“Finished with my woman cos she couldn’t help me with my mind , people say I’m insane because I am frowning all the time ! ” 

The lads from Black Sabbath weren’t Celtic fans, but they knew how we felt when they penned their seventies classic “Paranoid ”

Alekasandr Tonev, who said he was innocent and had been told he was innocent, found out what it means to be a Celtic player yesterday;

A Disciplinary Tribunal convened today in accordance with the Judicial Panel Protocol to consider the following case:

Alleged Party in Breach: Aleksandar Tonev (Celtic FC)
Match: Celtic v Aberdeen (SPFL Premiership) – 13th September 2014
 
Disciplinary Rule(s) allegedly breached:

Disciplinary Rule 202: Excessive Misconduct by the use of offensive, insulting and abusive language of a racist nature.

Outcome: Complaint established.

Sanction: Seven-match immediate suspension applied. 

We’d love to show you a picture of the incident. But there doesn’t appear to be one.

We’d love to show you footage of the incident. But there doesn’t appear to be any.

We’d love to show you the reaction of the players after the incident. But for some reason, despite being able to find absolutely anything you are looking for on the web, it appears only the SFA have that evidence.

So, well done to their investigators who have found something that no-one else has.

Evidence and proof that Tonev racially abused debutant Shay Logan of Aberdeen.

We can exclusively reveal the pictures handed to the SFA by their Chief Investigations Officer that seem to have left no doubt that Tonev is guilty of the offence he was charged with. You may doubt that it is either Tonev or Logan in these pictures, but according to the impartial SFA, its definitely them.

This was the first incident, when Tonev and Logan appear to argue over a throw in.

Then , later in the first half, we see a somewhat over the top tackle by Tonev, which first attracted the referees attention to a possible problem between the two players

The situation got a litttle fraught, and Tonev was pulled to one side and spoken to by the referee

Who then filed his report and sent it to the SFA. Which led to the seven match ban.

Of course, Celtic will appeal. Which , in turn, means we’ll get to see the evidence, because to my mind, the pictures above, taken from the movie American History X, which shows exactly how fucking pointless and stupid racism is, are probably just about as far removed from the actual incident Logan reported  as any evidence that the SFA has.

The SFA have form when it comes to bewildering decisions, like  when Kris Boyd recently headbutted an opponent,  captured on tv. He was found “not proven “, which means we know he did it , but can’t prove it. Presumably the SFA telly was on the blink that week.

Now, there is , in reality , only the word of the Aberdeen player as to what really happened. Have the SFA accepted that as the true and proper account of events ?

Have we moved back to the dark ages where one mans word is deemed enough to convict another without any corroborative evidence. That concerns me more than if Tonev was actually guilty.

Remember those jolly days in old London Town when we were all innocent until proven Irish ?

If Tonev is guilty, which is possible, then he should be returned to Aston Villa without delay. Thats indisputable, and he should be made to share a car with Efe Ambrose, Virgil van dijk and Wakaso Mubarak.

And there should be plenty of stops at all the service stations so they can take it in turns to give him a proper kicking.

But there doesn’t appear to be any reason to think he is guilty.

Until we see the evidence the SFA have. Then we can make our own mind up.

Ronny Deila, the likeable Celtic manager , has spoken out aabout how fed up he is every time the MSM ask him about the possibilities of playing Scotlands newest and touchiest club.

 “If we win the treble, the history books will show that we won the treble, not that we beat Rangers. So you have to see a bigger picture than that.”

Then , according to a drunk friend of ours, he mumbled something under his breath in his native Norwegian….

For fucks sake , de er en annen divisjon team, sine spillere er alle shite , og deres manager er et fett clueless tosser .

Oddly, some words in Norwegian are the same in English, so you can probably get the jist of what was said. If , indeed they were said at all. We only have a drunk guys word for it, and he still thinks that Rangers are the same club.

 Deila didn’t stop there;

 “This is about winning the League Cup, I said I want to win the treble and we’ll take whatever comes in front of us.

“It’s a semi-final; whoever we are going to meet is going to be a biggy. So we’re looking forward to it.” 

 I think the best teams are in the top division – that’s how it is,”

“We’ll see, the teams in the top division are playing at a higher level every week and that’s an important thing.

“We play in Europe and you have the possibility to play against the best tempo.” 

