Celtic Diary Sunday January 19

Friend of mine from down here rang me yesterday. He was in Govan and looking for directions to Ibrox -some sort of ghoulish idea he had to look at the place.
“Easy enough,” I said. ” Tube for Kinning Park underground station and when come  out , just follow your nose. ”

Celtic continued on their run of domestic supremacy yesterday with a convincing and at times entertaining 3-0 win over challengers Motherwell. Kris Commons got his usual early goal to send howls of anguish around bookmakers, before following it up with a penalty after referee Bobby Madden finally gave a decision in the home teams favour.

In the second half a superb finish from Stephen MacManus completed the scoring. It was the big defenders first goal for the hoops in a couple of years, but thats because he doesn’t play for us any more.

Anthony Stokes got himself a round of applause for a great tackle on Keith Lasley which resulted in a red card and immediate elevation to legendary status, as the general feeling around was that Lasley had it coming. Whatever “it ” is.

Which, reading Motherwell boss Stuart McCalls comments, was what he thought it was all about.

“My initial reaction was just for the wellbeing of my captain because I thought it was a bad, bad tackle.

“I wasn’t up in arms trying to get him sent off. I just felt with the depth of our squad, we don’t carry a great deal of players and I thought it looked like a tackle that would put Lasley out for weeks, if not months.

“Fortunately, it’s not done that. I haven’t seen it again. I felt it warranted a red card.”

“I think there is bad blood towards Las from everyone that comes to this ground.

“If you remember last time out here there was a collision with Matthews that was accidental but that put him out. So I think the Celtic fans probably think back to that.”

Accidental ? Lasley seems to have a lot of accidental collisions every time he visits Celtic Park.

Lasley admits he was glad he was able to ride the tackle.

He said: “I have maybe been fortunate in the fact that my foot was off the deck. But I am not going to be moaning about it, it is part of the game.”

Fair enough, I suppose. It is part of the game. If you hand it out, you have to be able to take it as well.

Neil Lennon was happy enough with the performance, as it seems, were most of the support;

“That’s the best we’ve played at home in the league this season,” Lennon told BBC Scotland. “Coming off the back of the break, I was worried they might be a bit rusty, but the first-half performance was fantastic.

“I’ve got to give credit to Motherwell. They made a game of it,” he admitted. “They were positive and it made the afternoon an entertaining game to watch, the supporters were fantastic and it was a great crowd today. All round, it’s been a very good day.”

He also went out of his way to play down speculation linking him with the norwich job ;

“It’s just speculation,” said Lennon, “but I think they won today so I’m delighted for Chris, I think he’ll be safe for another while. He’s doing a good job there and keeping them out of the bottom three. I cannot help the speculation, I’m flattered, but he’s a good man and a good manager in that job.”

Kris Commons wants him to stay as well;

“No [we don’t want him to go anywhere],” Commons said. “But as you say, it is just speculation. The more we do, the more the manager is going to be linked with various jobs. It is probably the crunch time of the season when there are going to be ins and outs with managers at teams not performing as well. Our manager is certainly one of the best in the country, so he is going to be linked with many more, I think.”

” Now can I have that new deal ?”

Alright, I added the last bit.

After complaints about the quality of cuisine on offer in and around Celtic Park, a new Fish bar has been added to the Jock Stein stand.

Its not as overpriced as you would expect, ( though hardly cheap )and I suppose given that its only open a couple of times a week, they have to make a living. It all depends on the quality , I guess.

But if it means less of the foodshacks outside the ground, then I’m all for it.

Theres an outstanding and thought provoking article from Ewing Graham in todays Telegraph, which might just mean that the MSM is starting to break ranks.

“Rangers manager Ally McCoist has blamed rogue traders, whose investment in Ibrox was solely for short-term gain, for the club’s current plight.

Embarrassed and saddened by the fact that chief executive Graham Wallace had to ask the players in midweek whether they would accept a 15 per cent reduction in their wages – an offer they felt able to refuse – McCoist has come to a conclusion many independent observers reached a long time ago, namely that many of those investors were interested only in their profits and completely unconcerned by Rangers’ losses.

