{"id":10840,"date":"2017-02-12T14:02:18","date_gmt":"2017-02-12T14:02:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/etims.net\/?p=10840"},"modified":"2017-02-12T14:02:18","modified_gmt":"2017-02-12T14:02:18","slug":"they-could-have-been-contenders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/etims.net\/?p=10840","title":{"rendered":"They Could Have Been Contenders"},"content":{"rendered":"
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El Cormaco remembers a few who we may have forgotten, and wonders what might have been had they gotten the breaks. Except for Kennedy, who got a different kind of break.<\/em><\/div>\n
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Over the years following Celtic I have seen some icons come and go (hiya Henrik and Lubo) some heroes built up then torn down (wave to Burley and Walker) and many run of the mill types its hard to get too agitated about either way \u2013 pretty much anyone Strachan signed apart from Naka.<\/div>\n
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\u00a0 But reading Tony Watt\u2019s recent brain farts on paper it got me thinking of another class of Celtic player \u2013 the nearly men, the coulda been somebody\u2019s, the guys who we either saw too briefly or not at all but left us with a sense there could have been an all time great there if things had worked out differently.<\/div>\n
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So here is a wee list of some of the guys who passed though Parkhead\u2019s gates without becoming one of football\u2019s greats, fell free to add any others I may have missed below…<\/div>\n
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Shay Given \u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/div>\n
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We are all familiar with Shay no doubt, an Irish football legend, son of Donegal, Celtic fan, played in the Premier league in England for years and years ( this article will be vague, I don\u2019t do research. I m like Trump; what I say is not fake news, because I said it. If you don\u2019t like it, I\u2019ll send in the Feds. I\u2019m currently pulling a face like an overweight tangerine trying to pass gallstones for the full Trumpian air of authority)<\/div>\n
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He came as a young player, never played a first team game and went down the road to Blackburn after Macari decided he had no need for a short goalkeeper, having secured legend Carl Muggleton to play in nets. Had Luigi not had a thing against shorties, being no Colossus himself, who knows how things might have turned out.<\/div>\n
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Shay went on to more than prove Luigi wrong, we went on to have a series of mediocre keepers until Boruc and Forster.<\/div>\n
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Sigh<\/div>\n
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David Marshall<\/em><\/strong><\/div>\n
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\u00a0 \u00a0Unlike Shay, we actually saw David Marshall in goal for Celtic. Thrown in after Rab Douglas \u2013 one of the many mediocre keepers we\u2019ve had – was suspended, he played a game for the ages in the Camp Nou, saving everything a great Barcelona team could throw at him, before picking up his wee goalie bag and putting it down a few days later at Ibrox where again he saved everything in another man of the match display.<\/div>\n
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\u00a0 And then?<\/div>\n
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\u00a0To be honest I m not too sure, go to Celtic Wiki for more, from memory he lost his place to Rab again, got annoyed at being sent back to the<\/div>\n
stiffs and was punted down to Cardiff City.<\/div>\n
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\u00a0 Not to be forgotten though, his performances down there kept him in our thoughts and he went as far as being Number 1 for Scotland, ahead of stellar competition like Allan McGregor. Cough.<\/div>\n
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\u00a0 Since gone onto take McGregor\u2019s place at Hull City, his career down south has been impressive and left me at least wondering why on earth he was allowed to leave when he did.<\/div>\n
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John Kennedy<\/em><\/strong><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\u00a0 Watching John with his wee file book standing near Ronnie last year as things fell apart on the pitch it\u2019s difficult to remember at times just what a prospect he was. Finding this photo of him I saw underneath he played 45 times for Celtic.<\/div>\n
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In that time he started well, got better, and by the time he saw his career ultimately ended by a Romanian players\u2019 dirty tackle on his Scotland debut he was being talked about as the new Billy McNeill. And this time for real, not like Stephen McManus, Brian O\u2019Neil etc etc etc, this was a time when Celtic\u2019s defence was excellent generally and he more than held his own.<\/div>\n
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He seemed to have it all; strong, aggressive, composed on the ball, a great reader of the game, quick, a proper defend first defender with the added bonus of being a very good footballer, a leader and organiser at a young age.<\/div>\n
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And then that tackle on his Scotland debut, a long period of rehabilitation for him, with occasional notices he was making progress, to be followed by notices that he had a setback, until finally the announcement that he was having to retire due to injury.<\/div>\n
