Celtic Diary Thursday November 20: Ronny Wants Revenge…

Before we start, theres shocking news from the world of music. Bono, lead singer with rock giants U2 , and full time charity fundraiser has been involved in a bike accident, and has suffered multiple fractures to his arms, shoulders and face He’s had metal pins and screws inserted to help put him back together.

Well, tonight thank God its him instead of me.

We’ll return to the theme of tax dodgers later.

Scott Brown is suspended, and Mikael Lustig is injured again, and so they will both miss the weekend clash with Dundee. Kris Commons could feature, if only to dispel stories that he’s outta here when the January window opens. Arguably, Celtic have been playing better without him, but thats a little unfair on Commons, as he does add creativity to the team when he’s playing, and although he hasn’t hit the heights of last season, when he arrives in the box behind the striker, he’s a great finisher.

As for playing better without him, it could be argued that we were playing badly as a whole, and Commons absence was just coincidental, coming at a time when the players were finally adapting to the new Deila system.

James Forrest will be available as well, which could mean the game turns out to be one of the more entertaining this season.

Celtic drew 1-1 up at Dens Park earlier this season, a match Ronny spoke about yesterday

 “Dundee away was the worst game we have played this year, so we have something to prove after that poor performance.”

Really ?

I didn’t see it, or if I did , it has been erased from memory. The latter is more likely.

I asked someone who was at the game if he remembered it;

It appears he did.

When Ronny first arrived at Celtic Park, his ramblings to the press were often bland and uninteresting. Like this one yesterday, looking ahead to the game;

“Dundee are a well-organised team and have good togetherness. These are usually the differences between a good and bad side.” 

Hardly likely to be pinned up on the away dressing room wall and used as a motivation, and paying enough respect not to offend, while at the same time making it perfectly clear that he can’t remember a bloody thing about any of the Dundee players. Perhaps he’s erased it as well.

You couldn’t blame him.

 “Now we are ahead, having played one game fewer [than their challengers], we have the chance to put ourselves in a very good position.

“Hopefully we can continue winning games and put other teams under pressure.” 

 At least the press didn’t have to pay to get in.

 We’d all rather Deila did his talking out on the pitch, and now that he’s settled we’re beginning to see a man who is entirely at ease with the Scottish hacks, and isn’t giving them any ammunition to throw at him.

 Instead, they are just concentratiing on picking a name out of one hat , a club out of another and a number from another.

 One that came out, and never got printed, was Jo Inge Berget, to Cardiff, for £6m . This story was about to hit the back pages until the woman who brings the sandwiches round pointe dout that he was actually already their player.

 Incidentally, its not just Scottish hacks who are piss poor. The Manchester Evening News has reported on interest in John Guidetti from France in the January window. You’d think they’d know by now.

Sportsvibe, the “home of entetainment ” added more fuel to the fire;

Marseille are believed to want Guidetti to replace Andre-Pierre Gignac who is attracting interest from Premier League duo Liverpool and Newcastle.

 Guidetti joined the Etihad club in 2008 but has failed to break into the first team, leading to several loan spells at Burnley, Feyenoord, Stoke City and Celtic.

 The player who spent the majority of his childhood in Kenya qualifies to play for Sweden as his paternal grandmother is half Swedish, half Brazilian. 

More worryingly is the interest from Southampton…

Southampton are poised to launch a January bid for in-demand Man City forward John Guidetti, who has impressed on loan at Celtic.

The 22-year-old has scored nine goals in 10 games for the Hoops and they are desperate to keep the Swede on a permanent basis.
However, the fact he is out of contract at the Etihad next summer could force City to cut his season-long loan short and cash in on the youngster in the new year when the transfer window reopens.
City are believed to want just £5million for a permanent move – and that is a fee Saints would be prepared to play.
Saints boss Ronaldo Koeman had the player on loan at Feyenoord two seasons ago and made an enquiry during the summer but he eventually moved to Scotland.

 Hang on,  he did grow up in Kenya?

If you are curious, you could always look it up. I’m in a hurry today.

Oh, for f…

See if you can spot the young Guidetti in this picture;

Theres a video as well.

Guidetti in Kenya

 It doesn’t matter how many times the club come out and say its a year long loan. But once more would be nice. Its making me nervous.

Anyway, looks like we’ve got a replacement lined up. none other than Wayne Rooney, currently of Manchester United, and probably looking to get as far away as possible from that place as he can. Probably. Or probably not.

I don’t know.

 “My family and I have always followed Celtic, since I was a boy anyway, so my kids have all got Celtic kits and I always look out for the scores.

“I got asked about coming here but I’m concentrating on Manchester United and England at the moment.”

If David Murray was our chairman that would have have been a front page special;

Rooney In Plea To Celts ; 

Bring Me Home! 

 Manchester Utd superstar and England captain Wayne Rooney expressed his desire to join his bhoyhood heroes Celtic yesterday-and he told Sir Dave he can’t wait to come north !  

 Of course, if Murray had been Celtic chairman, we’d have no club to support. He had a habit of spending money thats not there, and not on the bills he’s supposed to, which led to the liquidation of the one club stupid and short sighted enough to let him anywhere near it.

