Celtic Diary Friday May 22: For Sale: Everybody !

Well, if you believe what you read in the papers, everyone is already lined up for a summer move.

This  new policy, designed to encourage sales of season books , involves renting players on a week to week basis throughout the season so that supporters will want to turn up not knowing who Ronny will pick until an hour before kick off. In fact, we won’t even know who is on the club’s books until then.

Nir Bitton is the latest to be the subject of bids from a cash rich, quality poor English side as Sunderland look to avoid a relegation battle next year as well. Regardless of the fact that Dick Advocaat hasn’t even said if he’s going to hang around in the north east, the papers have recorded a bid of around £5m being prepared.

The Express had a club insider saying;

“Nir Bitton’s outstanding display against Inter Milan in the Europa League in February really brought him to our attention and we have been impressed with his consistently strong performances in the Scottish Premiership.”  

The Record repeated the story, and the quote-you’d think they would have had a source who said that they had been watching him since he was fifteen, or something, – was repeated verbatim, but hack andrew McInnes went one further and said that Mitchell Dijks , the Willem II left back they linked us with is now going to ajax, or Feyenoord, or retiring and taking up potting plants, and consequently we should all be devastated.

Aye, okay.

Am I the only one a little suspicious of the motives here ?

As Celtic push the sales of season books, with some success, we hear, the papers have us selling our players. Celtics PR man, Ian Jamieson maintains that the club generally gets a good press coverage, but one wonders if he misses some of the more underhand tactics….

Remember the periodic articles on the Murray Park conveyer belt ? How the future was assured, and a procession of talented youngsters would be nurtured into top class professionals who would perform at the higest level ?

Well, you’d think there’d be someone ready to do a story on these guys….

Further proof that the Ronny Revolution is taking hold throughout all levels at the club came last night when Stevie Frails under 17s swept aside Second Rangers 5-2 in the youth cup final.

Frail, who deserves a lot of credit for instilling on a day to day basis what is now required from players , was jubilant;

“I’m so happy. We have always won the cup on the back of the league and it we lost our league title this year which was tough.

“But I know how much effort the players put in every day in training and it’s always nice to finish the season on a high by winning a cup against Rangers, which makes it a lot sweeter and I’m so pleased for the players.

“The pressure was more on us and they probably felt that. We had lost our last game against Rangers at Lennoxtown. It was a disappointing result, though the performance was ok.

“We were setting standards on the 6-1 win at Murray Park earlier in the season, which we based a lot of the preparation on for this week. You saw the fruits of it. We can play better but I’m not taking anything away from the performance which was excellent.

“We showed a bit of character. We scored first which took some of the pressure off us a wee bit but then we conceded right away, but we dug in and got good goals before half-time which we needed.

“We can play a lot better. It’s a big wide open pitch and you could see the fatigue setting in as they have had such a hard season but I’m so chuffed for them all.”

 There was praise for man of the match Aiden Nesbitt, who scored three and probably left the Ibrox left back wondering if he should have taken that job at Tesco after all;

“Even taking the hat-trick out of it, he was excellent He was a threat going forward and he was an outlet for us all the time, causing their young left-back a problem. He did it in the semi-final as well. That’s what people want to come and see and for him to score a hat-trick at a national final is brilliant.

“I can’t single anyone out as I felt all of them were terrific. We brought a squad of 21 and it’s hard as I have four or five kids sitting in the stand and are devastated not be playing.

“But they enjoyed it like the rest of them and I would like to pay testament to their attitude and how they conducted themselves when the team was announced.

“It was hard listening to Rangers winning the cup against Hearts last year and it’s where you want to be involved,”

“Although we won the league last season, and that’s the main thing we set out to do every year, there is something special about winning a cup at the National Stadium. We go into the summer on a high now and look forward to coming back next season. Everything about it is brilliant.”  

When we hear Ronny talking of trimming the squad to around 21 players, the rest being made up of youngsters, it’s good to see that there is now a realistic chance of Celtic having a large core of young players that have come through the ranks to the first team.