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45 games, it could easily have been ten times that.<\/div>\n
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Craig Bellamy \u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/div>\n
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A bit of a cheat here, as he wasn\u2019t ever actually a Celtic player as such, having come on loan from Newcastle after falling out with Souness.<\/div>\n
He could easily have come up and coasted for a few months, but played like the fan in a jersey he claimed he was; always committed, fantastic movement and skill and lit up what was O\u2019Neill\u2019s last season<\/div>\n
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There was talk he was going to sign permanently, sadly the financial gap between Scotland and England was too much to surmount and we couldn\u2019t make his loan permanent. He went on to a somewhat nomadic career after that, including a brief but successful spell at my English team West Ham who had to sell him again after the Icelandic banking collapse.<\/div>\n
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Known for being \u201cabrasive\u201d off the pitch, if he had stayed at Celtic who knows what he could have achieved in the hoops, a class act<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Tony Watt<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n
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\u00a0 \u00a0Writing about Tony Watt the challenge is always how much you can say before referring to \u201cthat\u201d goal. As I\u2019ve made reference to it in my first sentence it\u2019s clearly difficult, but it shouldn\u2019t be forgotten that when he came on in that \u00a0game he wasn\u2019t an unknown to the Celtic fans.<\/div>\n
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\u00a0 \u00a0He had already shown flashes of real potential in games in Scotland, scoring some important league goals and was in and around the squad pretty regularly at the time.<\/div>\n
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\u00a0 \u00a0Signed from Ayr for \u00a350,000 I think he was clearly raw but had bags of potential, powerful, fast, direct, a good finisher, it seemed we might have a genuine home grown (ish) superstar of the future.<\/div>\n
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\u00a0 \u00a0But even as the words \u201cI\u2019m not going to let this goal affect me\u201d were coming out of his lips his head and his arse began to expand at an alarming rate. Rumours of attitude problems began to surface, his appearances became more and more fleeting and it was one of Ronnie\u2019s first moves to sell him on.<\/div>\n
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\u00a0 \u00a0 That no one raised much of a complaint about that shows how far his star had fallen, and while still technically a professional footballer he is more of a freak show now than a credible player. His recent comments about having no interest in Scottish football if English football is on offer is very short-sighted for a guy who will soon have no options in English football, but the boy\u2019s brains are clearly in his boots, and even from there seem to have been misplaced.<\/div>\n
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\u00a0 A shame, I\u2019ll always have the memory of walking out of Celtic park after the Barca game (there I said it) singing the Tony Watt song like a man possessed , along with thousands of others.<\/div>\n
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Stephane Bonnes\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/div>\n
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To be honest I\u2019m actually pretty disappointed in the photo above. I never actually knew he played in a game wearing the hoops; my memory of him was him in his posed photo with the Barnes era shirt on, having just signed for us, but I can\u2019t get a version of it to attach to this article.<\/div>\n
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On paper he was perfect: exotic, mysterious, an unknown from overseas that Barnes and Dalglish had found and signed after blowing everyone away at a trail, and who was going to be the player of the future. This boy had it all we hears; the silky skills, the eye for a goal, two great feet, the ability to beat a man any way you want.<\/div>\n
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He just needed a little more time to get up to the level. Then a little more. But soon we were gonna see this guy play and he was going to blow your mind with his technical brilliance. Then it sort of went quiet, and in the end he never played a first team game as far as I know.<\/div>\n
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And I m always right so don\u2019t worry about checking.<\/div>\n
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Who knows where he is now, there is a very real chance he is still at Celtic, just on the edge of the first team squad as they train, saying to himself;<\/div>\n
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\u201cThis is my season. This year I m gonna make it, and gonna show everyone. Allez\u201d.\u00a0<\/em><\/div>\n
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\u00a0But somewhere, someone has had a very successful Football Manger career with Celtic with Stephanne Bonnes pulling the strings, and that makes me happy.<\/div>\n
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\u00a0Right, any players you wish you had seen more of in the Hoops, let us know below, thanks for reading my ramblings,<\/div>\n
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Hail Hail<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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