As you probably saw yesterday, Celtic have agreed a deal with Southampton for Virgil van Dijk to move to the English south coast either before, during or after tomorrows Champions League match with Malmo.

But you know better than that, don’t you ?

Well, you should do by now.

Celtic said;

“The story is absolute nonsense and Virgil will play on Tuesday. We have no agreement with any club.” 

Peter Lawwell is spending the next forty eight hours in the company of the dutch defender, because if van Dijk  hurts his toes closing a wardrobe door there could be one or two voices questioning his motives.

The story began to leak on Saturday night, with apparently Virgil already ensconced at St. Mary’s and the price being set at £10m, with add ons. If van Dijk is reallistically comsidering a move to the Saints, then perhaps he should have a chat with Victor Wanyama before he goes;

Victor Wanyama asks to leave Southampton, say Sky sources 

Southampton manager Ronald Koeman said on Friday the player is “not for sale”  while Sky understands the club have informed the 24-year-old of their intention to offer a new contract. 

But the former Celtic player has responded by telling the club that he has not been entirely happy at St Mary’s for some time and that he sees his future elsewhere.  

Van Dijk should cut out the middle man and wait six months to get a move to a proper club with real ambition if he wants to leave, and he may well be in a stronger position to choose after a decent Champions League campaign.

Celtic have lost players to the English league for as long as any of us can remember, but the difference these days is that the Glasgow club cannot -or will not-compete with the wages on offer.

Still paying for Sky sports ? Well, that’s your money that’s going towards any fee that the club gets for van dijk.

You know what to do. If you haven’t already.

After Celtic beat Dundee United fairly comfortably on Saturday, manager Ronny Deila could not have failed to have been delighted. Not just at the result, not just at the performance of a number of “fringe ” players, such as Kris Commons, Saidy Janko and Eoghan O’Connell, but at the ease with which the players all played the system the way he wants them to.

Compare and contrast the result and performance on Saturday with the game this time last year against Inverness, where Celtic made ten changes and lost 1-0. Progress isn’t always entirely visible, but in this case it’s there to see, and it’s extremely significant.

It would have been easy for the players  to just turn up and put in half hearted shifts, but they didn’t. They could have tried to put themselves in the shop window, with only a week or so of the transfer window remaining. They didn’t.

What they did do was give the boss further food for thought. If mikael Lustig, as expected, doesn’t make the game, or breaks down during it, Saidy Janko gave the manager a reminder that he’s a player. Maybe not the finished article, but he has pace, strength and heart, and would do a job if called upon.

“I am definitely ready, I have to be. If I am playing it would be great.

“It is a big opportunity for me and I feel ready.

“I am ready and I think now it is up to the manager whether he thinks I need to play.”  

“I want to play in games like this, that is why I came to Celtic,” he said. “We all know how important the game is and I feel confident that if I am asked to play then I can do a job for the team.

“I am a professional and I always try to come on and do my best.

“You need to be relaxed and ready to play.

“I think I am back to full fitness. It would be great to play, of course it would be, but I also hope that Mikael is back soon. He is important for the team and it is good that there is competition for places between us because it makes us better players.”

Stopping short of actually leaping up and down and shouting “pick me! pick me ! ” , the former Manchester Utd man has shown he wants to be involved, and the interesting thing about what he said backs up what was noticeable about the Tannadice game.

 The players now know the system, and even making nine changes made no difference to the way Celtic played, and therefore the result.

Could that be why a terrified MSM, one or two of whom have never hidden their own agenda’s, leapt on the van Dijk won’t play story ? Or could it be less sinister, and they just figured he was going because he didn’t play ?

 Or are they just doing their best to kick start a declining industry , which ironically is declining largely because they publish such nonsense ?

Former Dundee United man Ryan Gauld has pretty much said he won’t be joining Celtic on loan, which was the other story doing the rounds. He tweeted;

Shouldn’t believe everything you read in the papers..