Sky News have a report on the game, which includes the goals, and seriously, the movement is so similar to the way the first team plays, the control so much better than you would expect that it’s made me wish i’d watched the game now.

Frail spoke of the character of the team in that passage, and thats an important asset at any level. Kids can start to believe the things they read about themselves, and often are lost to the game not because they can’t play, but because they aren’t properly mentored.

Watching the lads lift the cup, you could see a team spirit that means the job of moving Celtic forward is well underway.

So, a new man with fresh ideas comes in, changes the way everyone thinks, changes the way the team plays, with the emphasis on attacking , entertaining football, insisting that players are extremely fit, bringing through his own players the way he wants them, ably assisted by an excellent coaching staff….

I’m sure I’ve seen that film before somewhere….

Ach, maybe i’m getting carried away here….

Then again, maybe i’m not.

 You see, all of this should be in the papers.

They have reporters who are specifically employed to report on all things Celtic, and surely if you want to sell those papers to the Celtic support, this is the sort of thing they want to read, and so therefore it would follow that editors would encourage good news.

 Some Celtic fans have only the papers, and the broadcast media , to supply their “fix ” of Celtic news, so you could argue it’s a captive audience and it doesn’t matter what you print.

 But they are still losing readers, largely because they cannot compete with tv, the  internet and social media in what has become a twenty four hour industry.

 A daily publication therefore has to rely more on opinion pieces, as they can no longer realistically break stories, but the problem is that those on whom they rely for opinions are those least qualified to deliver.

 In short, they don’t know how to compose a neutral article, which considers all the facts before showing how they arrived at their conclusion.

 They start with a conclusion and kind of move the facts around to suit them.

And thats why they are dying.

 Former manager Neil Lennon, presumably bored at Bolton, has revealed the advice he gave to Ronny Deila before the League cup game against Second Rangers;

“My advice beforehand was to just win it. In Old Firm games the result is everything. If you can also do it in style then great. But ultimately it’s about winning.” 

We hear Ronny has his number on speed dial in case he needs to know anything else, such as should he eat something if he’s hungry.

For every “down ” story about Celtic this week, there’s been an “up ” story about the club on the other side of the river who have yet another new owner/chairman who is going to put them back where they belong.

 Thats what will happen, if they don’t find some money soon, but I don’t think thats what Dave King, the latest in a line of successful businessmen means when he says it;

Rangerssupportersloyal had a man watching the tv interview with King and murray;

Just watched STV coverage of Dave King and Paul Murray press conference at Ibrox today.

Watch is the key word hear as both of them colluded to say absolutely nothing and their eyes and body language told the truth, they plan to invest zero in Rangers.

Dave King was asked how much he was planning to invest immedately and he said he didn’t have a specific figure in mind adding “I have already lost £20 million, so I’m not about to impact anything.” His words tailed off and were lost as he avoided to say “inheritance.”

Murray said that £1.5m had already been invested, £1.5m more was coming shortly, and it was “for short term business needs. “

That is, to pay the bills.

They both commented on the fans not buying merchandise in the previous large quantities (Murray said that years ago Rangers retail sold 500,000 shirts, today that figure was 50,000). So the fans don’t like the retail deal; both failing to add that it was their insistence that the the fans boycotted retail, a boycott they themselves promoted as part of their anti-previous board and anti-MASH propoganda and spin, thereby depriving Rangers of vital cash flow from match day merchandise sales,season and match day tickets etc.

The fact that nothing came out of this press conference of any substance is a real disappointment given all the pre-EGM bluster of promised and committed multi-milion pound investments.

This is not very good at all, in fact it’s very bad for Rangers and although I had hoped for better – a real paradigm shift – it looks like all those including myself who didn’t buy into Kingco many months ago or never have were 100% correct. Here presented to the media paraded for all to see today is the situation we the real Rangers supporters feared – Kingco are not planning or intending to invest the significant monies required in Rangers to stabilise the club and take it forward to it’s rightful place at the top of Scottish football and beyond!

