Celtic finally unveiled the Croatian centre half Jozo simunovic to the public yesterday. Unlike former acquisitions from Zagreb, he hadn’t had a breakdown and flown to Australia, he was on international duty with the Croatian under 21s.

And Ronny seems rather pleased to have him, as it looks like he’s got the man he wanted to replace Virgil van Dijk, who , having done his bit for Celtic, was sent to the clubs retirement home at Southampton.

Ronny spoke of both the old, and the new;

“We had a fantastic player in Virgil and I’m happy for him to get the chance now

“We had no chance to keep him because last year he wanted to go but he stayed one more year.

“That was good for him and good for us because he has developed and now was the time for him to move on because his motivation was to get to a higher level.

“Now we have good players in and I’m looking forward to working with those players and hopefully getting a new Virgil van Dijk, or even better.

“Jozo has the potential. Virgil has been given a lot of credit by me over the last year and I did that because I really mean he’s a top player. We have scouted Jozo for a long time and we think he has the attributes to be a big player.

“But he’s 21-years-old and it will take him some time to get up to the highest levels, of course, but we know that we have got a very good, talented boy.” 

Woah, that’s going to cause a little friction at the club.

Don’t worry , John. first love is always special;

Then again, I’m not sure. Looks like he’s taking it badly.

Simiunovic reckons he is ready to face aberdeen tomorrow, if called upon. He said;

“I am excited and ready to play  If the coach decided to put me in then I am ready.

“It was my first day at training and we will see what the coach will decide. But I believe in myself and believe I can play in this team.

“I am settled. I arrived last night, I’m in a hotel and will soon get an apartment. It’s not really strange. The boys have welcomed me and accepted me, so it’s been good.

“I believe in myself and money for me is not important. It is only important that I play well.” 

Was it just me who read that in an  Arnie Schwarzenegger Terminator  voice ?

Probably.

At the time, I noted it was a little strange that he left a club in the champions league to join one that wasn’t. Big Jozo explains;

 “It was not a wrench to leave because I want this. I wanted the chance to play for Celtic and I hope next year I will play in the Champions League with Celtic. I believe it.” 

It was also difficult to find out much about him, as his transfermarket.com and wikipedia pages more or less just said

” Croatian bloke. Tall. Plays football. “

So he enlightened us.

“It is hard to describe myself as a player. I know the game, I’m steady, quick and strong. I will try to make the best impression I can. I always wanted to play in Britain.

“I did know about Celtic. The club has a rich history. They play every year in either the Champions League or Europa League and they are the champions of Scotland. They have the best fans in the world.”  

Reading between the lines, and the eight second booking he got the other night give me an idea what kind of player he might be, although he did defend his caution by blaming the referee, something he might have to get used to in Glasgow.

“I jumped and the referee made the wrong decision. When I jumped I hit their attacker but it wasn’t a foul.

The attacker was unavailable for comment, and will remain so until the doctors have finished just checking him over.

Something to put in your Diary, just like i’ve put it in this one, is a ceremony that takes place before next Sundays Dundee game, organised by the club and the Celtic Graves Society, who do a lot of work keeping our history visible to anyone who wants to see it;

CELTIC Football Club is delighted to announce that it will be working together with the Celtic Graves Society on a joint event to mark the 30th anniversary of the passing of the late, great Jock Stein.

The ceremony will take place at the Jock Stein statue at Celtic Park at 12noon on Sunday, September 20 before the home match against Dundee (KO: 3pm).

There will be a number of speakers including Lisbon Lion, Jim Craig in attendance at an event which will celebrate the phenomenal contribution which Mr Stein made to Celtic and to football in general.

Earlier today Leigh Griffiths appeared in court charged with singing a naughty song. He admitted the offence, and was admonished by the sherriff, according to the Scotsman.

If that is the case, it means he can move on and put all this behind him. the club had fined him four weeks wages for the offence, and it looks like a little bit of plea bargaining to get the whole thing dealt with has taken place.

Common sense prevails, and the striker can continue his journey to professionalism and maturity.

