Celtic Diary Saturday February 12: Trebles All Round

It’s Scottish cup weekend, and Celtic look forward to the visit of Raith Rovers, who in turn look forward to being re-admitted to civilised society now they’ve ditched David Goodwillie.

The recent fuss over Goodwillie, who had signed from Clyde where he hadn’t been sacked for his previous crime, dominated the headlines for a while. Raith stuck to their guns for a bit but when sponsors stopped the money they suddenly found a bit of moral fibre.

In no way can Goodwillie’s crime be overlooked, though he was never convicted, he lost a civil case, one does wonder about the hypocrisy of it all.

Either he’s allowed to earn a crust in football, or he isn’t.

And if thats how it is to be, there are plenty of other footballers who abuse their position as public figures who should also be banned.

What’s concerning is it took sponsors to withdraw money before any action was taken.

It’s the same at West Ham to an extent, where one of their footballers was filmed kicking a cat, and although West Ham keep fielding him, much to the delight of the cat, who is glad he’s out of the house, there’s a sense that someone somewhere needs to set an example when someone is caught behaving in this abhorrent manner.

Where Goodwillie is concerned, there has been no thought for the victim, who has been forced to relive her ordeal and that’s also wrong.

It’s difficult enough for victims of sexual predators to find a voice as it is, and this won’t help.

Men will never really understand this problem, but to get an idea of what it’s like, a fraction of what it’s like, wear a kilt in a pub full of drunk and aggressive women, and then try to complain to someone about how you’re fed up with them sticking their hand up it to see what you’re wearing.

I guarantee you’ll become more sympathetic.

As expected, the media tried to draw Postecoglou into the debate, but he deftly avoided it, and rightly so.

“It’s impossible for me to comment on it because I know if that was a club I was involved with and it was going through a situation like that, I wouldn’t like other clubs or managers commenting on it,”

As for the football, Celtic should have little difficulty in progressing to the next round, but there’s always the danger of an upset. The manager is too canny to allow complacency to set in, but then again, he’s not on the pitch.

There’s talk he will make a few changes, but in fairness he does like to rotate the squad anyway, and no one can really afford to have an off day as they won’t get another chance.

With one trophy in the bag, there’s still a chance of a clean sweep, and that means one hundred per cent tomorrow is a must.

Off the ptich, the interims are out, and that means that whatever else we say about the board, they are doing their job.

One expert was looking forward to them….

Joe black is a twitter legend, never failing to amuse Celtic fans with his rants and raves, but one can only wonder when his friends and family will undertake an intervention to help the poor fellow.

As usual, he was way off the mark… as the BBC reported, through gritted teeth..

Celtic have recorded a pre-tax profit of £27.6m in their interim results for the six months to December 2021.

Ange Postecoglou also oversaw a Europa League group stage campaign in his first few months as manager.

The men’s and women’s teams won League Cup tournaments in December and the men are top of the Scottish Premiership.

Celtic’s loss for the same period in 2020 neared £6m, during supporters’ absence from Scottish grounds amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Revenues for July-December in 2021 amounted to almost £53m and the club had cash in the bank of more than £25m at the end of the reporting period.

Postecoglou recruited 12 first-team players last summer and has signed five more for the second half of the season.

“We are optimistic about the future,” said chairman Ian Bankier. “We made substantial investments back into the player squad in order to target the football success that drives our financial success.

“In line with prior years, we expect to incur losses in the second six months of the financial year owing to the expectation of having less player trading gains, lower Uefa media right distributions and associated Uefa match ticket income, higher amortisation emanating from player acquisitions in January and seasonally lower retail income.”

Thats very healthy, and whatever else you may say about them, they know how to run a football business.

It’s just that perhaps their preferred model leaves something to be desired, such as a model that doesn’t include this lot…

Ten years ago, of course, it all went wrong, a result of financial doping, cheating and other acts described as little short of match fixing by one judge.

But money talks, and often in football morals and values are chucked to one side in pursuit of the pound, and misdemeanours and criminal acts are overlooked until that money is withdrawn.

Which is exactly where we came in……

It’s Saturday today, which means that it’s time for a new, and probably very short lived feature…. the Etims

Knob of the Week   (and a day )

As the world lurches from crisis to crisis, and great men and women step forth to avoid disaster, British prime minister Boris Johnson has declared that his country must stand to defend the rights of nations to choose their own government, free from tyranny, a speech that turned heads and dropped jaws in Scotland, Wales and Ireland, and to make a stand for dececy he sent his foreign secretary, Liz Truss, to speak on his behalf.

In Truss, he has found the only person in the world who could fuck things up more than he could.

She spoke over translators, declared she will never recognise the Russian claim to Rostov, which is just to the north of Moscow and reduced Britain to a laughing stock among serious world players.

Sergey Lavrov, an experienced negotiator said the conversation was like a mute talking to a deaf person, harsh, as at least they would try to understand each other.

Truss went to school in Paisley, and to climb the greasy pole of politics and reach one of the three great offices of state is quite an achievement, and i’m sure her old school are considering a name change…..

Here she is wondering where she left her shoes…..

Still, when she comes back to Paisley, and if they let her in, she can take comfort knowing she has achieved another great title, in fact the first ever winner of Etims

Knob of the Week   (and a day )

Yesterday, we had this….

R.St. Parsley 

 Just checking to see if your hearts still in the right place, Broonie  

Today…