Saturday, June 23, 2018

A shrug farewell to Stuart Armstrong

Congratulations, Stuart - you have finally got that move to headier climes that you have been angling for for at least a year.

Yes, you can play football - quite often, very well.

But, Stuart, my amateur judgment is that you are not now and never will be the big shot in football that you might be if you were more focused on your performance than your ego and your haircut.

Alex Ferguson once bemoaned the fact that David Beckham could have been a great of the game, had he been focused on his football, rather than his outside activities.

You, Stuart, could probably have been a very good player - though by no means a great - had you not given the impression that you thought the game too prosaic for a man of your qualities.

You arrived from Dundee United, after Ronny Deila signed you and Garry Mackay-Steven, with a flourish and then tailed off when nobody was looking.

From that point, we saw some flashes of what you might produce until, the second half of Brendan's first season at which point you started to fly.

That was convenient for all parties as we thought we had a player and you had a contract decision to make.

Of course, it all went tits-up at Hampden when you played that clever pass that gave England a last-gasp equaliser.

Not for you, hoofing the ball up the park or playing the easier pass. No, Stuart, you grandstanded and cost your team and your country the chance of victory.

Why do I mention this? Because I saw that idiotic pass for what it was - ego-driven at the expense of the team.

I had my doubts then but was still hoping you would buy into Brendan's project and be a part of something special - but what did you do?

You hummed and hawed and made the entire close-season seem to be about you (did I say, "ego"? ) and then you signed ... a one-year contract.

Any of us with a little experience could see what that meant - you hadn't got the offers you wanted and were going to ride the Celtic train for one more stop and do the same damned thing again.

At one time, I'd have rated you as a better player than Callum McGregor but the contrasts could hardly be more stark.

While Callum has been every coach's dream, absorbing every bit of instruction and developing into a footballer who can reliably compete at the highest level of competition, that's not your style, is it, Stuart?

So, you're making more money - good for you.

You're an "English Premier League player" now - whoop-de-doo!

I had a dream that you started with Southampton with a flourish, tailed off and then tried to show off in high-visibility matches before putting in a real shift as it came to contract time.

But, who am I to comment on a law graduate who is good enough to indulge in Plebeian pursuits?

And, if you had only pissed off last season instead of being a distraction, a wage-thief and a drain on morale, I wouldn't have.

This move suits all parties - but mostly Celtic.

You will be mentioned in the same breath as the likes of Robert Snodgrass - players people once thought might do something in the game but chose lucrative mediocrity.

No player is too good for Celtic - but many have thought they were.