 But Daves back on the scene.  He’s been in the papers, getting his tuppence worth in when Dave King, another dodgy chap, said he was due £20m from the liquidated club.

 Barcabhoy explains it better than me. Over on the Scottish Football Monitor.

• The news that Dave King stands to potentially collect £3 million from the liquidators seems to have taken a lot of people by surprise. It certainly had passed me by that he was a creditor.

  From what i can see, his claim is not included in the Duff & Phelps report to creditors . In fact unless i have missed it , its not included in any of them . Initial, interim or final .

  The claim though has now turned up I presume in the BDO report, I assume in the section that shows in excess of £20 million is claimed by Directors.

  Now a couple of things occur to me on reading this. Firstly , why is King any different to any other shareholder. Why should he be allowed to claim and Sammy the Mechanic not. At what point is the line drawn on claims. Normally equity is not protected in liquidations , at least as I understand it. Why then have BDO allowed Kings claim.

  Or

  Are they allowing it subject to a legal decision , and if so does that legal decision, if there is one , open the door for all shareholders to make a claim. King is claiming that he was not given full disclosure by Murray,and that Murray took decisions to benefit himself at the expense of other shareholders.

  All of the above seems to be somewhat shrouded , however it seems to have touched a nerve with Murray who came out with a fairly routine denial today.

  Secondly, and this is more interesting to those who believe King has been aiming at picking up the assets for next to nothing in another insolvency event.
  Now based on the data in the final creditors report from Duff and Phelps the picture below is interetsing.

  The unsecured creditors , who voted on the CVA were owed a collective total of £55.415 Million. This amount did not include the big tax case. HMRC were owed a non contested £14.372 Million . In percentage terms this equated to 25.93% , which was enough to reject the CVA.

  However if Kings claim for £20 million had been allowed by Duff & Phelps then the numbers are somewhat different . The amounts due to creditors would have been circa £75.8 million with HMRC still having voting rights over £14.372 million. This would have given them a percentage of under 19% , which wasn’t enough to cause the CVA to fail.

  This raises a couple of questions . King is clearly a Rangers man. Why therefore did we hear no screaming and shouting about his claim not being allowed for CVA voting purposes.

  If it had been allowed , he could have sided with almost everyone else, got the CVA accepted, no liquidation, no years in the wilderness, no journey from the very bottom of the Professional game in Scotland , and at worst only a one year European Ban ( i think )

  Of course that would mean he wouldn’t be in control, and would have jeapordised his chances of picking up the assets at a later stage when the company was destined to fail due to revenues falling through the floor and costs not being addressed.

  Did it suit King not to have a vote at the CVA with the opportunity to have his claim included later by liquidators. Could he have saved Rangers and chose not to do so, or was he denied any opportunity by Duff & Phelps and quietly ( unusually for him) and meekly accept this setback with good grace.

  Now that he’s back to being garrulous maybe someone could ask him .

    

 But no-one explained it better than big Bomber, and everyone just laughed at him when he asked who had the deeds….

 Murray has spoken to the press, denying everything and saying King was at all the meetings and knew exactly what was going on. Which, in turn, King has denied and reccommends that fans starve the club of their money.

 Of course, all this hullballo could be deflecting from this,

 Of course, if he truly has a warrant out for his arrest, Police Scotland will be waiting at the door for him.

 Remember, there was a warrant out for him, which became a warrrant was about to be issued, which became , well, completely forgotten as the first four arrests took place as this new festive pantomime began to take shape.

 If Whytes back on the scene, lets hope that the batteries in his tape recorder are at full strength.

The shell shocked support have another crisis on their hands, it looks like Newcastle based adult humour magazine ” Viz ” knows someone at Ashleys English club…..

 Except I get a feeling that might be photoshopped. 

 Neil Lennon, speaking to the Daily Record, has yet another reason why he left Celtic, and he’s told the paper all about it.

Oddly enough, if they’d paid as much attention to the problem of racism and sectarianism while he was in the job, instead of  running with headlines like this one

then he might not have had such a rough ride in Glasgow.

“I don’t want to paint a bad picture because it’s fantastic up there from a football point of view.

“But it does wear you down in the end.

“Maybe it was the chaos and the madness catching up with me, but I just felt desperately tired. When I was younger I was able to have the energy and courage to get through it.

“When I was getting bullets through the post and all that.

“I had good people of intelligence in the background who were looking after me. But in the end I was exhausted emotionally.

“It all caught up with me. I needed a change of scenery. Did it change me as a person? Not really, no.

 Yesterday we showed a picture of the programme from the Scottish League Cup quarter final at Kilbowie Park, where the home team proclaimed the fact that Jimmy Johnstone, of Celtic would be playing ( he didn’t-but Celts still won 5-2, before winning the second leg 6-0 a fortnight later ).

 Perhaps we could help new club Second Rangers drum up interest in the upcoming League Cup semi final, inviting their fans to come and see the Champions of Scotland .

 Whats happening here ?