Celtic Diary Saturday January 2 : The Just Got Up Edition

Happy New Year.

A New Year-A New You!

Or identity theft, as the charge sheet will read.

And a big thank you to the SPFL for making todays game go ahead at 3pm for those of us who have trouble aligning their body clock to 2016.

So, todays diary is a little late, but what it lacks in punctuality , it will try to make up for with news, views , wit and humour.

Well, we’ll try.

There were renewed calls for the resignation of Ronny deila as the transfer window moved into its thirteenth hour of activity, with no new sugnings, hardly any fresh rumours which, compounded with the news that potential rivals Basket Of Assets FC had prised Harry Forrester from Doncaster, a promising winger who just hasn’t found the right club yet.

With the Warburton warchest already opened and cash flying in all directions, the pressure is on Ronny to counter with a few big names of his own, and he’s been publicly working on a deal for Aiden McGeady, once the darling of the Celtic support until they realised he didn’t actually do a a great deal the last time he was here.

“We would not be able to pay the salary that McGeady is on at the moment,” Deila said of the winger’s current pay deal, which is reportedly €60,000 per week.

“The difference is so unbelievably big that there is no chance. Our wage structure would be broken 10 times over if we did that.

“We have tried before to get that type of player, but they get three times the salary at other places.” 

Will Dermot Desmond dip into his pocket and make up the difference, like he did with Robbie Keane ?

Ronny doesn’t know.

I don’t know what Dermot (Desmond) did before – you’d need to talk with him about that – but we’d need to have the opportunity to buy him (McGeady). That’s an important thing for us,”

“Maybe with players like McGeady, who has been here before, when he reaches the end of his career he’ll want to come back again.

“That’s possible but I haven’t talked with him about that.” 

Hang on, what has he talked with him about ?

The side is lacking in experience, but its a leader we need, and McGeady doesn’t fall into that category.

A New Year  means that we can look forward, do things differently, and that rules out taking back players who have clearly lost interest in the game.

One of my mates has made two resolutions, he going to wash his hands after he goes to the toilet from now on, and he’s going to talk less while he cuts peoples hair.

You see, this time of year we should be looking to improve ourselves.

Celtic host Partick in the big Glasgow derby, and hopefully all the players are fit, none of them are having problems with their body clocks, and they have been working on their focus and concentration.

And, with Celtic not having won since October 31 at home, theres room for improvement there as well. We used to be invincible in the east end of Glasgow, now we are , well, struggling.

Ronny knows there is a problem, and wants to sort it out.

‘It’s very important, especially in Europe. If you go through the history of home games, they are important.

‘If you look at the last 30 away games in Europe you can count on one hand the wins. It’s about home – that’s Celtic’s biggest advantage, to have 60,000 fans.

‘We have to make Celtic Park a castle. Last year at the end we were very hard to beat. We beat Inverness 5-0 and I enjoyed what I was seeing.

‘The first-half against Malmo too we were good and if we’re like that we are hard to beat especially with the crowd with us. We become hard to break down. That’s why we want to turn around the home form – starting with Saturday.’

Asked about current form, and the perhaps lackadaisical lollygagging that appears to be the current style at celtic, ronny appeared a little depressed, and had to be prevented from bursting into tears;

‘I think we have just been in a bad period. We haven’t played great,’ he admitted. ‘Away as well. Sometimes you have to put your hand up and say we were not great away at St Johnstone.

‘We won up at Inverness and were not great there. We have had a period where we have not performed as well as we can. Against Hearts I saw the team I saw some months ago. There was high energy and forward runs and it’s a total thing.

‘But we have been taking points with us and at home we had games where we won 6-0 or 5-0. We smashed some teams but lately we have not been creating enough.

‘That’s because things are going too slow and not going in the direction where the goals stand. That’s when we have to do more.

‘Away from home we can attack more space. It’s easier to create something yourself but Celtic Park is big and it should suit us. We have only lost one game in the league in 10 months, it’s not so bad. But it could be better.’ 

Are the crowd affecting the players ?

‘It has nothing to do with that – at least it shouldn’t We love playing football and this is a small thing. ‘It’s about the defence – it starts with being switched on and have good reactions. If you can’t win the ball then tuck back and try to create a situation where we can win the ball.

