Whilst Celtic supporters throughout the land argue about the reasons behind the collapse in the Nou Camp, and each side of the argument has valid points, which is why everyone needs to agree to agree with me, in that the team chucked it and deserve a proper kicking, a lone voice has come out in support of Brendan Rodgers, and he submits to the theory that it wasn’t all the fault of Rodgers, or indeed any of the players..

Former city trader-although there appears to be a remarkable lack of evidence for this- Mark Warburton came rushing to the aid of beleagured Brendan with these wise words,

“It’s not for me to talk about another Glasgow team or another SPFL team. 

But he’s going to, isn;t he?

But the story there should be how intense was the Old Firm game? 

Thats not actually a story, it’s a question. A story is a narrative of events which form a cohesive record of events, factual or fictional. a question is an interrogative statement designed to elicit information. As in “What the fuck are you warbling on about now, Warburton ?” Students of etymology-which is either the study of words or insects or something like that, will be well aware the the word “warbling” is derived from the old Latin word “Warburton “, meaning a person or persons who has a tendency to talk shite. For example, as overheard at a recent meeting of the Oxford University Physics society, during their sherry break;

” See that Warburton ”

“Aye ”

“He’s a bit of a Warburton, aye warbling on aboot somethin’

“Celtic and Rangers had a very intense match at Parkhead, it took a lot out of both teams. 

This explains why Warbs thought Mikael Lustig had been booked before he actually was. He was watching a different game.

They then have to travel to Spain and play one of the best teams in the world, who are smarting from a 2-1 home defeat to Alaves, a team who for the first time in 140-odd days have Neymar, Messi and Suarez back together again.

You couldn’t get more pieces going wrong.

“I’m the Rangers manager but anyone in football will tell you that’s a horrible equation coming together. Within two minutes you saw how good they can be and thought as a neutral, that’s going to be a long night. “It’s a tough place to go at the best of times without the other pieces coming together.” 


Warbs, of course knows exactly how tough it is to go to Barcelona. One time, he couldn;t find his luggage on the airport carousel, and the horror compounded when he couldn’t get a taxi from the airport. Then he found the driver couldn’t speak English, and when it came to paying the guy, he had to draw on all his experience as a city financial expert-of which there is remarkably little evidence-to avoid a cheeky attempt by the driver to rip him off to the tune of almost five euro’s.

But as Joey Barton, clint hill and Phillipe Senderos will tell you, it’s darned difficult to get money out of wily Warbs, who knows how to get value for money, what with his experince of being a city trader, something there is remarkably little actual evidence of.

As far as the Barcelona game goes, its done now. We can;t change the result, we can;t change the performance, but we can resolve never to let it happen again.

After all, if you don’t do something wrong , you’ll never know when you’re doing something right.

Maybe pinning these comments, from the spanish media, on to the dressing room wall, might help…

What was perhaps a little unexpected is just how much sections of the Spanish media have laid into Celtic players. Of course, the team from Scotland were always unlikely to outclass Barcelona at the Camp Nou but Catalan newspaper Mundo Deportivo sound genuinely annoyed with just how bad the performance was.

The player ratings for Celtic aren’t pretty anywhere in Spain, but Mundo Deportivo’s description of individual performances is blunt to say the least.

‘Dirty’ midfielder Scott Brown is said to not understand football, and to have ‘wanted a pub fight’ instead, which Ivan Rakitic politely declined.

Stuart Armstrong is labelled ‘Lu­ná­ti­co’ and it’s claimed that when he was on the pitch there was a sense of ‘What am I doing here?’.

For Kolo Toure, Mundo Deportivo say it’s never too late for a new experience and ‘At 35 he suffered probably the toughest match of his life.’

It’s all getting a bit tetchy around Scottish football these days.

Joey Barton, mentioned above as a canny and shrewd purchase by former city trader Warburton-though there’s remarkably little evidence of this-has had a bit of a rammy with his team mates and manager, leading to him being sent home fro training on Tuesday, much to the delight of the Scottish media, who finally got a story before the internet bampots, and finally dug up the courage to actually print it, as it doesn’t show the Ibrox club in a good light.

One theory is it was his turn to explain what happened to the side on Saturday, and his efforts to re enact it didn’t go down too well.

Various stories are circulating as to what happened, but as far as I can see, this appears to be the most likely…

Why would this be the most accurate version ?

Simple-it claims that notorious stool pigeon Lee Wallace was on the end of the worst of the abuse, and he wouldn’t have been able to keep that to himself, as this picture shows.. when he was asked who started it…

Of course, he was pointing to Barton. Which is evidence enough for me.

Chris Sutton and Roy Keane were also at odds over Celtics performance in the Nou Camp, with Keane accusing Celtic

“All I hear sometimes when people talk about Celtic is winning the league.

“They need to do a lot better in Europe, which is easier said than done.

“This time around it’s obviously difficult with the group they are in.

“But even in the qualifying games they were poor. They scraped through, they didn’t win any of their away games.

“The whole mind-set has to change. Don’t accept, particularly away from home, being the whipping boys of Europe. 

“A lot of these players are international players. It’s not Altrincham – it’s Celtic. They have got to do much better.

“It’s Celtic, a huge club and they need to do better. When they qualified the celebrations were way over the top.

“I thought they’d won the competition. People were hugging each other, the manager, the coaches, the players. They should be expecting to do well.

“They won 5-1 at the weekend against Rangers, one of the worst Rangers teams I’ve seen in a long time, who played with 10 men for the last 15 minutes.”

There’s nothing wrong with any of that, in fact you could even argue that it’s constructive criticism.

To which Chris Sutton replied..

 ( these are )all points made with a short sighted and unfair reflection on the current circumstances. The problem with Roy Keane is that he had such high standards during his career that he probably judges everything by them. 

It’s unfair to do that because he was absolutely brilliant. Celtic would love a team of Roy Keanes but he would cost up to £90 million in this day and age.

The problem is that the Nou Camp hammering has been taken in isolation and we need to look at the bigger picture here and what Brendan Rodgers has done in a short space of time.  

There’s nothing wrong with any of that either. sutton is right, Celtic have improved considerably, and if the only thing we have to sort out is our away form in europe, then you could claim, with a degree of accuracy, that he’s already got us to the level of performance that Martin O’Neill did…

You may not have noticed, incidentally, but Hapoel Be’er Sheva beat Inter Milan last night, 2-0 , in the San Siro…

But you know what is good ?

Reading sensible, constructive debate in the media between two guys who both have Celtics best interests at heart.

Want a bit of gossip ?

Serious enough to perhaps pass on to Police Scotland ?