Celtic Diary Tuesday January 21

Its Scott Browns turn to sleep a little restlessly as reports from Portugal indicate that Celtic are about to make a move for Serbian attacking midfielder Filip Djuricic. The badly spelt 21 year old has failed to settle in Lisbon, and is available for around the £6m that Lennon happens to have lying around. Leigh Griffiths and Stevie May will be watching developments as well, as if all the money goes on Djuricic, then the striker we all desire will be coming fromthe bottom shelf. One word of caution, this stint at Benfica is not the first time Djuricic has failed to settle abroad, he went to Olympiakos in Greece when he was 15 and it didn’t work out, so maybe a loan with a view to buy would be a better option this time.

Celtics performances in the champions League last time out did show the midfield up a wee bit, and although that can be largely blamed on playing two in the middle, it looks like steps are being taken to strengthen that area. Nir Bitton looks the part, Stefan Johansen says he is the part, and with a possible addition of Djuricic, then that only leaves one berth for either Brown, Ledley or Kayal. Well, at least until Brown gets sent off again.

At this point, Charlie Mulgrew looks like being understudy pretty much all over the pitch. However, if the story we heard about Emilio Izzaguerre being on Liverpools wanted list, then there will be a place for him in the defence. After all, its not like we are going to continue this clean sheet run, so we’ll need someone to blame.

Thats if Adam Matthews isn’t moved over to the left, a position he played so well against Barcelona last season.

It appears a wee bit of refreshing-if not rebuilding -the squad is underway, and by getting it done in January, it means that Celtic might just be ready for another go at the Champions League next season.

Joe Ledley and Georgios Samaras are no nearer to new deals, although Samaras met Celtic officials yesterday, and held “positive ” talks. Whatever that means.

We hear that electric shocks were used in the negotiations, but have no real evidence.

Mo Bangura is the latest to be touted for a loan move-again- and its entirely possible-according to the Sun-that Teemu Pukki and Amido Balde could join him.

You have to feel for whichever Sun hack came up with that one, but if your editor wants a thousand words, you’ve got to find them somewhere.

Anyone who uses social network twitter instead of just hanging around peoples houses like we used to in the old days to find out what “celebrities ” are up to would have noticed yesterdays humorous spat between journalist Graeme Spiers and “celebrity ” Rangers blogger and David Leggat write-alike Chris Graham.

Graham, who presumably has way too much time on his hands and recently caught Spiers kicking his dog, claimed that the hack had “bought ” hundreds of followers to his twitter account to boost his figures.

Which would seem a reasonable accusation, if you had a great big empty space between your ears, and a bemused Spiers creditably managed to laugh at the whole thing and seemed to enjoy the bewildered amusement that followed.

However, we at Etims have discovered that not only has Spiers bought thousands of Russians, he is actively paying one of them to devote his time to monitoring output from his nemesis;

Chris Graham is an active participant in all matters relating Rangers and their subsequent offspring that plays in Scotlands lower leagues, and you would think that he would have other things to harp on about.

Such as manager Ally McCoists staunch defence of his teams use of a luxury hotel prior to last nights game against Forfar.

“I can understand people questioning it but it’s my job as the Rangers manager to give our players the best opportunity we can to perform.

“We are still Rangers Football Club and have always attempted to be as professional as we can.

“That will never change as long as I’m manager.

“To give the players the opportunity to play as well as they can you have to prepare as well as you can.

“We’ll continue to do that until I’m told otherwise.

“If we do get told we can’t prepare in the manner we’re accustomed to then we’ll alter it.

“It would be disrespectful just to turn up. The Forfar players were away for a pre-match meal as well.

We did hear that several Forfar players managed to grab something on their way home from work before heading to the ground.

McCoist also told BT Sports last night that the ongoing train wreck that is his club is not the fault of the fans , the staff or the players.

Dozens of viewers ( I’ve seen the figures ) leaned forward awaiting a confession, but none came…

The media are turning on him, thats becoming more evident by the day, and one begins to wonder if the Spivs are eyeing his £800,000 salary as the cash runs out. Maybe they are actively planning to get rid of him, but want to thoroughly discredit him first.

This could be the funniest and most enjoyable episode of the whole pantomime.

Back to the good guys, and Tom Rogic has spoken well of Celtic now that he’s back in the good weather;

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy there, it’s a fantastic club, but I think it’s important for me at this stage in my career to be playing.

“It’s a fantastic squad there and it’s very difficult to break into. There’s a lot of great players.

“It’s been a good learning experience. I feel I’m a much better player than I was 12 months ago so I look back on the past 12 months as a positive.

“It’s great set-up with amazing fans and it’s great to be a part of that. I enjoyed winning the double last year.

“It’s a successful club, in the European Champions League, so I certainly don’t have any regrets.”

To be fair, when a side is on a winning run, it wouldn’t be fair to the players who have done that to drop them, however badly we feel they’ve done.

Oh, by the way, we don’t normally do adverts on here, but a pal has asked me to mention that he has one of those beard trimmers for sale. He only wants twenty quid for it, and you can contact him direct if you want;

Mr. Roy Cropper, 15 Coronation Street, Weatherfield.

Poor Roy. Every time he sees the toilet seat up he’ll be reminded of her.

That was Jimmy McGrory in the picture yesterday, the number one celtic legend, who made his debut on January 20, 1923. Pensionerbhoy, one of our regular readers remembers the game, against Third Lanark, and the hassle he had dropping the grandchildren off first.

We’ll need to ask him what the score was, as there appears to be some confusion;

@ETimsNet Jimmy McGrory. Celtic FC debut, away to Third Lanark, today 1923. Celtic won 1 nil.

@ETimsNet correcting myself here… they actually lost 1 nil. Anomaly on the wiki pages. Mods alerted

And they’ve apparently just cleaned out a charity shop.

One for today, and again we head back in time….

Billy McNeill has won twenty three trophies  as Celtic manager. Three captains are sharing second place with seven. Name them.