‘When you intercept the ball in a good situation you can drive forward. When you always go back to the goalkeeper you will always have 11 men behind the ball and we need to increase the tempo.

‘When we play well there’s a good atmosphere inside Celtic Park but when you don’t then you get them after you and I can understand that.’

‘I think we have to improve things Not change them. We need to look at small details.

‘We look at the same things in training and they have to see the effect of the small things we do. They have to fight as a team and show the spirit from Hearts. I saw a team there that was hungry and who pushed them right back. We kept them under pressure.

‘You can’t do that for 90 minutes but if we do that for the first 20 minutes on Saturday then Partick will have problems.

‘We have to start well and put them under pressure and keep discipline then they will open up by the end.’

Or, of course, you could take a deep breath, and start smashing heads together.

Theres only one way to deal with lollygaggers, and its not by being nice to them.

Time to stop the tail wagging the dog.

Nothing less than a convincing win this afternoon will put the doubters at ease.

Celtic will be without Stuart Armstrong, Scott Brown, Dedryck Boyata, Charlie Mulgrew and Derk boerrigter, The first four are injured and the latter is currently having his picture taken for a free to good home advert on ebay.

From whats left ronny should be able to pick a side that can deal with Partick. thats the bottom line.

Otherwise he might find the pressure becoming unbearable.

Over on the other side of Glasgow, the man currently in charge of a basket of assets has spoken out about the pressure and criticism he’s had from the fourth estate, which as far as I can see, is the first sign that he’s having a bit of a wobble himself;

“There were comments which frustrated us Lots of comments about us having no spine which I thought was hugely disrespectful statement to us at the top of the league.

“Certain media outlets saying that, and we’ll remember those comments and use those comments. They were ill judged and in my mind totally incorrect but we answered them against Hibs.

“The media in Scotland is very different. You get warned about it and you get to learn about it very quickly and interesting I think is the word.

“It’s about how you deal with that. It is what it is. You expect criticism, if we lose or draw you expect it, but when comments get personal and refer to having no spine and being exposed I think you have to respond.

“You can’t fail to read it. You take it for what it is 95% of the time, but I think sometimes when the words are inappropriate you have to respond.

“We use that with the players and they were as irate as we were and it sharpened focus even more and we delivered an appropriate response.” 

Warburton , for it was he , is looking ahead to the rest of the season, and whatever it brings now that there has been more investment in his club.

Remember that £5m loan ? From Mike Ashley ? That they borrowed to pay off another loan to Mike Ashley ?

Well, thats been sorted now as two more real rainjurs men have stepped up to help the not so real Rainjurs, and the big bad man from the north east won’t be bothering them any more.

Or something like that.

Why they just didn’t get the bank to extend their credit…oh wait… I’ve remembered..

The new investment certainly seems to have cheered at least one prominent supporter, who is still a little perturbed that he may have been  duped in the past.

And another .perhaps less prominent supporter, reminded the civilised world why we really don’t want them back with this heartfelt post on a supporters website; 

As today is New Year’s day it is as good a time as any to look back and see where we were as a club fifty years ago. It goes without saying that things were very different, but do we really appreciate just how different times were? Fifty years ago a Rangers supporter could say what he wanted, sing what he wanted and within reason, do what he wanted. 
Contrast that with today’s sinister atmosphere of Big Brother and Scotland’s very own thought police who have Rangers constantly in their sights. 

Fifty years ago Rangers was a hugely respected football club both within and without Scotland. Its players and officials from the patrician John Lawrence right down to the ball boys embodied the Scottish Protestant work ethic, where self discipline and fair play were the name of the game. The stories about Rangers players observing a strict dress code were not just stories but true in fact. Even sartorial elegance was important at Rangers, the message was clear to one and all, don’t besmirch the name of the club. Those few Rangers players who transgressed the rules were promptly sent on their way without any further ado.