Again, there may have been something else under his breath….

Hvordan i helvete gjorde Neil Lennon satt opp med disse idiotene for fire år . alt de gir en dritt om er Rangers ? 

You might have to look that one up.

 Ronny Deila may have been the subject of some initial criticism from some quarters early on his Celtic career. but he’s coming to terms with the job, and slowly imposing his personality on the support.

 Perhaps that was his plan. Players first, then the fans.

Who cares ? As long as we keep winning I don’t care how he does it. Though when we do win well its spectacular to watch.

 A treble, even a quadruple , or at least a realistic chance of that has added a wee bit of spice to the games.

 Whilst Ronny has firmly stated that he doesn’ give a toss who we beat as long as we win things, Barry Ferguson, once of Rangers, now manager of Clyde via Blackpool is still, somwhat bizarrely, being paid by a national newspaper to continue their campaign of pandering to the New Rangers support, in the hope that they don’t suddenly realise their club is dead and they decide to watch another club instead.

Barry Ferguson: Scottish football badly

needs the return of an Old Firm clash

but I want it to be in the final

With season book sales and attendances on the increase across the board, Barry continues to hark back to the days of tax dodging and cheating to save our national game from its inevitable demise without the sound of sectarianism at every ground.

BARRY says an Old Firm League Cup Final is a match everyone would want to see and reckons it’s the game that Scottish football needs to reinvigorate the interest in our game.

Er, who from ?

People who would like to know how to bump a club, fleece the fans and successfully float a new entity and pretend nothings happened ?

I suppose it could be released in time for Christmas as a sort of Guide To Getting Away With Skanking Everyone You Do Business With.

The first hundred copies sold could also get a list of estate agents in France who sell big houses. BY BARRYFERGUSON

And most of the chairs, which would be smashed to pieces by the support that has refused to unattach itself from the carcass of the old , now defunct , club. Especially when they take a good hiding.

It’s the game that everyone wants to see and I’d argue it’s the one that Scottish football needs to reinvigorate the interest in our game.

Because make no mistake, even now when you mention Scottish football to anyone in England or abroad, the Old Firm rivalry is still the first thing they talk about.  

 Actually, they don’t. but quite a few have asked how a club can be put in liquidation, yet continue to exist. Easy really, they don’t. Which  usually leads to a conversation about how corrupt our game is.

Something I realised again on my holidays this year. 

Presumably he took a fortnight on the shankhill road.

So there’s no doubt it would be a fantastic boost for fans, sponsors, TV companies and players to get this game back on for the first time since April 2012.

Second Rangers are currently sponsored by 32Red. So they are obviously in demand.

And contrary to what many people think – including John Guidetti whose “You’re going down” comment could well come back to haunt him – Rangers would have nothing to fear. 

No, they wouldn’t. They are dead and aren’t afraid of  anything anymore.

I’ve heard all the talk about the club’s lower-division status and the scars of the off-field war that continues to rage between the boardroom and the fans making them vulnerable.

I’ve heard that they would be wide open to suffering a humiliating heavy defeat by a Celtic side who have reigned supreme in the top flight and raked in money from the Champions League in the years since Rangers plunged into crisis.

But anyone who knows anything about this unique fixture will understand that all outside factors count for very little. As the old cliche says, the form book goes out the window. 

If he’s talking about the games between Celtic and the old club, he’s wrong. The form team usually won. If he’s on about matches between the new club and Celtic, there isn’t a form book to study. We’ve never played them.

Old Firm matches are won by the team that wants it the most, by the players who win their individual battles on the pitch. Where your team is placed in the league, or in this case, which league you are playing in, becomes irrelevant for those 90 minutes. 

By that reckoning, Old Rangers nine in a row would have meant we’d have beaten them over and over. Or that the whitewash of a few years ago could not have happened.

I’ve lost count of the number of Old Firm games I was involved in when one of us went in as hot favourites, only for the underdogs to come out on top because they were more fired up on the day. 

 Give it a go Baz. You won’t have to take your shoes off  You won’t  get to ten.

Rangers might be playing a division below Celtic but they still have good players – many of whom I would happily put up against the best that Celtic have to offer and be confident they could more than hold their own.

 Hold their own what ? Is that legal ?

