Celtic Diary Monday November 3, 2025: Repeat Until Fade

Fell asleep in front of the telly yesterday afternoon, and I had the weirdest dream….

It must have been the early years of the century, Martin O’Neill was leading the team out at Hampden in what the bloke on the telly called an Old Firm semi final. 

Celtic opened the scoring through a player with two first names, obviously a poke at the establishment where we grew up learning to fear people with two surnames. 

Obviously, that meant it was time for their penalty, which was awarded when a Celtic player was falling after a push and unavoidedly had the ball hit his arms, and it was 1-1. 

Celtic seemed shaken by the intervention of the officials, and this continued as despite several assaults on hooped players, only one of them was sent off, and even then it was seen as harsh compared to what will, by the end of the week, be described as attempted murder when a Celtic collided with the Rangers goalkeeper and brushed his head with a foot. 

The game remained level, ten man Rangers obviously playing for extra time, an animated O’Neill leaping and raging on the touchline, commentators praising the plucky new club, but forgetting to mention they are a new club. Well, when I say ten man, they did have a player sent off, but still had eleven men on the pitch. and a couple of guardian angels watching over them.

Even the crowd got sounded like a voice from the past, singing about putting on the agony, chanting Martin O’Neill’s name and even singing what seemed to be 70s Boney M hit Daddy Cool. 

Extra time came, and it got even more bizarre. Instead of a Martin O’Neill pep talk we had a tactical word from Shaun Maloney, who with a shaven head looked even younger than he did when he played back then. 

Even stranger, the players listened to him, nodded, and went out and scored a couple. One , a terrific long range effort from Calum McGregor, who would normally just pass to whoever was nearest to him, and then point to his own goalkeeper. 

After the game, he told an interviewer “If you don’t shoot, you don’t score “. Surprisingly, there wasn’t a parade of pink elephants puffing on their pipes passing by in the background at this point. 

Celtic then wrapped the game up with a third, scored by a player we didn;t have until Monday, who looked, along with the man with two first names , to be the answer to all our goalscoring problems. 

Tell you what, it’s the last time I watch a game without a drink. It does things to one’s mind.

Then, I discovered that in the real world, Celtic had indeed beaten “rangers ” 3-1 to book a December 14 date at Hampden against St Mirren.

It was just like the old days though, in many ways.

Someone called Dallas had an unhealthy influence in helping his favourite team. When Celtic had an early goal chalked off for offside, he decided not to follow the rules which involve clarity about a mistake by a referee to overturn an onfield decision, and chalked the goal off. He didn;t even ask the ref to loom at the monitor to show him why.

At the “rangers ” penalty, Dallas went along with Nick Walsh’s decision because that meant they both could help their ailing heroes.

After all, a thrashing from Celtic would have pretty much put an end to any pretence that their latest messiah isn;t actually sent direct from heaven.

Other, perhaps less controversial decisions consistently broke up play when Celtic were bearing down on goal.

Only one perpetrator of a red card tackle was punished correctly, as Derek Cornelius got away with a studs up lunge on Johnny Kenny.

The mainstream narrative will surround a collision between Auston Trusty and equity member Jack Butland, when the big defenders boot brushed butland’s face, indeed “rangers ” are already reportedly demanding an explanantion as to why he wasn’t sent off, charged , convicted and deported to Canada in chains.

At this point , however, we would like to point out that we think Nick Walsh is just a piss poor referee, and not in any way connected to or receiving any influence from Ibrox. Or ever has been.

Mainstream will ignore these issues, though it will be interesting to see if referee chief Willie Collum releases the tapes of the audio on some of the more contentious decisions, and if they’ll be audible beneath the singing of a few well known tunes from his staff.

the calls for Martin O’Neill to be given some sort of supervisory role at the very least will grow this week, and if he gets a result or even just a performance against Midgetland ( Are you sure that’s their name ? -Ed  No idea, I gave up on the Europa league until last monday, but that’s what it sounded like, -Ralph )

Let’s not give up on the Europa just yet. Especially if we can swap Calum Osmond into the squad for Cameron Carter Vickers, as rules suggest we can up until matchday 6.

The performance, the result and most importantly the attitude of the players suggest that maybe Dermot Desmond was right to make the change he did, possibly before things became unsalvagable.

In an alternative world, had the Brendan Ballsup been allowed to continue, neither Kenny nor Osmand would have been on the pitch to score, Maeda and Engels would have still been unenthusiastic at best, left out at worst, Trusty wouldn’t have put in a man of the match performance and McGregor would not have launched one from distance.

Dermot might have annoyed us, and yes, undoubtedly the parting could have been handled better, but one is beginning to understand the anger, if not to condone it.

I still think at least some of you could have sung Only Maloney , though.

Dum dum dum dum doo ee ar.

way ay ay ay

On Friday, we had this…

Today…