You can believe what you read on here, though, well, sometimes anyway, and Mikael lustig looks like he might well feature tomorrow night. Pictured at the airport today, he was very nearly managing to carry his own bag;

The match also saw the debut of the much talked about new midfielder Scott allan, who came on in the second half. Though I’d mention that because if you relied on BBC Sportscene to keep you informed you wouldn;t have known.

Allan signing for Celtic was probably the biggest story of the transfer window so far, and I can’t think why it was ignored by the beeb.

Maybe they were just miffed about him not going to Second Rangers, as they, and others, mercilessly and relentlessly pushed for. Maybe it meant they would have had to talk about the on line abuse the player received from the disappointed Ibrox support. Or maybe they figured that we all wanted to see the Morton- St. Mirren highlights instead. I’m all for showing the second tier games, incidentally, but I can’t help feeling there was a hidden agenda here.

 Of course, that could be my old fashined Celtic Minded Paranoia kicking in again. So, to put my mind at rest , I had a look at this story.

Former Celtic youngster Islam Feruz says he would

be ‘honoured’ to make it into the Scotland squad

in new cap vow

THE Chelsea striker, 19, was criticised by some Hoops fans when he made the move to London but the Somalia-born star has not forgotten his Glasgow roots.

It’s by Gordon Parks, which is his name, and not what he did.

Feruz was the chap Tommy Burns looked after. Then he went to Chelsea. Kids do that sort of thing, their head is turned by the bright lights and gold lined streets of London. in Feruz’s case, the streets were lined with gold.

The Celtic support felt he was being disrespectful to the memory of Burns, and he got a fair bit of stick on social media. Not making any excuses for it, after all, if he wants to go to Chelsea, or anywhere else, that’s up to him, but it seems an odd time to remind us of it.

Especially in the sub heading of a story which is supposed to be about his desire to play for Scotland, perhaps as some kind of thank you for helping him to make a career out of football….

“I’ve never said I didn’t want to be considered for Scotland.

“Some of the things which have been said about me not wanting to play have been untrue. I want to play for Scotland and I’ll be honoured if I’m selected.

“I’m proud to have played for the national team at different age groups.” 

And played very well, if i recall correctly. So, it should be a story about how he is getting on down south, maybe how he misses his pals, his deep fried Mars bars or the Glasgow banter…

Nope.

Feruz was criticised for moving to Chelsea in 2011 after the striker had been nurtured by the Hoops with mentor Tommy Burns working to prevent his family being deported.

But he hasn’t forgotten his roots and is helping to fund a Sunday League team in Glasgow called AfroScots.

Feruz said: “It’s more than just a club, we share similar experiences and it’s great I can help out by buying strips and things like that.”

Evariste Bembo picks the AfroScots side and he said: “I’ve been good friends with Islam since I arrived in 
Scotland six years ago.

“Islam is a quiet guy. I’ve read things on Celtic fan sites about people hoping he breaks his leg and things like that which is sad.”  

Surely not an attempt to revive the old policy of “Two Sides Of The Same Coin “, often trotted out by the MSM every time rampant Ibrox support trashed a city somewhere in Europe ? Or when they ignored basic taxation rules, or stiffed creditors ?

Allan got grief, but so did Feruz…. Petty, pathetic and piss poor.

What is becoming even more ridiculous is the attempt to blot out the liquidation of the old club, and the MSM, which, without exception, back in 2012, trumpeted such headlines as these;

are content to perpetuate the same club myth.

Mark Warburton could be the first Rangers manager to win six opening games since Bill Struth. Apparently.

Even though they managed tow completely different clubs.

Whats the point ? Apart from a heid the baws, everyone knows they died. everyone knows how much they stiffed creditors, the taxman and their own fans .

It’s quite simply the most embarrassing chapter in Scottish media history, and yet they still persist.

As the Diary said at the time, it would have been better if the press acknowledged their demise, and paraded the new entity as a sort of FC Rangers of Glasgow.

A fresh start, and maybe even the money the support raised would have went to the club, and not associated shysters all around the world.

