Set up to fail by no-spend policy

So the dust has settled on a top-of-the-table encounter that was not so much a disappointment as a confirmation of the worst fears of Celtic supporters.

What have we learned? Nothing.

What have we been forced to confront? That the club's negligence in maintaining an adequate squad (never mind aiming to improve) could better be described as reckless endangerment of our title ambitions.

For 45 minutes, Celtic dominated a Rangers team whose paucity of talent is perhaps best illustrated by the fact that the club and Scotland's top scorer was not allowed a second on the park while Lee “Elbows” McCulloch was invited to start the match and introduce his studs to rib-cages at his whim. Despite this, only one chance was created.

In the second half, the team somehow contrived to allow time on the ball to Barry Ferguson and Pedro Mendes – the only two quality players in blue (and with the greatest respect to Ferguson, time has taken its toll on his limbs). This resulted in Celtic actually managing to be second-best to Rangers after the break.

But here's the rub: Rangers are and were awful, their smothering 4-1-4-1 epitomising the anti-football of the pathologically inferior side. Celtic looked almost embarrassed, like a strapping young man being attacked by a drunk pensioner but constantly slipping on an icy pavement, continually looking round to make sure that no-one was watching.

Is this a team to achieve a treble (yes, Darren and Giorgios, that question is aimed at you)? Not unless all football conventions turn on their heads, Celtic Park is laid with one-way grass and referees like Willie Collum start moving walls away from balls instead of the reverse.

Given recent form and a transfer window that saw Celtic defy the odds and enter February actually relatively weaker than the club that ended 2008, the best we can hope for is a stumbling performance the like of which was last seen when Wim Jansen's side tripped over the line with the least-worst form of the two hamstrung giants.

Our strikers – all three of them – seem to have spent far too much time at the hands of Zero Tolerance, habitually assuming a non-threatening demeanour. Scott McDonald looks like a player who, with a big fat pay check thinks it is appropriate to replace quantity with rare, special quality when it comes to goals.

Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink (much admired on this blog) is demonstrating how injuries to nippy players with a turn of pace over ten yards are as nothing compared to the crocking of one-gear strikers without an accelerator. Jan has been quoted as saying he must end his goal drought, which is tantamount to saying that the banks ought to get their act together.

As for Giorgios Samaras? Well, suffice it to say that his polo neck is hotter than the odds of him upsetting any goalkeepers these days.

On the other hand, we have a glut of talent in midfield – too many to play – amounting to a “too many cooks” scenario that is by no means adapting to squad rotation.

The defence continues to have its wobbles – with personnel still looking uncomfortable with zonal marking every time something unexpected (like a cross or a mis-hit pass) is witnessed.

On this, it is only right to mention Lee Nayor. Lee has suffered from constant demands for a new left-back (hey, his form has led to demands for a new left-back) but on Sunday he performed reasonably well, as he has on several occasions this season. We absolutely need competition in that area but the attempts of our financial decision-makers to smudge over this weakness has exposed poor Lee to the sort of unwarranted intrigue last seen when Saddam Hussein was filmed in his y-fronts.

Lee has not been an especially weak link of late and he hasn't prevented any signings.

But we know the men who have.

All this doom and gloom is a roundabout way of returning to an inescapable point: Celtic are regressing while attempting to keep one notch ahead of parity with a Rangers that is heading down the toilet.

There are easily identifiable people who shoulder the blame for the wreckage of our squad and squandering of our ambitions.

We know who they are and the empirical evidence helps to identify them, despite what their paid apologists claim.

But that is another story...





--

Artur Boruc's answer

Still I Rise
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

(By Maya Angelou)

--

Fans served lies, damned lies and Celtic spin

Are Arsenal still looking for a Chief Executive? Could Gordon Brown have a vacancy for an experienced duplicitous former cabinet minister? Could the Taoiseach occupy the time of a Gibraltar tax exile in refurbishing his boat?

Because unless the three geniuses who are running Celtic entertain themselves elsewhere – and soon – what we once knew as our club will be nothing but a shadow dressed in green and white.

We have been let down before at Celtic – many, many times – going all the way back to the days when the club tried to sell Jimmy McGrory. Fans endured the shambles that was Celtic before Jock Stein; saw that great man discarded and humiliated by the White/Kelly dynasty; suffered as a small group of people led the club to ruin while our rivals and the mainstream media openly mocked us.

But in all those times, there was something that is missing from the Celtic of today – real fight from the fans; a raging determination that what had been built by generations of Celtic supporters would not be lost through the greed, incompetence or dishonesty of those who contrived to become its “custodians”.

Today, that seems to be missing. That is not to say that there are not thousands of fans who genuinely care for the Celtic we grew to love – the football club. But there are far too many fans mollified by welcome and long-awaited successes, amused by the trials of our city rivals and deceived by the spin machine that churns out propaganda under the guise of independent supporters' media.

Celtic is oh, so healthy according to the sort of people who prefer reading the Financial Times to football reports. But there are reasons why you should trust accountants at your peril – they can create any story based on statistical analyses and their primary focus is invariably money. Whenever you engage with people whose main drive in life has been the acquisition of wealth or personal power, you dance with the devil. Such people have no soul, they are rarely able to appreciate concepts such as beauty, tradition, empathy and identity – their psyches are defined by measurable gain; their instincts to view all intangible notions as expendable as they boast of their achievements over Cognac and Monte Cristos.

Such people have always been evident at Celtic's helm but rarely have they had such strong allies in the form of complacency, and outright dishonest “opinion-formers”, bought and sold with favours and promises, acting in the interests of the few against the many, declaring those who would dissent to be enemies of the club.

It is a manifest deception of which Stalin or Mao would have been proud – that those who cry out for the preservation of what were commonly-held ideals become castigated as enemies of the revolution, “wreckers” as our last Prime Minister would have called them. The most heartfelt and honest sentiments are distorted and portrayed as dangerous naivety or sheer delusion. There is only one viable method – made necessary by forces that the masses cannot hope to understand.

In the meantime, we have had foisted on us a policy that doesn't even reflect a sporting ethos, never mind a resolute commitment to win with style. This is a Celtic to win corporate admirers rather than football fans. But then, rather like the Fabians and their notorious distaste for the proletariat they took it upon themselves to save, the football fan has become an inarticulate embarrassment to those who sip wine with their football while those who drink the lager that emblazons the team's shirts risk being banned from the ground.

Football, as we once knew it, is dead. Celtic is a club whose breath is fading.

This is evident in the stands – the disinterest fused with frustration that has replaced what was once a gloriously passionate voice. Our team has talent but not heroes, the swift turnover of personell frustrating the process of developing a relationship between players and fans.

The prevailing policy is to remain a wafer ahead of a club in ruin, with rationalisations limiting expectation along with expenditure. Celtic fans were weaned on tales of the audacity of Patsy Gallacher, Charlie Tully, Jimmy Johnstone and Johnny Doyle; the fire in the bellies of Sean Fallon, Bertie Auld, Tommy Burns or Roy Aitken, the grace of Danny McGrain, Bobby Murdoch or Paul McStay. When was the last time a story was written by the modern Celtic? What tales of the current era will fire the imaginations of young fans? Does club policy allow for such romanticism?

Brand profile and asset management are the order of the day at the expense of the right of the fan to harbour ambition.

But still the plc performs exceptionally. Still, we are told that all is well.





--