Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?

John Lydon, 1978

Cast your minds back to December 2008. Celtic were Scottish champions and coasting to the SPL title. We played the R-word in January, establishing a 7-point lead in the SPL table. We were heading for a fourth title and bemoaning two title blips under Martin O'Neill that had spoiled what should have been a historic run of championships. All was right with the world, right?

Well, not quite. Few of us were actually fooled into thinking we had a good team. Complacency had appeared to set in at every level of the club.

Gordon Strachan had already submitted his notice (as suggested here), despite lies to the contrary. As with almost every man who knows he is marking time in a job, his demeanour changed. He was that bit less angry and more dismissive.

His ideas - when he appeared to have any – increasingly looked tired and predictable. The performances on the pitch were reflective of an attitude that everyone seemed to be guilty of – going through the motions in a slightly disinterested expectation of eventual success.

The team on the park was leaderless, gutless and lacking any spark of creativity or passion. The players turned up, regularly failed to win and went home, only to take the same approach week after week.

The fans were unhappy but there was little that could be recognised as a consensus. Some said the football was boring. Others said they were unrealistic and should be thankful of the inevitable title, however it was achieved. Some questioned the board's fiscal policy. Others told them they were the sort of people who brought Leeds Utd to financial ruin. Some feared for the future. Others told them the club was in the best hands but that average Celtic fans were too ignorant to understand the strides being made at boardroom level. Some were angry, some were bored and, frankly, some didn't seem to give a damn.

But we had one consolation. We were going to win the title because our nearest rivals were an abysmal team, almost totally bereft of talent, and in such a financial hole that there was damn all they could do about it.

Then came the long, cold January of 2009. It is a time that will live in ignominy in the history of Celtic. Rumours abounded that Celtic directors had reneged on promises to improve the team in the summer. The arrival of Willo Flood had all the impact of Neil and Christine Hamilton turning up at a charity event as surprise celebrity guests.

The rest is so much history – the title was lost, the manager vanished, he was replaced with someone who had just had his team relegated after the manager of Burnley turned us down (only to later be lured by the bright-lights-big-city of Bolton). And, yes, we were told lies about that too.

Well, the chickens have come home to roost. On this blog, I expressed concern about the sort of managers Celtic had approached, not even considering someone like Davie Moyes who was clearly interested. But, in truth, I suspected that they would get away with it.

I had a hunch that a new manager would see players more motivated, kick a few backsides, inject a few ideas and comfortably outclass the other teams in Scotland. Shouldn't have been too hard, should it? To outclass St Mirren? Or the Scottish champions who had actually got weaker than that side we were lolling past just 14 months ago?

For those of you who deplore the blame game, look away now. It's high time to indulge in recriminations with gusto.

I blame the Coolmore Mafia's Dermot Desmond, a man with an ethical business record that makes David Murray look like Richard Branson. Brian Quinn has not been forgotten.

I blame Dr John Reid, who spent a lifetime betraying and backstabbing political colleagues to get what he wanted, who had no qualms about killing children in an illegal war, yet has shown no stomach to fight for Celtic.

I blame Peter Lawwell and Eric Riley, partners in crime who have made huge sums of money while Celtic have declined.

I blame the players – nearly all of them – who have shown no sense of understanding that it is a privilege to play for Celtic.

I blame Tony Mowbray, who I urged to resign with dignity several weeks ago, and who appears to lack the most basic footballing intelligence.

I blame the Scottish football establishment and their friends in the media who perpetuate the myth that, just because we are playing badly, we are not entitled to impartial officiating, while another team that is playing badly is gifted points and has players let off scot-free after committing assaults just because of who they are.

I blame the Celtic supporters, who in five years under Martin O'Neill started to think of winning trophies as something that just happened.

I blame the insidious campaign of propaganda and disinformation masquerading as “independent” comment on a certain blog and I blame the adherents to that blog's “party line” who smugly derided fans who just wanted to adhere to Celtic's traditions, including trying to win things. They are perhaps the worst of all. They have embraced decline and declared themselves to be financial geniuses in doing so. Rest assured, the volunteer men who built the first Celtic Park with their bare hands did not do so for the likes of them.

A club and a support divided? So be it. Draw the battle lines, prepare for idealogical warfare. We must root them out, whatever the cost. We are not even serving in heaven, but in hell.

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Time for Celtic to abandon Scotland?