The reason for mentioning the end of the old rivalry again, apart from a manic and depp rooted satisfaction, is that the media  are at it again.

You could almost be forgiven for thinking that they don’t want Celtic to qualify for the group stages this year.

Surely they do ?

Radio clyde, a minority station based in Glasgow has a phone in show, which if you can prevent your ears from vomiting for long enough, features a line up of volunteer presenters ( surely no-one is paying them for this shambles? ) offering their opinions on Scottish football , which always seem to veer wildly in favour of a now defunct club from the south side of the city.

It appears the “expert panel “, featuring ” Voice of Alzheimers ” Hugh Keevins, “Voice of A Stricken Canine ” Derek johnstone, and assorted other “voices ” which, apparently detached from any sense of normal thought processing, dance across the airwaves of the west of Scotland at around tea time every night, presumably to show the masses that no matter how bad their day was at work, it could be worse.

You could be the sound man responsible for checking the quality of this guff, forced to listen to it day after day, month after month….

Eternity amongst Satan and all his minions in the fires of hell would seem like a stroll in a country meadow by comparison.

This time Keevins stated that Ronny Deila should be sacked if Celtic failed to overcome Malmo.

Of course, the purpose of this sort of wild outburst is to prompt listeners to listen and callers to call. If you do happen to call, you will be cut off as soon as you make any kind of point that makes any sort of sense.

Which further enrages you, and any other like minded listener, and the show gets publicity on the interweb, and more importantly, valuable word of mouth promotion.

Which pleases advertisers. Which pleases the Radio station.

Don’t listen to it. Although it may seem a little hypocritical of me to mention the show, I’m doing it in the context of what appears to be a massive anti Celtic and Deila campaign kicking in up there again.

Almost as though the death of the opposition three years back has now been forgotten, the new club is the same as the old club, and we can all carry on and forget about it.

Or, of course, we can keep reminding them.

That way it won’t come as so much of a shock when Hector, Plod and the Stock Exchange conclude their investigations….

Obsessed ? Maybe. It’s that deep rooted sense of right and wrong within me

Amused ? Definitely. It’s funny as fuck watching them pretend nothing happen, though a little disconcerting to see how easily they ignore the real story, even though they wrote about it themselves at the time.

With a big game coming up tomorrow, you might think i’ve spent too much time on them again.

I have, perhaps, but it’s also to serve as a reminder to be ready for a vicious media  onslaught tomorrow, or later today.

It’ll be there. It always is.

So, lets concentrate on what we have.

We’ve a manager who knows what he’s doing.

Backed by a coaching team that has installed a system that all the players now know how to play.

They’ve increased the fitness levels to enable them to do it. They’ve used modrn methods to allow the players to get to that fitness, such as diet, for instance.

By the way. I’m taking Monster Munch to court. even my fertile imagination is struggling with the idea that nightmare creatures,with big teeth, huge claws and a complete reluctance to negotiate why they want to rip your head off and eat it,   ,  taste of pickled onion.

In fact, I don’t even think they put bits of real monsters in the bag at all.

We have a great goalkeeper, a sound defence, a midfield that is equally adept at defending as attacking.

There is pace throughout the team.

There are goals throughout the team, not least in Leigh Griffiths, who is beginning to show his true potential.

Above all, as demonstrated in the Tannadice fixture, the players have shown they can learn and , importantly, are willing to learn.

They have shown a spirit and togetherness on the field which will be a crucial factor in tomorrows game.

This team has heart.

Sure, we can always use a player or two to improve overall quality, but today and tomorrow lets forget who might be coming in, and who might be going out, and concentrate our support on the players who will be in Sweden tomorrow night.

I couldn’t care less about the financial implications.

I want us back at the big table,

If the players want inspiration, something to distract from the big talking Malmo camp, or the back stabbing media, how about this ?

So, with determination and triumph usually seen to be hand in hand, bear that in mind as you consider todays caption competition, still the only competiton on the interweb with no winners and no prizes.