Lee Wallace is as good as any full-back you care to mention playing in this country. Kris Boyd, Kenny Miller and Lee McCulloch have been there and done it all before and that experience would be invaluable in the heat of an Old Firm derby. 

 Experience will win the game ! Quick, sign Bobby Lennox and Billy McNeill. Actually, they’d still score against that defence and defend against that attack.

When I look at the Celtic team, I see a pretty new squad with some good players but the guy who still stands out for me most is Scott Brown. He’s the experienced spine of the team who drives the rest on but it would be interesting to see how the other influential players like Virgil van Dijk, Stefan Johansen and Guidetti would get on in their first experience of the Old Firm derby.

Believe me, even the most experienced players can be caught like a rabbit in the headlights in what is the most intense atmosphere most players would ever experience. I know this because it happened to me too. 

 No it didn’t. As I recall you always got eight out of ten.

Even if you’ve played 10 Old Firm games you are still not immune to being caught up in the atmosphere at times. 

People look at me as if I’m mad whenever I say this,

No shit.

but it’s impossible to describe exactly how it feels to be part of this game unless you are out on the park to experience it yourself. I’ve played in other derbies since like Birmingham against Aston Villa and I can honestly say that there is nothing else quite like Rangers v Celtic. I have never experienced that level of intensity anywhere else. 

You haven’t got a second to think what you are doing on the ball, you always have to be one pass or one tackle ahead or you’ll be caught. It’s very easy for such a frantic game to pass you by and it would be fascinating to see how the foreign players who have come to Celtic in the last couple of years would fare in their first taste of it. 

Most players in the Celtic squad have had experience of playing lower league teams on what is their big day out, so I think we’ll manage.

The same can be said for the young boys in the Rangers team like Macleod or Fraser Aird but that is where the more experienced guys who know what it’s all about come into their own, by helping the rookies around them. 

So, their old boys will help their rookies, but our rookies will be let down by our old hands and it will make them turn into rabbits.

The bottom line is it would be a much closer game than a lot of people seem to think and I’m sure the majority of football fans would want to see it happen. It would be compulsive viewing. 

It could be closer than I think. I’m expecting double figures.

But do you know the best thing that an Old Firm reunion would bring? Some long-awaited focus at last on action on the pitch instead of matters off them. 

Unless you check the arrest statistics, the wife beating incidents and the peeing in peoples closes.

It’s a damning indictment of the soap opera that has unfolded in the Rangers boardroom over the last three years that no one seems to want to talk to me about football any more. Any Rangers fan I meet doesn’t want to chat about the performance in the last game and which players are doing well. The first question always seems to be “What do you think will happen next with this carry-on with the board?”

That is one of the saddest aspects of the turmoil behind the scenes that shows no sign of easing any time soon – the actual games have become almost an afterthought. 

Actually , it does show signs of ending soon. Just not in the way Bazza means.

But should that League Cup semi-final draw pull Rangers and Celtic together at teatime tomorrow, that focus will shift back where it belongs – on the pitch.

The build-up will be unbelievable, the excitement starting from here and gathering momentum right through the New Year until the semi-finals are held at the end of January. 

And as strange as it may sound, bearing in mind what I’ve said about the madness of this fixture, it would be a great relief for the Rangers players to have a big game like that to look forward to. 

Largely because it would significantly increase their chances of getting paid in February.

As professional footballers, they will always try to focus solely on the next game as it comes but it’s impossible for the current squad not to have seen the headlines and felt the uncertainty of everything surrounding the club’s current financial position.

They must be affected by it in some way so it would actually release the pressure valve to have the welcome distraction of a massive Old Firm game on the horizon to look forward to.

Imagine what a thrill it would be to finally get back to talking about football again – and getting the rest of Europe talking about Scottish football too. 

Does anyone else remember the last time “all of Europe ” was talking about Rangers ?

Seriously, whilst I’ve gone on a bit about them today, Let someone else dump them out of the Cup.

We don’t need them.

Scottish football doesn’t need them.

They just need us, so they can cling to their outdated traditions.

A sense of identity that is based entirely on the hatred of other identities.

Anyway, I decided to clear my browser history after visiting the official Rangers site yesterday for the Lewis MacLoed story, and was amazed to find that there is no history.

 Hope Charlie kept the receipt when he bought it.

 We’ve not done a quiz for a couple of days, so apologies for that. Heres a picture to ponder today, anyone know whats going on ?