{"id":18185,"date":"2023-01-30T08:45:25","date_gmt":"2023-01-30T08:45:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/etims.net\/?p=18185"},"modified":"2023-01-30T08:45:25","modified_gmt":"2023-01-30T08:45:25","slug":"celtic-diary-monday-january-30-with-a-little-help-from-their-friends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/etims.net\/?p=18185","title":{"rendered":"Celtic Diary Monday January 30: With A Little Help From Their Friends"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The weekends football continued the pattern of recent weeks with Celtic collecting three points and &#8220;rangers &#8221; managing, with a little help from their friends, to keep pace.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Of course, it&#8217;s not about keeping pace with Celtic, only the bluest of eyes still see\u00a0 a title race, it&#8217;s now about keeping the new club ahead of Hearts, who have by far the stronger team, in order to secure a crack at Champions League football.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The two clubs collide on Wednesday, with Hearts already practicing playing with ten men and the keeper facing hours of penalties in training.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>John Beaton will be referee, to ensure the right result, and VAR will be run by Kevin Clancy, who will do as he&#8217;s told.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Celtic host Livingston next, and will simply go about their business, moving closer to two in a row game by game.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Willie Collum did his bit at the weekend, ignoring penalty claims and sending off a St Johnstone player when he really shouldn&#8217;t have, and one has to question not only his motives, but his intergrity.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>In any other profession, someone so ridiculously inept would be asked to resign at best and removed at worst.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Collum has had neither option presented to him, which suggests he may have access to information that the SFA would rather remain behind closed doors.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Which would suggest he might actually try to do the job to the best of his ability, despite any instructions to the opposite. But he still continues to flout the rules in plain sight, almost as though he wants to be sacked, and certainly as though he likes the attention that comes with it.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>At first, a suggestion he might be a sort of Fifth Columnist, Willie &#8220;fifth &#8221; Collum does have a poetic ring to it, sounds ridiculous, but the more i consider it, the more it becomes at least a possibility, is that in his own mind, Collum is trying to bring the whole system down around him.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>St johnstone had a moan about him on their Twitter feed, which measn they are surely thinking of an official complaint, and frankly they should.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Celtic have shown no signs of fighting back against what is more or less match fixing now endemic in the game, so we must look to others to kickstart the cleaning up.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t care who does it, it just needs to be done.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Every week, one club benefits from the VAR system, and every week, two clubs are disadvantaged.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Celtic and whoever plays &#8220;rangers &#8220;.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>VAR is being used all over Europe, and it would be interesting to see if any other club has benefited every week , or if there is another country where such inconsistency in decision making is rife.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And to think on sports desks throughout the land, they would still rather ask former players who struggle to put together a coherent sentence for their thoughts, rather than going out and collecting data and drawing their own conclusions.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Then again, they probably have, which is why they resort to asking former players who struggle to put together a coherent sentence.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The transfer window closes tomorrow night, and although Celtic have lost a couple of internationals, we&#8217;ve brought in a few as well.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;ll be Wednesday morning before we can fully take stock, but once more we seem to have come out of it stroinger than we went in.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Although we have heard there will be a couple of cheeky bids from down south for a couple of mainstays, but that&#8217;s more in hope than expectation. Enquiries about our players have been given short shrift in most cases, and the ones who have gone are ones who wanted to go .<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Good luck to them, they&#8217;ve done their bit in the early stages of the revolution.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>On the other side of the city, however, they are stuck in a bit of a rut.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>No one wants to buy what they&#8217;ve got, and no one wants to come to them who is already getting a game elsewhere.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Which brings us back to where we started, in that they need all the help they can get.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The weekends football continued the pattern of recent weeks with Celtic collecting three points and &#8220;rangers &#8221; managing, with a little help from their friends,&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":18186,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/etims.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/download-61.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2J7If-4Jj","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18185"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18185"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18185\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18187,"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18185\/revisions\/18187"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}