Though personally, I would have told the judge to shove it, that I wasn’t even there, and jumped out of the dock shouting “you’ll never take me alive copper !”

Which is why my own journey to maturity probably has quite some way to go yet.

Neil Doncaster, the man we love to hate, gave us another reason not to send him a christmas card yesterday.

SPFL strike new TV deal with Sky and BT Sports: Scottish Premiership coverage to run until 2020

We hear he is also selling off anything he can find in the offices at Hampden at a car boot sale on the car park this sunday.

Doncaster, pictured here with his trademark vacuous grin, said;

“We are delighted to extend our relationship with both Sky Sports and BT Sport to the end of season 2019/20 on improved term.

“We look forward to continuing to work with Sky Sports and BT Sport to broadcast action from the Ladbrokes Premiership and Ladbrokes Play-Offs for a further three years.” 

The deal is reckoned to be worth about six shillings per club, and is in line with all the other deals Doncaster has been party to in that prior to negotiations, he removed his trousers, bent over the table and invited the Sky executives to do it to him one more time, baby.

Interestingly, there’s no further coverage of Division one games, as clearly Doncaster thinks Second rangers will be promoted this time, or more likely, will be out of existence.

but that might not happen.

Keith Jackson, in a question and answer feature in the Daily Record, reveals that Dave ” The Lying ” King, wants to re-write commercial law and rescue old Rangers from liquidation. Jackson, presumably humouring him because he knows that left to talk uninterrupted, King is comedy gold;

Q: Why is reviving the Oldco important to you?

A: It would be a good thing to do. It would be back to the traditional Rangers. I think the supporters would like it. It is not economically important but it is something I would like to do.

Q: A sense of closure? You could almost put an asterisk beside these past few years?

A: Exactly. You can never rewind what has happened but in 100 years’ time you might look back and say there was a blip of four or five years in Rangers’ history when this all happened and it was resolved to the norm again.

Q: Is it feasible?

A: It is practically feasible and legally feasible. We just have to get in the position where the liquidators have done everything they can. The club can then be rehabilitated.

But if you have all these claims floating around, where we don’t really know who is claiming assets and what they are, then it will continue for a longer period.

Q: Would this result in the oldco’s creditors being paid back in full?

A: You don’t have to pay 100p in the pound to creditors. If creditors accept a compromise and waive some of the debt it could be 50p or 60p in the pound.

Q: But better from a moral point of view?

A: Yes. At the moment if you look at the potential for the liquidation, with getting the money from Collier Bristow plus potential other claims, if HMRC are taken out the picture, then there is an opportunity for everyone to get 100p in the pound.

Take Craig Whyte’s new claim out of the picture as well and people could conceivably get 100p in the pound. 

In fact, if you take everyone out of the picture, he can keep all the money.

Q: You’ve previously expressed regret about the creditors. Is that part of why you want to do this?

A: Yes. It’s an emotional thing as well with the supporters.

They hear all this, ‘you’re not Rangers any more’. And ‘You are a new club.’ We just want to put all that behind us and say we had this unwanted period and now we are back to where we were. It would be a good thing.

Q: Do the newco jibes hurt?

A: Not as much as it hurts the fans.  

No shit. About the only thing he’s ever said that is even remotely believable.

And that includes when Jackson asked him what time it was.

Congratulations must go to Jackson, who we hear kept a straight face through all of that.

Sometimes good journalism is about letting the reader make up his own mind. By allowing King to ramble, Jackson has cleverly shown him up to be a diddy.

 Seriously. Had Jackson challenged him, he would have stopped talking and we wouldn’t have heard his somewaht unique interpretation of liquidation and other aspects of how to run a football club.

King also accused Hibernian of contacting the Ibrox club to try to sell them Scott Allan. Of course, Hibs have denied it, and quite rightly.

Of course it isn’t true.

That’s because it came from the mouth of Dave King.

and as such, todays caption competiton is a picture we used earlier in the week, because i would live to know what’s being said here…