wee jay<\/a>\u00a0watching Samaras score for Greece.<\/p>\nThat video shows what our players and our club should be all about. God bless the wee man, and the big man for making him happy. Again.<\/p>\n
UEFA confirmed the Celtic banked around \u00a314.5m from the Champions League last season. Surely a couple of quid from that could go towards giving a man who has given us seven years and invaluable publicity what he wants to stay ?<\/p>\n
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Neil Lennon, the former Celtic manager , doesn’t look like Margaret Thatcher. He doesn’t sound like Margaret Thatcher, but he’s behaving like her.<\/p>\n
When the old witch was ousted from her job as Prime Minister, after a couple of weeks break cruising on the River Styx with her old pal with the horns, Thatcher came back to haunt her successor John Major from the back benches.<\/p>\n
She offfered her opinion on everything, and that meant Major was trying to ignore two women who could have destroyed him, with Edwina Currie still texting him and calling him “Big Boy ”<\/p>\n
Lennon currently can’t stay out of the papers, and he’s been on the telly as well. He gives the impresssion that he is still Celtic manager, and refers to players as though he s still their boss. Then he spoke to the Evening Times..<\/p>\n
The question of players being held back from appearing for their country has been in the news, with Harry Redknapp-also bitter about not being in a \u00a0a job he wanted- said when he was at Tottenham, players used to interrupt his accounting classes to tell him they didn’t want to go away and play for England.<\/p>\n
Lennon was asked the \u00a0about Celtic players. Did he put pressure on them to turn down the chance of an international cap ?<\/p>\n
“Absolutely. Of course I did. There comes a time in the season when you are playing Champions League, you are playing league games, cup games and then you have friendlies.<\/em><\/p>\n“You may have players who have played 40-odd international games already, do they need to go and play an extra game in an Eastern European country?<\/em><\/p>\n“They train on the Monday, travel on Tuesday, play on Wednesday and you won’t get them back till Thursday or Friday. I have had international players from Japan and South Korea. They leave on the Sunday after the Saturday game and I don’t see them again until the Friday, before a 12.30 kick-off, maybe in Aberdeen.” \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\u00a0And yet he tried to talk Kris\u00a0\u00a0Commons out of retiring from the Scotland team….which in turn meant that Gordon Strachan, reading the article, could put his phone back down.<\/p>\n
Kris decided he wanted to stop playing for Scotland, he wanted to spend more time with his family. Now you can read between the lines into that.<\/em><\/p>\n“I wasn’t too happy with his decision, I tried to talk him out of it but you have to respect his decision in the end. He went on to have a great season for us and was Player of the Year. In the back of my mind I am thinking ‘he doesn’t fancy doing the travelling for two weeks and making a cameo appearance here and there’.”<\/em><\/p>\nYes, I can read between the lines there. Kris wanted to spend more time with his family. Despite what Lennon said, you get the impression that Commons and his wife like each other, and want to spend time together. Some couples are like that.<\/p>\n
\u00a0Maybe someone could give Lennon a wee nudge and perhaps a holiday brochure.<\/p>\n
\u00a0Don’t spoil the memories…<\/p>\n
\u00a0Scott Brown is looking ahead to the first season without his mentor, and says Celtic will be ready to go when we eventually find out when the game against Reykjavik will be.<\/p>\n
” The main thing is that the new manager gets into it and sees how we are building up and how we are going to perform, and get the formation and team settled by then.<\/em><\/p>\n“Everyone is in good shape. The lads are pros and always keep themselves ticking over in the off-season.<\/em><\/p>\n“We get schedules of what we should be doing and what we shouldn’t be doing and the lads have stuck to that well.<\/em><\/p>\n“The sports scientists focused on it and tried to get us all in tip-top shape for the new manager coming in.”\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\nFair enough, but will he be challenging John Collins to a square go on the car park after class ?<\/p>\n
After all, thats the important bit. ( Copyright MSM )<\/p>\n
There will always be negatives here and there and people trying to stir it, but we have just got to focus on the positives.<\/em><\/p>\n“It is two good management staff that have come in and it is going to be good for us.<\/em><\/p>\n“He (Deila) phoned me and said who he was going to be bringing in. It has been good so far. It has been interesting.<\/em><\/p>\n“John has come in and everyone is making it a big issue, but me and John have got on fine, there have been no hard feelings whatsoever.<\/em><\/p>\n“It has all been positive and hopefully that continues.<\/em><\/p>\n“It is all about not falling out with people. You know that someone could come back around the corner and you could work with them again.<\/em><\/p>\n“I knew John might be working at Celtic at some point because he is a legend here. There was always that possibility.”\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\u00a0Then he dropped a bombshell…<\/p>\n
But Brown has kept himself busy during the close-season by starting a Uefa B Licence coaching course at Largs.<\/em><\/p>\nHe said: “I think it’s good for any professional to learn that aspect of the game, though.<\/em><\/p>\n“It shows you what goes on behind the scenes and that it’s not about turning up and putting out cones.<\/em><\/p>\n“There is a lot of planning and a lot of thinking that goes into it.”\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\nIs he growing up ? Are we going to get a mature Scott Brown leading from the front ?<\/p>\n
As Derek Johnstone , the Radio Clyde football expert-( thats a sentence thats making its debut in outwith English fiction ) would say, “it’ll be like a new signing ”<\/p>\n
Although we don’t yet know when the Champions League qualifier against Reykjavik will take place, we do know where it will happen.<\/p>\n
![\"That's](\"http:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/i\/pix\/2014\/06\/25\/article-2669987-1F14899500000578-263_634x416.jpg\")
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This is Murrayfield, which hasn’t had its name changed yet, probably because its nothing to do with Dodgy Dave, and Celtic could be the first to play on the new worm free pitch.<\/p>\n
Celtic will be first beneficiaries of new worm-free Murrayfield <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n\u00a0pitch when they play Champions League qualifier at home <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\nof Scotland’s rugby team\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/span><\/p>\n
See, told you. \u00a0I<\/p>\n
ts in the Daily Mail, next to the “get your jackboots ready for the winter ” advert<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Gregor Townsend, the 82-times capped former Scotland star who is now head coach at Glasgow Warriors, said<\/p>\n
Townsend, the 82-times capped former Scotland star who is now head coach at Glasgow Warriors, said: \u2018The surface will be great for Celtic to play on. On top of that I am sure the team and the fans will enjoy playing the match at Murrayfield.<\/p>\n
\u2018The capacity is around 67,000, which I think is similar to Celtic Park, and I expect there will be a great atmosphere.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nI remember going to a friendly match between Hearts and Barcelona at Murrayfield a few years ago and it was a fantastic occasion.<\/p>\n
\n
\u2018I am sure the Celtic match at Murrayfield will also be a fantastic match in a fantastic venue and a lot of Celtic fans through in the east of Scotland will already have their tickets.<\/p>\n
\n
\u2018It will be great if Celtic win the match and it is great to see football and rugby working together.\u2019<\/p>\n
So, the manager is untested, the assistant is untested, the pitch is untested and we’ve never played at the ground before.<\/p>\n
Oh, and we don’t know when the game will be, so we can’t make plans to support the team.<\/p>\n
Am I on the point of spotting where things might go wrong ?<\/p>\n
Yesterday , we asked what was wrong with the picture of Ian Wright and Regi Blinker , two players who were better described in rhyming slang, and the answer, from none other than Etims colleague Desi mond, was “Everything ”<\/p>\n
Today, another reason to consider ourselves lucky. Who is this guy, bought in to shore up the defence…<\/p>\n
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