disappointed not to have won after a great comeback.

“The manager made things clear to us at half-time. We all knew we hadn’t played well and it was just a case of getting together to start doing things better in the second half.

“We did that but still didn’t win and that was the most disappointing thing.”

Mostly Swansea and possibly Everton have joined Celtic in the race for on loan Manchester Utd striker Nick Powell, but you have to ask yourself if he can’t force his way into that Manchester Utd squad then he’s hardly likely to do any better at Celtic. I know the counter argument is that United have Rooney and van Persie, but they could have done with the competition, and the way they’ve performed this season, they would probably have buckled.

His goalscoring record is unimpressive, although there is a bit of disagreement from some sources as to whether he is a midfielder or a forward,  and you’d have thought he would know by now.

£4m is the reported price-to start with anyway-and may I wish the Welsh side luck in their quest.

Celtic  have thanked those fans who renewed their season books online before the midnight deadline on sunday night. They haven’t said how many renewed, but did use the plural , so it was definitely more than one. The rest of us will await the forms arriving in the post, which will be this week sometime.

Theres good news about the players returning from injury-John Herron made it a half a dozen different right backs this season-and we could be seeing Mikael Lustig again very soon.

Lennon explained: “Mikael is now back in training and we are hoping he will be fit for next weekend and get some kind of game time then.

“Darnell had an arthroscopy procedure on a knee which will keep him out for three or four weeks, and we expect Adam will join in with training this week, along with Charlie Mulgrew, who has also been out with a hamstring.

“We have coped okay with losing so many players who can play right-back for us, but it will be good to have them all back.”

“It is important to get some game time into Mikael before the season ends because he has been out for so long,” said Lennon.

“Psychologically for him it will be important, as well.

“He is a huge player for us.

“We just felt the surgery needed doing, and that it was the right time to do it so that he can come into the Champions League qualifiers fit and raring to go.”

Elsewhere, Campbell Ogilivie, a sort of Scottish Ronnie Biggs but with a suit on, admitted that he received a £95,000 EBT payment from the old Rangers football club, which went into liquidation back in 2012. He also admitted that the sun is a big yellow thing in the sky and that if you don’t eat the crusts on your sandwich you won’t get curly hair.

He said he didn’t understand it, and thought it was all legal. I must have missed the bit when he said he’d paid it back and published the receipt.

Because I’m sure a man of such integrity would have returned the money as soon as he realised it was illegal, and tantamount to tax evasion.

Thankfully, it won’t affect his position at the SFA, where he is Chief Blazer, because short of driving a bus into a crowd of disabled children, nothing affects anybodies position at the SFA.

Although Gordon Waddell, who has a column in the Sunday Mail, thinks the end is in sight for the Hamden Mafia…

Scottish Football looks set for civil war as SPFL

chiefs plot to take SFA’s powerbase

Well, theres a surprise. A new organisation set up because the old one runs football “like its own little fiefdom ” is about to make a play for complete control. Well spotted, Sherlock!

Rather pleased with his discovery, Waddell then asks;

What is the SPFL hoping to achieve by seizing the

SFA when it doesn’t seem able to run it’s own

organisation?

But he doesn’t know the answer. Thats because he’s asking the wrong question. The correct question should be ;

Are the clubs going to expose the SFA for the corrupt, self serving cabal that it is ? 

Then he could help by exposing some of the shortcomings  himself, or at the very least drawing attention to the ones we already know about.

But thats not how the mainstream media works in Scotland. Actually, the mainstream media in Scotland doesn’t actually do any work. It just feeds on scraps thrown to it by those who consider themselves part of the establishment. Even after they have been liquidated and confined to history, in one spectacular case of denial.

For instance, Waddell is afraid of change because

”  big-money backers of the game – like Tesco Bank, McDonald’s, sportscotland and the government-backed Cashback for Communities scheme – base their contributions on the fact that they are all-inclusive and not aimed at the elite end. ”

Er, Scottish football doesn’t have any big money backers. Thats why all the clubs have decided to cut theior own cloth and depend less on the SFA .

Thats not to say the SPFL are any more competent, after all, Neil Doncaster is in charge, and he’s completely clueless. But the times they are a changing….

More news from Manchester Utd, the ongoing story as I type this. Apparently Ryan Giggs could be named as interim manager. Well, he has the experience playing away from home…. His first job is to unite the players, and make them feel part of the club.  Not sure its a good idea to implement   a “Bring your Wife to Work ” day.

Back to Scotland, and the 120 day review ( 119 days laughing , one day saying fuck this ) of Second Rangers cash flow problems has been concluded. The public will get the details on Friday, But manager Ally Mccoist will sit down with Graham Wallace to get the bad news before tonights game against Ayr.

The cheery chappy won’t be pleased at what he hears, but no doubt he’s already found someone else to blame.

One firm of major investors at Ibrox have already found someone to blame. According to Phil MacGhiollabhan, who wrote about the demise of the original club, the fellow who came up with the idea to chuck money down the black hole of Ibrox has been sacked. And a couple of others have been moved sideways, where they will be in charge of cleaning the vending machines and making sure theres plenty of toilet roll in the gents.

McCoist himself is keen on bringing Kris Boyd to the club for next seasons campaign, but that just shows how detached he is from reality. Oh, wait maybe he isn’t that daft after all. I must have missed the bit where he endorsed the new season book campaign…

Andy Walker was the man hinted at in Saturdays cryptic clue.

Now, I was talking to a chap the other day, and football came up. He wasn’t interested in the game, but as a kid used to walk his neighbours dogs. Two of which were Henrik Larsson and Bobo Balde. So he says. But, I tend to believe him, because he also mentioned the guy in the picture, memorable to the fellow because he had an incredibly stunning and kind wife. ( The lad was only seven or eight at the time )  Heres the player. Who is he -and who is his delightful   partner ?