Celtic Diary Monday August 9: Hello Celtic, Missed You

Any doubts that the Angera would bring a return to total football at Celtic Park were swept away yesterday as the hoops stormed to a 6-0 win over Dundee.

And frankly, it could have been a lot more.

Perhaps Dundee were tired after their 1-0 win over “rangers ” on Saturday, or perhaps they just weren’t very good, but the fact of the matter is Celtic didn’t give them a chance to show us if they were any good.

The style mooted by manager Postecoglou isn’t fully operational yet, but yesterdays performance and result shows the players are doing what he asked, they’re doing it the way he’s asked and they’re getting the result he told them they would.

Maybe we should calm our jets as it was only Dundee, but it doesn;t matter who you’re playing if you don’t let them have the ball.

Kyogo Furuhashi continued his astonishing start to life on the other side of the world with three exquisitely finished goals, before the manager replaced him as the transfer window is still open and , well, with this board you never know.

He’s the first Celt to score a hat trick on his home league debut since one of the Maley’s did it in the clubs first game. An astonishing fact, if it actually is a fact. We don’t bother checking that sort of thing on here.

Even Tom Rogic scored, even Oddsone Edouard scored, albeit a penalty and after a row with Liel Abade who wanted to take it himself after he , as we used to say at school, caused it.

Tony Ralston scored a goal..again..that any striker would have been proud of, and if anyone is symbolic of the wind of change currently roaring through Celtic Park, it’s him.

He’s doing as he’s told, when he’s told to do it, and reaping the rewards. He may not be the glamorous big money signing we crave, but the improvement is vast, and if it continues then we might have saved a few quid.

All in all, we can be happy about how things are going, and have few complaints.

Who knows, we might even get the 7-0 the diary used to harp on about back in the Brendan Rodgers days.

Having said that, I’m refusing to get carried away, and it is still early days. This could be a trophy laden season, although it’s too late to enter Wimbledon and I’ve no idea when the boat race is.

One interesting aspect of the game was the relentless urge to keep scoring, evident against Jablonec when Ryan Christie put his head where boots normally go to score the fourth.

That gung ho attitude is regarded by some as unprofessional and unnecessary, as when a game is won a game is won and it can be adjudged a little naive to risk injury, or the sort of scenario we had many years ago against Partizan Belgrade or more recently Hamburg under Tommy Burns.

The Angera is about entertainment, though, and lord knows we have been starved of that lately.

By the way, we said we’d keep an eye on the referees this season, and it’s worth noting that there were a few robust tackles that went unpunished yesterday, and if we didn’t call them out last weekend for fear of being accused of sour grapes, then there can be no excuses for mentioning it this week…

Then again, such is the level of adrenaline in players just now, they probably wouldn’t notice if one of the opposition players jumped into his car and ran over them as they raced in on goal.

Neither would the referee, come to think of it.

In Postecoglou, we have a manager who not only knows what he wants, but has the personality and communication skills to pass that on to the players.

Since he was linked with Celtic after the Eddie Who fiasco, nothing that he’s done since he got here has been a surprise.

Whats important is he has complete faith in himself and his ideas, and unlike previous managers, feels no need to have his ego massaged.

He already knows how good he is.

And has complete faith in his own mind…in exactly the same way Steven Gerrard hasn’t….

https://twitter.com/i/status/1424406403200999426

With three sides, Aberdeen, Hearts and Hibernian leading the league on maximum points from two games, it might be that our main rivals for the title will come from outside Glasgow, as opposed to the usual suspects, who come from outside reality.

It seems all is not well over the river, with their only new signings failing to make an impression, or even do an impression of a professional footballer.

Players are leaving, players once hailed as world beaters, a bit like their current new signings…

Their key men from last season haven;t started this season yet, and one wonders what the real problem is, and with their chairman Stewart Robinson already at odds with the governing body again, there is the feeling that the squirrels are airborne again…

And this could be their darkest hour since, well, the last one.

Already heavily in debt and now facing an early exit from the sunlit uplands of the champions League, they’re having a moan about the piss poor sponsorship deal that was agreed with second hand car lot Cinch, hardly a global brand and at £8m for four seasons…or whatever it is….it’s mere pennies compared to virtually every other deal in every other league.

Robertson may well just be firing his bullets before the realisation dawns that the reason no one wnats to put their name to Scottish football is largely down to the toxicity of his own club/company and the moral and financial flexibility of the SFA/SPFL.

With the recent loan from the Scottish government requiring accounts to be made public, and attachments as to what it can be used for fairly strict, you get the feeling that when they recently settled one or two outstanding debts withClose Brothers, they may well have borrowed from Peter to pay Paul…

Oh, in this context “Peter ” isn’t Peter Lawwell…he did more than his fair share to keep the club/company afloat, and isn;t in a position to help any more.

With Celtic certainly benefiting from having fans back in the ground yesterday, one can only wonder how the fragile Ibrox players will handle their return game with Malmo in front of a support that at best isn’t happy unless it’s winning, and if things don’t go their way immediately in that game, Then there’s a real possibility of collapse as the game goes on…

Me ?

Well, I think it’s just fine….eveything is just fine and dandy.

Whilst our media will ensure that goings on at Ibrox remain a bit of a mystery, we’d like to ask for your help to clear something up from Celtic Park yesterday.

Is this guy trying to take pigeons into the ground ?

Or have the outside caterers been struggling due to the shortage of lorry drivers ?

Yesterday, we had this….

Today…