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<\/p>\nWhich conjures up an image that once seen, would never be forgotten. But we’ll come to that later, in the section reserved for publicity seeking non entities.<\/p>\n
Celtic sort of eased past Alloa last night into the League cup semi finals with a 2-0 victory, secured late on with goals from James Forrest and Moussa Dembele, and can now look forward to a tie against the winners of tonights game between aberdeen and St. Johnstone. Greenock Morton and “rangers” are the other semi finalists, and the balls are already warming up nicely in the oven to ensure the new Glasgow club is given every opportunity to make a second successive cup final.<\/p>\n
The police need the overtime, the media need something to harp on about, and above all, the new club need the money.<\/p>\n
Aberdeen will only get two days rest before their first ever meeting with “rangers ” this weekend, but they are not complaining. In fact, they’ve gone out of their way to welcome their visitors, and are planning a wonderful gesture to the memory of the original ibrox club, who were replaced by the current lot.<\/p>\n
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That game now looks, er , interesting, and presumably Level 5 are already sharpening their pencils to blame Aberdeen for any major incidents, or minor incidents they can turn into major incidents, before, during or after the game.<\/p>\n
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Alloa Athletic deserve a lot of credit for last nights disciplined if not adventurous performance, indeed one wondered during the game what would have been the outcome had Celtic shown such determination gaainst Barcelona, with midfielders who tackled, defenders who defended and a goalkeeper who tried to save shots.<\/p>\n
Celtic struggled to convert chances again, not unexpectedly, hence the 2-0 prediction in yesterdays Diary, which is a return to the old problem from last season, but its fairly easy to see why its happening again. When in training , all they have to do is get the shot on target, regardless of which of the chuckle brothers is keeping goal, and there’s a better than fifty fifty chance it will end up in the net.<\/p>\n
Real goalkeepers, such as those at Inverness and Alloa will try to stop this happening, often moving in the direction of the ball. This upsets our forwards, who then rush their shots meaning they can end up anywhere, and they often do.<\/p>\n
I mention both goalkeepers because Craig Gordon seems to have gone to pieces as well, with one reckless and clumsy challenge last night that could have sen him red carded and a penalty awarded to the Wasps. And given the accuracy of the forward play, that could have been very costly indeed.<\/p>\n
Gordon s lunge looked like this..prompting comparisons with the infamous assault by Harald Schumacher on Patrick Battiston when France and West Germany re enacted the First World War in the World cup.<\/p>\n
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When viewed from a different angle it does look quite serious<\/p>\n
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Victim Greig Spence spoke about the incident, and he seemed to suggest that gordon should have been sent off…<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cHe took me out quite aggressively but you don\u2019t want to see people sent off. It was a bit away from the goal but it was a bad challenge.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve got a cut on my knee and if I had made that challenge or someone in the middle of the park had made it, it would have been a straight red.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s like a different rule for goalkeepers \u2013 they get more protection.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0\u201cAt the time I asked the fourth official if it was a goalscoring oppor-tunity. He said that he didn\u2019t think it was an obvious one and that was fine.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cHaving now seen the pictures, I would say that, in terms of the foul itself and the type of foul it was, that it should have been a red card. If an outfield player had made that challenge he would have been sent off.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cIt was a big moment because if he walks then they\u2019re down to 10 men and that gives us a big chance.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cOn nights like this we need those decisions going for us but we just had to get on with it.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cWhat I would say is that we had good fortune at times. Our keeper played well but equally we got breaks at important times in terms of the chances Celtic missed.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n BT sports commentator Chris Sutton agreed, and then went into a sulk when their in house refereeing expert Howard Webb disagreed.<\/p>\n Webb, of course , is a former English Premier league official, and many pundits claim that now he’s retired, Manchester United just aren’t the same team. He has officiated at the very top of the game, taking charge of the Spain -Netherlands World cup final in 2010. Where he gave a yellow card for a tackle by Nigel De Jong that raised a few eyebrows at the time…<\/p>\n I’ll bet he’s got all the Bruce Lee dvds.<\/p>\n Celtic boss Brendan rodgers was pleased to get the game out of the way. Which reminds me, did anyone else notice he came out at half time and sat in the dug out ?<\/p>\n Rodgers said;<\/p>\n \u00a0\u201cWe\u2019ll play much better. I wasn\u2019t pleased at half-time as we have to be more clinical.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cOverall we had 13 shots on target and probably another 13 that weren\u2019t on target. So to score only two goals was disappointing. We must be more ruthless.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cThe name of the game was about being patient. If you move the ball quickly enough you open up the sides of the field and the opportunities will come.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cThe objective was to qualify. We always knew it was going to be tough when you look at how Alloa came through their group. They beat Inverness and Ross County so we knew they had resilience in their team.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cWe knew they had great mentality and character to defend \u2013 and they proved that. We had a lot of chances in the first half and didn\u2019t take them and as the game moves on you can become a bit edgy but we showed great patience.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cWe scored two great goals and kept a clean sheet so we\u2019re through and that was the main objective.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n We did achieve the first clean sheet since the Lincoln Red Imps return match, which seems so long ago. Wonder when the next one will be, and how many of us will still be around to see it…<\/p>\n \n Elsewhere, and an explanation of the story in todays title shows that Joey Barton didn’t suddenly become a publicity seeking whore, but in fact, has always done his talking on twitter, only to see it backfire, as this tweet from March 2013 shows…<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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