Venture capitalists do what they do: they make money not by providing jobs or generating wealth for others but by exploiting vulnerable companies and individuals. Rangers was a prime case.

Sir David Murray, the prime mover in the club’s downfall, bought success with the Bank of Scotland’s money but, when Lloyds took over that failing institution, he could no longer depend on his cronies to continue extending credit with which to fund his lavish spending.

The new fiscal prudence at Lloyds and his decision to sign players he could not afford, brought Rangers to their knees. He then claimed to have been duped by Craig Whyte when he sold the club to him in 2011.

Within a year Whyte – who had sold four years’ worth of season tickets to an outside agency in order to pay off the £18 million debt to Lloyds – had driven Rangers over a cliff, wilfully withholding tax deducted from staff salaries and refusing to pay bills in order to keep the club running. They were plunged into administration in February 2012 and ceased to exist in June of

that year. However, a new consortium fronted by Charles Green was given exclusive rights by administrators Duff & Phelps to buy the business and assets of the old club for £5.5 million that summer.

A share issue 13 months ago raised £22.5 million which, like Green and his colleagues such as Imran Ahmad and Craig Mather, is long gone.

There is the real prospect of the new club facing insolvency in the near future and last week McCoist asked Wallace where the money had gone.

“The chief executive at the moment is aware that some of the problems are there because some of the decisions were made for the short term, maybe a year ago,” he said.

Asked whether he believed that those decisions were made for other people’s benefit, McCoist replied: “Yes. He [Wallace] didn’t go into great detail. He just said some mistakes had been made. I don’t know enough about it. Who do you blame?”

It was pointed out that someone must have authorised the signing of a host of players on long and expensive contracts and led him to believe that finance was not an issue. “Absolutely,” he said. “I just went about my business signing players. The chief executives that I have had so far, Charles was the first one then Craig came in. I was wanting to bolster the squad and that’s what I did. No one said it was a problem.”

The thought that Rangers’ budget in the third and fourth tier of Scottish football was not only unnecessary but unsustainable never entered McCoist’s head.

“Not really,” he said. “Not being an accountant. Maybe I have it totally wrong but, with the player budget coming down this year, I was looking at it – wrongly, obviously – season tickets, costs I’m doing on the back of a fag packet and it kind of fits.

“We had a lot of money in from an IPO [share sale] and we had two amounts of season tickets but I was obviously wrong and I obviously am wrong.”

Rangers have amassed 58 points ahead of their game at Forfar, but should they descend into administration, they will face a deduction of 28 points, almost

half that total. Such an outcome could deny them automatic promotion and possibly even see them miss out on the play-offs but McCoist is refusing to press the panic button.

One of the many criticisms levelled at him by supporters is that he has endorsed every chief executive he has worked with, including some who were unlikely to have had Rangers’ best interests at heart.

Even so, he could not bring himself to say that he regretted publicly backing Green at a time in 2012 when season-ticket sales were sluggish.

“A lot of things go through my head when I think about Charles,” he said. “He came in and he was the first potential ally I had, so I had to – I don’t think I was in a position to do anything other than what I thought was best for everybody. And at that time there was nowhere else to turn ”

And these days, it takes him bloody ages to turn.

It is the first article to begin to tell it like it actually is, and could mean that this first trickle of the truth might turn into a flood that will finally wash away the walls that have been built around the myth of good guy Ally McCoist.

We tried to contact Ewing Graham to congratulate him for breaking ranks with the rest of the Laptop Loyal, but he was out feeding his pet.

Twitter has been alive with rumours that Lennon is interested in Robert Snodgrass, of Norwich. Apparently he’s just what we need should  our other left sided midfielders all be on the same plane if it crashes.

Yesterdays picture , as it said at the bottom, was of legendary goalkeeper John Thomsons parents.

Today, can you recall what year this is from ?