The typical Rangers fan was a white working class Protestant. He would have been employed meaningfully in actually making real things, unlike the mickey mouse ‘service industries” which now make up so much of our present day economy. Rangers meant hard graft, honest sweat and a release of pent up energy on a Saturday (every Saturday) and at three o’ clock!. The impact of Skye was nowhere in sight as the football authorities and clubs determined when and where they would play, rather than some faceless executive of a multi-national communication business.
There was no Scottish assembly nor was there the array of pressure groups which abound in modern Scotland, many of which seem to have a hatred of Rangers as their sole raison d’etre. Furthermore, there was no rapid tele communication, when just having a heavy black telephone in your house seen as a sign of affluence in a sea of poverty.
The internet has given rise to a series of bloggers (mainly strange obsessed individuals who spend much of their sad existence following the fortunes of a club they hate) who had they been located fifty years ago would have been institutionalized for the good and safety of society.

There was a tacit understanding then that Rangers were the natural leaders, their size and achievements put everybody firmly in their place. All clubs feared and envied Rangers, their will power and sheer determination to win seen as the template for others to copy. 

Within the Scottish media respect was afforded to Rangers, this was a time when Scottish journalists wrote about they saw, rather then what they wanted to see. Any attempt to blacken the name of Rangers would be met face on by John Lawrence and his associates and given short shrift.

And Celtic? They were nothing, constantly humiliated. The average Celtic supporter who ‘sought’ work had few educational qualifications and worked (if he felt inclined) as an unskilled labourer. Managerial and supervisory posts were way beyond his reach. Lack of a decent education rather than religious discrimination was therefore the reason for his plight. Catholics were disproportionately over represented in the prison population and unemployment benefit claimants.
Catholics sought a separate apartheid form of education which entrenched their suspicions and fears of mainstream Scottish society. In self-imposed isolation they viewed Rangers with a curious mixture of hatred and admiration.It was here at this embryonic stage, that the future generations of Bernadettes and Declans would roll of the bigoted assembly line ready to subvert the very society which had fed, clothed and educated them.

Rangers held the whip hand in the fifties and sixties. So what went wrong? Two things in my opinion. Society changed rapidly especially in the eighties and nineties. Society lost a lot of belief and faith in the nation’s institutions. The church lost its way and that was most evident than in the Kirk. The descendants of Calvin and Knox should hold their heads in shame. From a robust defender of the faith, the nation’s church was bequeathed to a group of limp wristed apologists who sought to ‘accommodate’ other faiths. At a political level, the once strong Conservative AND unionist party of Scotland shrunk to zero. Aligned to this was an alarming rise in the SNP, the republican wing of Celtic. Their aim was simple, break up the union and get full independence. For this to happen, you have to have two groups of people doing two different things. One group does nothing, switches off either through apathy or ignorance, unaware of what is unfolding before their very eyes. It is to this group that most of my anger is directed towards because they have betrayed their heritage and legacy.
The other group is the complete opposite, they have a very clear but narrow agenda with fixed objectives. Get political control at local level with the district council. When that is achieved move onto the national stage. To achieve these political objectives they realized that control of the media is necessary. Institutions like the BBC which was once largely neutral in sporting matters has adopted an active anti-Rangers agenda. At local radio the effect is equally corrosive with the constant drip drip of anti-Rangers bile. The number of hostile ‘journalists’ in the written medium seems to have mushroomed in recent years. The catholic university educated intelligencia has coupled itself to the liberal media in one hell of an unholy alliance. So what is their overriding agenda?

Nothing less than the total destruction of Rangers football club, there can be no other possible explanation for their concerted, merciless pursuit of Rangers football. Their hatred of our great club precludes any rational analysis on their part. This is not paranoia, we leave that to others! It has been gratifying that finally a large number of Rangers supporters have belatedly woken up to their game. No where was that seen more than last Sunday’s game at Ibrox against Hibs. The atmosphere generated by the crowd really did evoke the grand days of the sixties when the anthems were sung with gusto and passion. Make no mistake, they heard the lion roar and they shat themselves. What other possible explanation could there be for the amount of critical articles that came out like rats crawling from a sewer.

We are very much alive and well and reports of our demise have been exaggerated.Roll on 2116 when Rangers will be the only show in town. Have a goo New Year, and yes we are the people!