Steps forward 2 - 4 Steps backwards

How can you account for a team that has won the league championship three years in succession getting turned over on its own ground by a side with some talent but which is also peppered with mediocre footballers?

Bad luck? Bad refereeing?

No.

The answer is bad planning and inexcusable errors from individuals.

First, to the defence. Yet again, Celtic have been exposed as a team that is uneven in its distribution of personnel. We have at least six talented midfielders but still only one left-back. (The “versatile”, injured and invisible Jean-Joel Perrier Doumbe can hardly be counted.)

It has been apparent since, 12 months ago, Vladimir Bystrov raced past Lee Naylor like a Ferrari overtaking a Skoda with a caravan in tow that we needed another left-back. We didn’t sign one. What are we left with? A good right-back putting in an abysmal performance in the left and being skinned by the likes of Kirk Broadfoot.

Gordon Strachan, who often mentions the duty of full-backs to protect their centre halves, would do well occasionally to remind the men in the middle of small consideration such as cover, when players like Daniel Cousin are tearing down the wings with only one option in the penalty box.

Wilson was bad – really bad – but the experienced pairing of Gary Caldwell and Stephen McManus far too often watched play developing around them, perhaps because of the clever zonal marking system that Celtic execute so brilliantly.

Then there is Artur Boruc. Let’s mention the elephant in the room: Boruc is a great goalkeeper – probably the best in the world – but has started the season in the manner of a man whose priorities are seriously distorted. Two disciplinary incidents since the summer, a visible belly and a casual demeanour do nothing to engender confidence after a display that would have embarrassed Henty “Drop the Ball” Smith.

Then there is our most experienced international striker, Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink. A game is not lost at 3-1 with 20 minutes to go, especially when your opponents have just had a man sent off.

To aim idiotic kicks at opponents off-the-ball and then leave the pitch with a wry smile when quite correctly shown a red card is inexcusable and unworthy of a Celtic player. Jan has been an exceptional player for us and has suffered a serious injury. Hopefully the manager will demonstrate to him forcibly that as a senior Celtic player, he is expected to be professional at all times.

How frustrating this must have been for the players who were performing well. Scott Brown and Paul Hartley worked hard to be productive for the attackers, Georgios Samaras was dangerous throughout and Aiden McGeady, Shaun Maloney and Shunsuke Nakamura looked capable of producing more openings. Ben Hutchinson faced an unenviable introduction to the derby fixture but should now be in third place in the strikers' pecking order.

However, it was a wasted effort when let down by such unprofessional, juvenile displays elsewhere.

Rangers deserved their win and congratulations to them on an excellent display. Some Celtic players should seriously consider issuing an apology.





--

Rangers hate mob challenges police

“Those who try to lead the people can only do so by following the mob”
Oscar Wilde
In terms of population and territory, Scotland indisputably punches above its weight.

With a population of just over five million and a surface area of slightly more than 30,000 sq. miles, this cold, relatively infertile northern part of Britain is a small country by any measure.

But that diminutive status has never stopped Scotland being noticed.

Ride roughshod over engineers like James Watt and Thomas “Colossus of Roads” Telford. Forget the literary legacy of Scott and Burns. Dismiss, if you will, the influence of David Hume and his contemporary Adam Smith whose book, “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations” caused some form of ripple in western political philosophy. Hang up on Alexander Graham Bell; leave John Logie Baird on standby; trade your prescription for Alexander Fleming’s antibiotics on the street corner.

No Scot need relate his or her contemporary life to the legacy of long-dead figures, who may – as far as anybody knows – be figures from mythology.

No, there are vibrant, living, breathing offspring of the Scottish nation whose outlooks more readily relate to those who consider themselves to be the Scottish racial, religious and cultural archetype.

When a new land across the Atlantic was being settled and colonised, Scots made their mark, and especially on the southern states. Scottish folk music laid the foundations of Blue Grass and Country. Scottish slave owners shaped the agricultural economy. They rose with the South in the great secession and Civil War; pledged loyalty to the Confederate States of America; even gave their saltire as a model on which to base a new flag.

When white supremacists found themselves disadvantaged by the victory of the Union forces, the romanticism of Thomas F. Dixon Jr., inspired the founders of the Ku Klux Klan.

Many years before, and thousands of miles from the slave-striven plantations of the South, Scots were seeded in their own plantations. It was Scots who were settled – this time mostly in the North – but the north of Ireland.

They founded a “language”, Ulster Scots, and more effectively an energetic hatred of the Catholic indigenous population that spawned the Orange Order and a plethora of British Loyalist/Anti-Catholic killers and even bigots.

It should be no surprise that the supporters of Rangers should scorn the achievements of great Scots and rather choose to vocally and aggressively express the sentiments most easily associated with the Klan or the Scottish sympathisers with White Anglo-Saxon Protestant supremacists.

After all, this club with a poison at its core is unique in its identity. Without hatred; without a compulsion to denigrate, offend and oppress, there is barely a notion of Rangers as a positive independent entity.

Having revelled in anti-Catholicism, profiteered on hatred of Irish immigrants, Rangers today exists as a Neolithic oddity – devoid of the evolutionary refinements that position most clubs closer to the modern psyche than any regrettable historical embarrassments that shaped their early years.

Today, we are invited to witness that “superiority”, manifest in the utterances of several thousand civilised representatives at Celtic Park.

Starved of success, embittered through subordination by a Celtic that embodies an acceptance and celebration of cultural values they feel compelled to abhor, the songbook of Rangers has somehow become increasingly distasteful since football’s European governors embarrassed the domestic authorities, effectively proscribing ditties measuring supremacy in crude imperial units of Fenian Blood.

In the absence of admonishments from the SFA – and faced with an overwhelming silence in the Scottish mainstream media – it has been reported that Strathclyde Police have advised Rangers that supporters singing, “The famine’s over; why don’t you go home?” will be subject to arrest.

In response, certain Rangers supporters have issued a direct call for defiance of police instructions amounting to direct and wilful incitement to public disorder.

This compulsion to offend and denigrate Scotland’s Irish minority population is apparently so precious to some Rangers supporters that they will actively seek confrontation with the forces of law.

In the meantime, former Rangers player Gordon Smith, who recently expressed concern at disrespect for “God Save the Queen” has yet to be heard on the subject.

Sometimes silence is marked with a heavy price.





--

Celtic to repair Scotland’s reputation – again

Among Celtic’s other great claims to fame – first British team to be European Champions, best team in Scotland and world’s best fans, we can now add another title – the emergency repair team to Scottish football’s reputation.

Having built strong links with Barcelona, much of that work was undone by the actions of uncouth supporters of a minor Glasgow club, which thankfully does not feature in European competition for the remainder of this season.

Likewise, having built friendships in Villareal to the extent that locals formed Celtic supporters clubs, a lesser Scottish club again tarnished the nation’s name with despicable behaviour that brought Uefa sanctions.

And again, having visited Manchester many times for friendlies, testimonials and Champions League matches, building friendly links between the clubs, fans of another Scottish club brought mayhem to the city’s streets in a foul display of bigotry-fuelled barbarism. This particular incident even resulted in Manchester United being denied the chance to parade their European Cup through the city streets, while the locals were not even allowed to watch the games on big screens.

Celtic fans are yet again called upon to show people in some of Europe’s favourite cities that Scottish football supporters can and will travel across the continent respecting the towns and people. We look forward to doing so.

Welcome too to Aalborg, who will be shown the same respect on and off the field. Just remember, though, they're not all like us!





--