Celtic Diary Friday September 4: But Can He Defend ?

Shane Duffy became the first Celtic player to score for his country before he’d even played for the club when he headed home a late equaliser for Ireland last night in their game with Bulgaria.

Thats all well and good, but can he do it from a Ryan Christie corner ?

Can anyone ?

One former Celt had a point when he tweeted

The player seems to have got a lift from joining his boyhood heroes, and if he brings that sort of enthusiasm to Celtic then it will take the weight of responsibility from Scott Brown and the pressure of being the only cheerful guy in town from Jeremie Frimpong.

Whats not to like ?

There’s still that eternal worry that sooner or later someone will be sold to pay for this shopping spree, now running into the region of fifteen million pounds, and lets be honest, its going to happen.

But it won’t be Tom Rogic, for the moment at least. His proposed move to Qatar has fallen through, but the player and his partner still want to go closer to Australia as they haven;t really settled in the land of the rain, and it’s only a temporary setback.

It might be Olivier Ntcham, who is back in the thoughts of Southampton, and of course there are Kris Ajer and Ryan Christie still to offload, although maybe Callum MacGregor will hang around for a while yet, as with David Turnbull being added to the squad, there might be something in him supplementing MacGregor as opposed to replacing him.

Scott Brown can’t go on forever, although no one wants to tell him that, and the problem seems to be that the inactivity of lockdown has made it difficult for Brown to stay as fit as he would have wanted to be.

No news on Oddsone Edouard, but it is kind of odd that he has travelled with the French under 20s. considering he has missed the last two Celtic games.

With it being common knowledge that some Celtic players have their own private physicians and trainers, maybe he just wanted a second opinion…. as this from SportsWitness seems to indicate

Celtic’s Odsonne Édouard is ‘uncertain’ for France U21’s upcoming fixtures against Georgia and Azerbaijan, according to L’Equipe.

Les Espoirs travelled to Gori on Wednesday for their tie against Georgia on Friday. They then travel to Sumgayit to take on Azerbaijan on Monday.

Although the Celtic star made the trip, he risks missing out on the tie against Georgia due to ‘discomfort in the upper thigh’, and Nice striker Amine Gouiri could take his place.

It’s claimed the 22-year-old has been receiving treatment since he arrived at the national team camp in Clairefontaine. 

Doesn’t he trust our medical guys ?

After what happened with Keiran Tierney you have to wonder….

Elsewhere, and there may yet be something else to give Peter Lawwell a headache, and fans something to cheer….

BBc Radio 4 reported yesterday that the English Premier league had terminated its contract with Chinese broadcasters Suning, creating, in the words of the Radio station, ” a black hole in Premier League finances at an already difficult time ” (paraphrasing, but that was the point ) .

At the time, I thought that would be an odd thing to do, given the contract is worth just short of a quarter of a billion pounds over three years, and it transpires I was right to be sceptical…Nick Harris @SportingIntel tweeted the facts…

The Premier League’s “termination” of their contract with Chinese rights holders Suning (PPTV) is huge, but disingenuous. The PL didn’t terminate it. The broadcaster did, in effect and in reality, which is embarrassing, expensive and dangerous to the PL. 

The deal with Suning was the biggest single non-domestic broadcasting contract in the history of the Premier League, worth $600m-$700m over 3 years, 2019-2022. And whoosh. It’s gone. Every club instantly loses £8m income a year on average cos it’s gone.

One week from the start of a new season and the Premier League has no TV deal in the most populous nation in the world. You’d imagine the PL’s biggest clubs are not massively happy about this. 

The Premier League earns by FAR the most non-dom broadcast revenue per year than ANY other sports league in the world, even after the Suning cancellation (see graphic and page 22 of http://globalsportssalaries.com/GSSS%202019.pdf). 

But it’s still a significant negative development  

Premier League diehard fans in China are split into 2 camps; those who have paid PPTV for 2020-21 subscriptions and now won’t get any games. They are furious. And those who never paid and rely on pirated streams. Both groups = massive headache for PL.

A significant number of EPL games are timed to suit the massive far eastern gambling market, and that in itself is a murky world.

In business, when one company loses faith in another, and it’s not clear why Suning have ditched the EPL, others sit up and take notice.

At the very least, it will drive the cost of the product down, and that can only mean even less money for clubs that are spending beyond their means, as not only will they be directly affected, the indirect consequence of les viewers means less advertising and that, in turn means less money for them to spend on Celtic players…

We might not be able to sell anyone at all if the trend continues.

And as for Alfredo Morelos, he might as well buy a house in Glasgow and get used to the fact he’s going nowhere.

The media have been congratulating that lot again, with their man Stewart Robertson praising the support for buying all the available season books, although there is yet again a hole or two in his caterwauling….

“I have been continually astonished by the passion and loyalty that our supporters show our club.

“Time and again, our supporters surpass expectations, may that be for retail purchases, MyGers or now, season tickets.

In the midst of the enormous doubts around the club/companies inability to trade solvently its even more astonishing.

“As we approach our 150th year, Rangers fans demonstrate their unrivalled loyalty to our club once again.” 

Not quite loyal enough to save their club when it died, although in fairness no one actually asked them to, which makes me even more sceptical of the motives behind the New Entity Scandal….

Theres something that needs looking into…did the Gallant Venture Capitalists decide to bump the club before they invested their pound ?

Still, with Celtic moving into the new market for facemasks, such as these….

..the Ibrox club/company have yet again follow followed their lead, with this one that actually makes it look like the wearer isn’t wearing one….

Meantime, they’ve found another way of demonstrating that they miss the good old days of open and total warfare….

Today, we honour the Merchant Navy. The brave men and woman who kept goods moving to and from Britain during the world wars. We also celebrate the modern merchant seafarers who are responsible for 90% of UK imports. #MerchantNavyDay

But when will they honour the brave lads who welded and riveted their way to victoey, without whom the Merchant Navy would have had to swim to the USSR with the supplies strapped to their backs ?

Then again, it probably won’t be long.

Yesterday, we had this…

Today…