No, it's not that old “let's go to the Premiership” line that we know is not going to happen in the foreseeable future. It's an even older line – but one that seems to have reached its peak at the most improbable time – the relationship between Celtic as a club and body of fans with the Scottish national football team and association.

This angst goes back at least as far as Jimmy McGrory, the highest goalscorer in the history of British football who was awarded just seven international caps – scoring seven goals.

Many will hark back to the era of Jimmy Johnstone and deciding to turn their back on the national team after hearing Scotland fans boo a man who was acknowledged as one of the finest players in the world. Others will point to the absurd – the surprise omission of Kenny Dalglish from the Scotland squad coincidentally preserving the consecutive caps record of former Rangers player George Young.

Sit in any company of Celtic fans and each will have his favourite story of a Celtic player overlooked for selection (Harry Hood being a decent example) or abused by the Tartan Army at Hampden (too many to name – let's plump for Brian McClair).

Yet somehow, today's Scottish football hierarchy has contrived to scale new heights in alienating the Celtic support, discarding all honour in their efforts to assuage the ire of Rangers fans – within and without the Scottish media.

In the interests of accuracy, it should be noted that honour – or even basic fairness – have never been attributes highly valued by the SFA. In the 1990s – when Rangers were riding high and Scotland still occasionally qualified for tournaments, the period was remarkable for the national team's ability to reach the latter stages despite sudden call-offs from certain Rangers personnel who were almost invariably fit for their club's domestic and European encounters.

Far from being criticised for their repeated acts of disloyalty, the practice was almost invariably either dismissed as bad luck or seen as some sort of virtue: to lead the charge for Rangers but let the country fend for itself. There were no worse offenders than the future Scotland and Rangers assistant manager, Ally McCoist and the terrorist-supporting criminal associate Andy Goram, who were nevertheless reinstated without question when the glamour matches came around.

However, even in those days – when Celtic fans had more pressing worries – there was rarely the level of unqualified anger that has surrounded the relationship between the Scottish football establishment bodies and their favourite team.

Ever since the media clamour to sack the incumbent Berti Vogts and replace him with Walter Smith (with then media pundit Gordon Duffield Smith the vanguard Bear), the SFA has flitted between accommodation and capitulation to the interests of Rangers FC, regardless of the conduct of their officials or rabble element amongst their players.

Walter Smith, who had been out of work as a manager since his sacking by Everton 18-months previously, had clearly briefed pundits such as Duffield who were able to say that they “knew” he was willing to take the job.

For this salvation from football's scrapheap, he rewarded his employers by abandoning the country without notice at a vital moment in a Euro 2008 qualifying campaign. David Taylor claimed to have been very unhappy about the whole show yet compensation was never pursued, Smith was praised in the sections of the media that would like to claim to be impartial and the interests of Rangers were seen to be still paramount in 21st-century Scotland.

Back at Rangers, and far from having any sympathy with George Burley, (who had replaced another former Rangers manager at the national team), Smith's players continued the policy of his previous period of tenure – some selective withdrawals added to loutishness and malice to the point of sabotage. Some, like Kenny Miller and David Weir, continued to support their nation's cause on the football field.

But the scurrilous behaviour of Kris Boyd, Lee McCulloch, Barry Ferguson and Allan McGregor would have appalled any Scottish fan who cared about his country. It appeared neither to worry Walter & Ally nor Gordon & George (Peat), who made occasional rumblings about behaviour being unacceptable before making Burley the scapegoat for all the episodes. Is it a coincidence that all the issues of conflict or ill-discipline in Burley's Scotland came from players of the club whose players withdrew from squads most regularly?

Given that Duffield and Peat admitted to meeting with Rangers officials to change the date of the Scottish Cup final to give Rangers an advantage in their SPL campaign and announced this to the Daily Record without consulting their members or the other finalists, it might have been thought that the Ibrox hierarchy would feel a personal debt if not one of national allegiance.

But the story of Scottish football remains that the Rangers manager is untouchable – by the authorities or the reporters like Darryl Broadfoot, well-known Murray and Rangers lapdog, who finds himself appointed as a media professional by the SFA.

Duffield and Smith are adopting old-time policies in a new media age, which makes their reinstatement of the Ibrox four all the more apparently an act in the interests of Rangers over Scotland. Their control over the referees seems only to extend to supporting decisions that have clearly disadvantaged Celtic and in the process silently abandoning the much-vaunted anti-diving campaign that, if implemented, would have robbed Rangers of the services of Kyle Lafferty and Nacho Novo along with Miller and Boyd.