With King and Co at the helm the club will be allowed to stutter along, drip fed some money as and when required on the assumption that the fans will dig deep over the summer(share issue/season tickets/some strips) and thereafter to sustain what will be a poor shadow of Rangers, a weakened Rangers just making up the numbers in the SPFL (assuming the team succeeds on Saturday and again over two games next week).  

Thats a supporters view, probably not a popular one, but compare it to a slavering article from Gary Ralston, in the Record;

THEY may have toiled all season to climb from the Championship but Dave Kinginsists the balance sheet at Ibrox is Champions League.

King arrived in Scotland on Tuesday and will be appointed Rangers chairman today as the job of rebuilding the Ibrox club on and off the field continues in earnest.

Former chief executive Derek Llambias and finance boss Barry Leach were both axed yesterday, without the pay-off they craved, leaving the way clear for King to appoint a new executive team.

Llambias and Leach may yet seek legal recourse but King is relaxed about the prospect, viewing it as part of an ongoing strategy in dealing with issues relating to Sports Direct from which he will not flinch.

The club’s short-term financial future has been secured with another £1.5million from the Three Bears and a similar sum from King to keep the gas on in Govan and the gas guzzlers running at Murray Park.

The club will need additional financial support from season- ticket holders and key investors in the coming months to fund a rebuilding strategy that will see players of Premiership quality arrive over the summer, even if Rangers fail to get past Hibs and Motherwell in the play-offs.

In the medium term a share issue will also be launched as King again reiterated he is willing to commit the thick end of £30m from his family trust, most likely over four years, to help his boyhood favourites back to the big time  

Then he quotes King, who contradicts himself immediately;

Now if you look at Rangers, even in terms of the financials, we are in an incredibly strong 
position. We have shareholders who can fund it and it has virtually no debt. How many clubs in the world don’t have debt?

“For any football club our balance sheet is incredibly strong. We are one of the strongest clubs in the world financially.

“How many clubs are sitting with £5m of interest-free debt and that is all they’ve got? We got the fans, we’ve got the season-ticket money, we’ve got the stadium, everything all paid for. There’s not many clubs in that position. We’re incredibly strong financially at the moment.”

Ralston doesn’t even pull him up on it , instead he continues…

Rangers may finally have a balance sheet that sparkles but Johannesburg-based King, fresh from being named fit and proper by the SFA, addressed the media yesterday from a Blue Room whose windows were streaked with dirt.

It’s happening again.

 The media pursue an agenda that paints everything at Ibrox is rosy, and everything at Celtic Park is just a couple of days away from meltdown.

 Perhaps if they did it the other way round people would start to trust them again, and might even buy their papers. Perhaps if they came to a conclusion after examining the evidence things would change. But they won’t, or can’t do that. Instead they print what they think will sell papers, despite the evidence that it isn’t.

 The truth might hurt, but until you face a problem head on, you’ll never solve it. and if you take it further and ignore the problem, it will devour you.

By doing exactly the same thing they did when Murray was there, when Whyte came in, and when Green came in, the press are guaranteeing exactly the same result now King is in.

 How can they not see that ?

 I don’t care if the new Rangers come up to the Premier League or not.

 What I do care about is the way  the game is being run  by corrupt and incompetent authorities, supported by a compliant media while all the time the supporter, who indirectly pays their wages, is being , to coin a phrase, being kept in the dark and fed a load of bullshit.

That was all a bit glum, so her’s a we story from Football 365.

 Many years ago, the Arsenal squad were out on the beer, and got into an argument with some US Marines, which ended in a car chase that only stopped when Charlie Nicholas threw a bottle of vodka through the windscreen of the car carrying the marines, causing it to crash.

 More bizarrely, Arsenal boss George Graham was woken the following morning with news that charges of attempted murder were being levelled at his players…

 Brilliant story, obviously not true. Is it… ?

Now, whats this chap saying to his good lady… ?