Thursday, June 07, 2018

Time for spine and conscience to collapse King's house of cards

I am not going to start by sympathising with outgoing Scottish Football Association director, Gary Hughes, even though I don't believe that he did anything wrong by calling Rangers fans "the great unwashed" in 2006 - long before he was employed by the SFA.
What he said in that interview, so conveniently uncovered by The Rangers, (the original Rangers having been put into liquidation six years after the quote), was a silly joke. It was no more or less offensive than being called a "soap-dodging Weegie" by a fan one of the Edinburgh clubs but that's beside the point.
Hughes has gone, even though there was nothing illegal or motivated by religious bigotry or any other kind of hate speech.
But I won't weep for him.
Nor do I feel the need to rally to the side of Murdoch McLennan after the most contrived and absurd attacks on him having connections to companies involving Dermot Desmond and Denis O'Brien.
Both men will survive this and are presumably comfortably off. They have also been part of an institution noted for its incompetence on its better days and corruption on its worst.
You might argue that men of their business pedigree are needed to reform the SFA but I disagree. It is beyond redemption and only disbandment and a new organisation would have any hope of seeing the Scottish game being properly governed.
But what we should all be concerned about is the increasingly malign influence over the Scottish game of the convicted criminal, Dave King.
King has a grasp on truth, integrity and basic morality befitting a bona fide psychopath.
It is now so well known that a South African judge described him in court as a "glib and shameless liar" as to seem a tired cliché when repeated.
It is old news that he was a director of Rangers as the club ran a scheme of industrial-scale cheating and tax evasion, despite which he was considered a "fit and proper person" to be a director of a new club for which the SFA broke its own rules as well as the fundamental principles of good governance by allowing it to take a place in the Scottish Football League, for which it did not meet the basic criteria.
He sabotaged his own new club in order to pressure Mike Ashley into dumping it in the ditch, despite Ashley (no angel, by any means) being far better qualified to create a south Glasgow powerhouse.
He spun another intricate web of lies in order to take control of The Rangers acting in concert with two other parties to try to duck below company law.
And, of course, the takeover panel laughed him out of court when he claimed that nobody would sell their shares to him at the price dictated but, nevertheless, he would not make any offer as he lacked the funds to do so but, if so ordered, would buy the shares with the money that he claimed not to have.
As someone reluctant to make light of mental health issues, I would normally hesitate to make crude remarks about the psychological state of someone based purely on evidence prevented in the media but King's behaviour appears to be consistent with a serious personality disorder (which is not typically considered to be a mental health issue in the same way as the afflictions that many people suffer from through no fault of their own).
He self-evidently feels no embarrassment about telling the most absurd lies, which, at times it is difficult to believe that anyone - even the most rabid of the great unwashed - could possibly believe.
And he is not simply self-interested but more than willing to destroy anything that gets in his way, including the club that he is using for his own gain, or the game that sustains it.
Increasingly, he comes across as a man who would dynamite his own house rather than have the bank repossess it, regardless of the risks to the neighbours and any random passersby.
And yet he gets support in the media of the kind that goes beyond footballing bias or cultural affinity.
Over the last week, we have seen this from both ends of the Scottish journalistic spectrum.
At the bottom-feeder level is that international class buffoon, Keith Jackson.
Like King, Jackson apparently experiences neither embarrassment nor shame when shown to be glaringly wrong and, like King, he regularly trades in obvious falsehoods without discomfort.
In his latest piece on the supposed conflict of interest over McLennan, Jackson declares himself a dab hand at writing about company law.
This is from a man who once, despite having the benefit of the Internet, failed to correctly spell the word, "chateaubriand", on three consecutive occasions, as he attempted to boast to Twitter about how he was living the high life.
Graham Spiers is notionally a superior type of writer to Jackson, though he has rarely broken a story.
Spiers is of above average intelligence for a Scottish football writer, which is a compliment of a similar level to saying that Kris Boyd is of above average fitness for a man in his mid-thirties.
But Spiers is not as clever as he would like to think and he shares the same failing as Jackson in that he clearly believes that the public are too stupid to know when he is spinning them a line, even when he knows it very well, himself.
Spiers decided to tire us all by giving credence to King's most risible assertions that there is an appearance of something untoward in the McLennan situation, swatting aside every question about people who were clearly conflicted in their work with the SFA.
In doing so, these two have created a false sense in the media that legitimate questions are being asked, which has given some semblance of media credence to King's latest attempt to slip the noose of the Notice of Complaint raised in relation to Rangers securing a licence to play in European competitions through submitting false information.
The Hughes case is just one that points to ample evidence that the current modus operandi of The Rangers is to set the dogs on anyone with the slightest potential influence over events pertaining to that aberration of a club.
This follows on from a tradition once boasted of by their former PR grime-lord, Jack Irvine, whose emails - exposed by Charlotte Fakes (almost certainly Dave King) boasted of being able to coerce journalists because he knew "all their dirty little secrets".
I would not expect Spiers to have the kind of dark secrets that many Scottish football writers accrue on every second trip abroad, though an uncharacteristic moment of weakness is always possible.
In the case of Jackson, I would expect that his bar is set so low as to be difficult to embarrass by any heterosexual indiscretion.
King may well have dug some dirt on these two as he has clearly had people rooting into the backgrounds of others or he may be offering them different ways to get back into the fold (though despite his Ibrox bans, it's not clear that Jackson was ever really out of it).
But, whether through carrot or stick, King is clearly able to persuade high-profile members of the Scottish football media to write whatever he wants.
In doing so, he is further undermining the already crumbling foundations of a game that is thoroughly rotten.
Far from humouring his destructive bent, the media should be honouring their pledge to report the truth without fear or favour, and exposing King for the cynical charlatan that he is.
We await some decent members of the Scottish media developing both the spine and conscience to do what they surely know they should and bring down the  King house of cards.

Sunday, May 20, 2018

A day of thanks – to Brendan Rodgers, the Celtic players and especially to Scott Brown

I missed out on Lisbon. I was too young to appreciate nine-in-a-row. I had to make do with stories, pictures and films telling of the legendary Lisbon Lions and how they took on the world and won. Of the Quality Street Gang who helped Celtic dominate Scottish football from the late 60s to mid-70s.

Having gone through good times and bad, my favourite Celtic memory had been the centenary double – thirty years ago, this year – when Billy McNeill came back as a saviour and delivered us the league and Scottish Cup.

That will always remain in my heart and be tied to the names of true Celtic greats – Bonner, Aitken, McStay and, of course, the peerless Tommy Burns.

That season was special, not just for the victories, but because a club as great as ours surely deserved something tangible on our 100th birthday. We have won doubles since, but none have ever mattered to me quite as much.

But time has taught me to try to appreciate success as it happens. To value the special people while they are with us.

While celebrating our glories, we never quite know what lies ahead and we must take each and every one on their own merits, while never ceasing to hunger for more.

So, firstly, we must remember that seven titles in a row is a monumental achievement in itself and not merely a component of something bigger.

And, secondly, when we have won two consecutive domestic trebles, we should enjoy the fact that our players, manager and staff have brought us our own “Lisbon moment”.

We could rhyme off the players who have put in stellar performances over the last two seasons and further back over the seven titles.

But none come close to Scott Brown in terms of what he has achieved and given to Celtic since he arrived from Hibs all those years ago.

Courage, skill, strength, determination, energy, leadership.

All these qualities have taken him on the long journey from a dynamic midfielder with great promise towards taking his place amongst the all-time great Celtic players and captains.

Just as in 1988, it seemed that the footballing gods had shone their light down on us to grant us a glory we deserved, those same powers seem to have delivered a fitting accolade to Scott in his testimonial season.

Celtic seven-in-a-row and double-treble-winning captain.

From one fan to all our people but especially to Scott Brown – thank you.--