In the face of media complaints – from hacks close to the Rangers manager – Celtic players are disciplined retrospectively with the SFA refusing to define the rules of procedure when Celtic wish to appeal. When Lafferty carries out one of the worst fouls seen in Scotland in recent times on Andreas Hinkel, there is silence. When Boyd elbows a player, the definition of offence is altered by the referee to obstruction, allowing him to avoid suspension, though a direct free-kick was awarded.

McGregor is involved in an “incident”, which he declines to report until it has been reported in the media, and Fraser Wishart – another former Rangers player involved in “fixture-gate” – decries an “assault” on a footballer “just for the jersey he wears”. He should be called as a witness as McGregor allegedly told police he did not know what happened or even where, frustrating their efforts to examine CCTV footage.

When the naked bias only involves tabloid headlines, we can choose to ignore it. But the insidious relationships at the heart of Scottish football are now blatantly undermining fair competition. For too long Celtic players have carried the immigrant's burden – having to try harder to show loyalty in order to earn an acceptance that is often grudged and rarely translated into “equality of esteem” as our ASBO neighbours might call it.

Amongst Celtic fans, it is always a contentious issue with many thousands born in Scotland every bit as passionate about their country as fans of any other club. However, the SFA-RFC-SPFA axis (with dishonourable mention to the SPL, led by another former Rangers player) has shown itself to disdain all normal rules of fair competition. The only pressure Celtic can exert is by boycotting the games – at least as fans. In the meantime, some of those hard-nosed executives and directors at Celtic should make their own voices heard in the corridors of power.

The inescapable conclusion seems to be that you can now support Celtic or Scotland – not both.
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Rotten to the core. Scottish football: of the peepul, by the peepul, for the peepul

Forget the corruption jibes against Italian, Eastern European or South American football. It has become increasingly evident in recent years that Scottish football is rotten to the core.

Take the Chief Executive of the Scottish Football Association, the Chairman of the Scottish Premier League and the Chief Executive of the Scottish Professional Footballers' Association and they have one glaring thing in common: all three are former Rangers players. This is such an astonishing imbalance that it would shame Ceaucescu's Romania or Saddam Hussein's Iraq but is easily overlooked, given the fact that the Scottish media routinely ignores the issue.

Is it a coincidence that all three bodies have contrived in recent seasons to materially affect the outcome of the Scottish Premier League Championship in favour of Rangers? And, today, true to form, they continue their naked corruption with the approval of the Scottish news industry.

Cast your mind back to the end of last season where one extension was not enough for Rangers. In an unprecedented act of duplicity, the SFA's (former Rangers player) Gordon Smith and George Peat secretly met with Rangers officials and offered to move the date of the Scottish Cup Final, briefing the Daily Record in the process to present the move as a fait accompli.

In doing so, they disregarded the rules of their own association without consulting any member clubs, including Queen of the South who were Scottish Cup finalists. And crucially, this move could not benefit Rangers in their UEFA Cup final campaign – it could only benefit their SPL challenge.

The attempted intervention was an outrageous act of duplicity yet acting against the interests of one of the competing member clubs – Celtic, of course – was allowed to pass without censure for the officials.

At the same time, the SPFA's (former Rangers player) Fraser Wishart, a man paid as a trade union official under the umbrella of the GMB, actively supported a full season extension, again without consulting his members, even though it was against the interests of those who paid his wages.

Take any unionised company or organisation in the United Kingdom and see what happens when they arbitrarily announce, at short notice, an illegal reduction in holidays without consultation. Any union would immediately threaten action. But Wishart, acting in favour of Rangers against the interests of his own members, actively supported an extension that could see hundreds of players having to cancel holidays without compensation, never mind affecting European Championship preparations, all for the sake of trying to help Rangers win the SPL.

No reference has yet been seen in the Scottish mainstream media querying Wishart's role or, for example, his publicly disavowing the actions of his own members when they happen to play for Celtic. In any real trade union, he would have been dismissed.

The SPL, led by (former Rangers player) Lex Gold, at the time agreed to one extension, specifically defying UEFA's continent-wide instructions to finish the season on time due to the Euro 2008 championships. It was a move that was opposed by Celtic and defied the SPL's own rules but it was largely supported by the mainstream media in Scotland, those who like to claim they are the arbiters of common sense, even if their diction and attire suggest that most of their “journalists” would be better suited to selling knocked-off bottles of suntan lotion.

