Celtic Diary Thursday December 2: Groundhog Season

Celtic dropped another two points last night as referee Bobby Madden awarded a late penalty to Hearts when it looked like they were going to lose.

Throughout the game, Madden had constantly broken up play when it looked like the hoops would threaten, and the early bookings to a couple of hooped players paid dividends when he had to send them off.

Oh, hang on, that’s tomorrows diary.

What i meant to say was John Beaton awarded a late penalty to “rangers ” as they struggled to overcome Hibernian last night,

With just minutes remaining, Ryan Porteous was judged to have fouled Ryan Kent in the box, despite it being fairly evident he drew his foot back to ensure minimal contact. Kent went down quicker than a two dollar ho and Beaton appeared to think long and hard about his decision, but in reality he was just exercising a degree of control on his body which wanted to jump and dance and sing and laugh.

Even the bookies wouldn;t take bets on a late penalty for a struggling “rangers “.

It happens as regularly as the sun rise. And guess what, the sun will keep rising….

Those of you old enough to remember the last time a club from Ibrox was having, er, cash flow issues, will also remember the plethora of helpful decisions they recieved to enable them to qualify for the champions league cash cow.

You’ll remember it didn’t work, as they fell at the first hurdle and didn’t make the group stage.

If they win the league this year, they will pretty much automatically enter the group stage. Thats 40 million or so quid bouncing their way.

Not even half of what they’ve already lost in their short but hilarious history. but it’ll mean they don’t have to have any more share issues, the latest of which raised £100,000, coincidentally at exactly the same time the wages had to be paid.

Effectively, someone pumped in enough money to keep the lights on.

For another month.
Their chairman , speaking at  their recent AGM, announced that the £7.5m hole in the accounts has been filled. Another loan, which no doubt will be converted to shares , unless, of course, they reap the benefits of champions league qualification.

We’ve seen this film before, although the plot is slightly different, the theme is the same.

And guess what ? Celtic, and all the other clubs being stiffed are not interested in doing something about it.

Hundreds of thousands of fans will keep going to games, keep buying the gear and when the next instalment in the long and dark history of rule bending is written, they’ll phone Radio Stations and newspapers to make their point.

They’ll be right, but by doing that they’ll be feeding the very monster that protects the status quo.

The established sports media that refuses to acknowledge firstly that this is a new entity over at Ibrox, and secondly, that it’s already in at least as much trouble as the old one.
Their failure to investigate last time round almost destroyed the game, and this time round, a repeat of the head in the sand attitude will mean the consequences will be more dire, as the European governing bodies, and probably media, given that we now have a manager from outside these shores, will sit up and take notice.
The apathy of the Celtic support, who, because things have always been this way, are prepared to accept it is astonishing. Rebels by name and nature, they’ve stood up for cause after cause, sent money to those under oppression or facing hunger and poverty, and yet when the one constant in their lives, the one thing that has an emotional and financial attachment that is seemongly unbreakable, is threatened, from either within or without, we stand by.

Afraid that someone else will take our seat, or perhaps just , in some perverse way, actually enjoying the environment that is designed to keep us down.

Of course, we don;t help ourselves.

Come with me to the late sixties and early seventies for a moment.

Celtic were dominant in Scotland, and feared throughout Europe. In that time, a European Cup was secured with a new style of play, a new attitude on the pitch and a manager prepared to drag his club onto the world stage.

With a wee bit more support, post Milan and Feyenoord, could Celtic have become then what Liverpool are now ?

The board didn’t support the manager.

First class players were sold when the club wouldn’t support their ambition, cheap replacements were sought, and Stein himself was sidelined.

His crime ?

He wanted Celtic at the pinnacle of European football, but the board even then were uncomfortable as his dominance meant the relevance of the Old Firm brand diminished.

In the late seventies early eighties, the club that would die in 2012 became also rans, as Dundee United and Aberdeen not only mounted a challenge but maintained it.

Dundee United made a European cup semi final and a UEFA Cup final. Aberdeen won a Super cup after lifting the Cup Winners Cup.
Rangers were on their way out.

Then came Murray….

Who killed it trying to do what Celtic had done, and to a lesser extent the two northern sides.

Celtic were at the top of the tree, at home and abroad in 1975. cheated out of another European Cup final by the hatchet men pf Atletico Madrid , the board refused to match the managers ambition, and instead we saw a brief resurgence of the Old firm.

A similar thing happened in 2003.
Today, we have a board that has an equally visionary manager, who must be looking around in bewilderment at what is going on. a board which refuses to acknowledge even the perception of bias that will lead to another title heading to Ibrox, so that they can stave off an insolvency event.

The Celtic board now is acting the way the Celtic board always did.

Preservation of the Old Firm brand ahead of anything else, a glass ceiling on ambition that will remaon as long as we, the support, allow them to do so.

The longer we pay into this shite, the longer it will stink up the enviroment.

Of course, we might not drop points to Hearts tonight.

Madden might not even be the referee,.

Then again, if he isn;t down for this one now, he will be by lunchtime.

They need to be comfortably ahead of Celtic during the christmas period, otherwise the gullibilly blue pound will go on other products.

Not deodorant, not soap, that goes without saying, but not “rangers ” new orange top, or whatever else they come up with for Santa’s sack,

And they’re kind of counting on every penny.

Thats a fair old moan, and no doubt a fair percentage of the replies will be along the lines of “but what do we do ? ”

You know the answer, but you don;t want to face it.

It’s hard to break what is probably the longest ongoing relationship, emotionally and financially, in your life.

But I’m afraid thats what it’s going to take before we can go to the football again without knowing what the result will be.