This season, the SPL contrived to allow Rangers to play Scotland's third-best team, Hearts, three times at Ibrox Park, excusing the actions in such fanciful terms that they could only be believed by a proponent of the seven-day-creationism school of science.

Again, this materially affected the run-in to the SPL and was largely supported by the Scottish media.

Further hitherto unheard-of actions have been undertaken by our referees. For the first time in several decades, referees have been publicly punished for “dubious” decisions, the head referee, Don McVicar having abandoned his practice of defending officials in the face of club attacks when decisions were seen to go against Rangers or in favour of Celtic.

The most obvious example of this was the removal of Iain Brines (who has no fan on this blog) after accusations emanating from Rangers that they had been hard done by. This is the same club whose former manager in his “132 years of unsurpassed dignity” rant insisted that nobody at Rangers would ever question the integrity of an official.

Walter Smith publicly implied bias by assistant referee Tom Murphy, again without sanction or comment from McVicar, even though he was forced to send Murphy a written apology which was unreported in the Scottish newspapers and broadcast media.

Finally, in recent weeks, two Celtic players have been referred to the SFA to consider further sanctions over incidents that referees thought unworthy of attention at the time while we are now told that the Rangers and media campaign to free Madjid Bougherra for the last match of the season has been successful.

This is in the face of one of the most appalling pieces of cheating by a footballer in recent years, Kyle Lafferty's dive to have a fellow professional sent off and regardless of the fact that Bougherra's studs are clearly shown to have made strong contact with the head of Aberdeen goalkeeper Jamie Langfield. Smith and Smith have clearly been in consultation again as the SFA Chief Executive has now praised the Ibrox club for fining Lafferty in a move that was intended only to pave the way for Bougherra's reinstatement.

And let's not forget Rangers' flouting of international anti-doping legislation in using pain-killing injections to allow them to field injured players or the dismissal by Gordon Smith of Rangers fans racist chanting, even though it strained international diplomatic relations between the UK and Ireland.

In the meantime, Celtic officials remain silent, save for one letter requesting “clarification” of the SPL post-split schedule. We have a former Home Secretary as Chairman, who apparently sees fit to allow the combined forces of Rangers and their allies to continually move the goalposts for the benefit of the Ibrox club.

We have a billionaire major shareholder, who may or may not be aware of these things from the sun-drenched tax haven of Gibraltar and we have a Chief Executive who has learned from Reid to keep his head down when there is flak flying, regardless of the detriment to the club that pays him handsomely.

It would appear that the parlous state of R-word's finances have led to desperate measures by the Scottish football and media fraternities to support them, rather than observe fair play. Celtic should – but won't – refer the entire matter of the administration of Scottish football to UEFA.

It seems that only Celtic fans have the interests of Celtic at heart.





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Gordon Smith: It’s just because he played for Rangers

Gordon Smith, Chief Executive of the Scottish Football Association, has come in for a considerable degree of criticism since he was appointed to the post.

There was his decision to blame Catholic schools for Scotland’s religious bigotry; his inaction on religious bigotry and racism in Scottish football grounds, most notably Ibrox; the lengthy process of appointing a successor to the national team coach, Alex McLeish; the way he informed – or didn’t inform – unsuccessful candidates such as Tommy Burns and Mark McGhee; his crass interruptions, picking a fight with the media during George Burley’s inaugural press conference; his false claims to have received complaints from every club about referees; equally false claims to having been misquoted while making these claims; his failure to secure a sponsor for the Scottish Cup; his apparent collusion with David Murray and the Daily Record to try to give Rangers an advantage in the SPL- trying to arrange a second extension without consulting any other clubs, ….

That’s enough to be going on with.

Amid all of these issues, Smith has insisted that criticisms of him stem only from jealousy of his “confidence” and resentment against his having played for Rangers, thereby absolving himself of any blame or, it seems, responsibility to sharpen up his act.

Yet, having kept his head down for the past few months (one of the few Scottish football figures to have kept a low profile after the death of Tommy Burns, a former SFA employee), Smith has finally decided to address the media and Scottish football fans with another brilliant idea.

That is the suggestion that Scotland fans should be prepared to pay upwards of £40 to see a friendly against Argentina on a Wednesday night in November. For this, Smith assures us, Argentina would be contracted to play its strongest team.

It would seem that Smith’s “confidence” has been replaced with delusions. If he somehow believes that this “consultation” will allow him to abdicate responsibility for ripping off those fans who attend Scotland matches, he is wrong. Likewise, he is fooling himself if he believes that outsiders cannot see through this stunt.

He doesn’t need a consultation – some common sense would have done – to tell him that he will attract more resentment than paying punters by this absurd plan.

And his promise of a “full-strength” Argentina in this friendly sounds unconvincing. As, George Burley’s first two internationals proved to be rest days for Rangers players, Smith would have more credibility if he was able to guarantee a full-strength Scotland.

Smith, remember Farry; Reid, remember McCann

Today the integrity of Scottish football’s governing body, the SFA, is in tatters.

Just days after Rangers withdrew four players from George Burley’s first Scotland squad it emerges that Barry Robson not only reported for duty, he insisted that he was fit and desperate to play.

Despite this, he was overruled by former Rangers club doctor, Stuart Hillis, citing a knee injury that Robson’s own club manager didn’t know about and the player himself was convinced did not affect his fitness to play.

The result was media coverage lumping Robson together with four Rangers players – all of whom were declared fit for club duty on the evening of the match.

Predictably, SFA Chief Executive Gordon Smith has had nothing to say. Rarely found wanting a crass or inflammatory comment, Smith’s credibility has been in shreds almost since he was given the job.

• He implied that cheating was part of the culture of Lithuania and Slovenia

• Was found to have contributed to a book citing Catholic education as a factor in football bigotry

• Falsely claimed that every football club had complained to him about cheating

• When challenged, falsely claimed that he had been misquoted by journalists, an allegation he was forced to retract

• Has made the deluded claim that all criticism of him can be attributed solely to his association with Rangers and stated that he can disregard comment on his actions from football fans based on the assumption that he is being personally targeted as a “confident” former Rangers player

However, when it has been suggested that the SFA have colluded with Rangers to rest their players and at the same time undermined Barry Robson’s international career to manage the negative publicity that the moves would attract, Smith remains silent.

Let’s be clear: if Gordon Smith can question the integrity of two UEFA football associations, it is quite proper to question the integrity of the body that he is currently so badly mismanaging.

Smith cannot dismiss legitimate questions based on nothing other than his paranoid insistence that his status as a former Rangers player and his confident nature attract malicious comment.

Celtic have consistently found that integrity and commitment to Scotland leaves the club at a disadvantage faced with an association that discards all standards of fair play at the behest of its favourite club.

Recent manifestations of this have been absurd anomalies in disciplinary sanctions being taken against players and officials at Celtic and Rangers.

The last time that a Scottish official’s action blatantly favoured Rangers over Celtic – when Jim Farry deliberately withheld Jorge Cadete’s registration making him ineligible to play against Rangers – Fergus McCann let it be known that the Scottish League itself would find itself in court if it did not take appropriate action. Farry was sacked.

It cannot be that the current incumbents at Celtic Park, one of whom led the country into war and one of whom has been credited with being a vital contributor to a national economic revival, along with shareholders who operate at the highest level of international commerce can sit idly by while the interests of Celtic are being undermined.

John Reid, Dermot Desmond and Peter Lawwell must challenge the SFA directly: either produce a legitimate justification for its recent actions or find itself answering before UEFA.

In particular, some key questions should be addressed:

• Why has the SFA declined to enforce the rule allowing it to bar players from playing for their clubs when they have withdrawn from their international squad in midweek?
  

• If the Rangers injuries were legitimate, why were no other Rangers players called in as replacements, Cardiff City’s Gavin Rae, for example, being preferred to Kevin Thomson?

• If Barry Robson was so badly injured that he was unable to even remain with the Scotland squad despite his protests, why was the usual process of consultation with the player’s club disregarded? Evidently, communication between the Scotland team and Rangers management and medical staff had taken place.

Such responsibility cannot be left to Gordon Strachan, who has already been targeted by the SFA, most notably by the referee at Ibrox tomorrow, and who has faced the indignity of having a national bookmaker run a special bet on the possibility of his being sacked by Sunday night.

To fail to address this is to let down Strachan, whose career prospects are affected, as well as Barry Robson, whose opportunities have come late in his career only to find himself the victim of the most absurd brand of politics.

It is also obvious that holding high office at Celtic is not just an honour – it comes with responsibility to innumerable supporters the world over.

• One other thing – we criticise reporters when they unfairly attack our club but it only right to mention that Keith Jackson is the only Scottish journalist who has so far highlighted the issues in this case. Praise where it’s due and all that!