Well, I think it’s pretty safe to say that we’re back to being in fine fettle now.
Domestically at least.
A rampant Celtic tore hapless Dundee apart on Halloween with four goals in the first half all started by a beautiful strike from star man Tom Rogic on the 20 minute mark followed by a penalty conversion from Scott Sinclair just after the half hour, James Forrest finishing off a sublime passing move with a neat finish on 38mins and then Odsonne Edouard tapping in the fourth just before the half-time whistle blew after some fine wing play and a cut back from Forrest.
The second half saw Celtic predictably drop down a few gears whilst Dundee put on their best guiser masks and started hammer throwing as they committed to keeping the score down.
That didn’t stop Ryan Christie bursting through on goal to finish expertly on 48 mins and Kieran Tierney should have made it six when he placed it past the post when it seemed easier to score after a fine low cross to the back post by substitute Daniel Arzani.
Arzani wishes the Celtic support a hello and a goodbye.Â
Incidentally, we finally got a glimpse of the highly touted Man City loanee Arzani who looked a little off the pace but still pretty tasty all before he went down in a heap on 78 mins before being taken off on a stretcher. Sadly early reports indicate ligament damage and that he’ll be out for nine months so safe to say we won’t be seeing him again. Thanks for the memories, Daniel. We’ll always have Dens.
The performance was a continuation from what we’ve been seeing from the Hoops since the mauling of St.Johnstone at McDiarmid Park nearly four weeks ago and saw us rack up our 18th goal in four domestic games.
Yes, Dundee are pretty much on their arse at the moment with their shellshocked new manager Jim McIntyre probably wondering what the hell he’s has got himself into and gave nothing going forward all night incredibly registering no shots on goal. But Celtic still put them to the sword in impressive fashion none the less.
Who’d be Jim?
Let’s hope we can continue this on to our top of the table clash with Hearts on Saturday with victory seeing us close the gap to 1 point with a game in hand over the jam tarts.
Over at Tynecastle last night they played out an eventful 0-0 draw with city rivals Hibs that saw their keeper smacked in the chops from a Hibs fan – no way it was a punch but still was uncalled for – and Neil Lennon got coined by one of Hearts more impassioned supporters who our ex-manager would now like to meet for a friendly one to one over a cup of tea or words to that effect.
Elsewhere crisis continued to envelop Rangers as they dropped points to Kilmarnock – who in fairness are no mugs these days as we found out to our own detriment earlier in the season – just as their financial figures were released revealing trading losses of over ÂŁ14 million to the year ending June 30th. Interesting that they decided to release the figures just before a home game kicked off. It’s almost as if they are trying to divert attention. Still, Dave King is very confident things are moving in the right direction and he looks pretty trustworthy.
I’m told that Europea League qualification will sort all things financial out. Strange how it’s been painted as financial salvation over in Govan yet our elimination from the Champions League and subsequent qualification for the very same Europa League has been painted as a near financial disaster. Funny that.
Anyway, it’s all going well on the good ship Celtic for the moment and there can be no doubt that the team has their swagger back.
Let’s hope the re-established domestic dominance can be translated into a positive European result in one weeks times as we desperately need to beat Red Bull Leipzig at Celtic Park next Thursday.
Anything but victory effectively eliminates us and defeat combined with Salzburg winning in Norway would confirm it.
I was disappointed we prioritised the weekend’s cup semi-final against Hearts over last Thursday nights away game against the Germans.
Europe for me is always where good Celtic teams and managers really prove their worth and by and large in the past three seasons we’ve been found wanting.
I guess I can delve a bit deeper into that quandary next week so for now, let’s just enjoy our continued return to form whilst all of our rivals faltered on Halloween night.
I took in our game on Sunday from the Dolphin pub in Partick, a good Celtic boozer if you have never been. The green and white sign with the ‘EST1888’ above the door should be a giveaway.
Anyway there with a few friends, I witnessed our match with league leaders Hearts at Murrayfield in front of a crowd of over 60,000.
Due to Hearts pretty incredible results since the start of the season – which has seen them win 13 from 16 matches with two draws and only one defeat – combined with our own patchy form since the start of the term this had been built up as a near 50/50 encounter with many favouring the Jam Tarts.
Indeed they had already defeated us 1-0 earlier in the season at Tynecastle and bounced back from their only defeat of the season so far against Rangers at Ibrox three weeks ago with wins at home versus Aberdeen and away to Dundee to maintain their spot at the top of the Premiership.
But the Celtic side that lost to Hearts back in early August has fairly ramped up the performances levels since then, especially in the past month, and with the capital side also without long-term injury absentees Christophe Berra, John Souttar and Uche Ikpeazu I was personally quite surprised at how close so many thought it was going to be.
Still, that meant that interest had peaked for it and led to not only a magnificent attendance at Murrayfield but also a large crowd in the pub which would be otherwise unusual for any normal national cup semi-final involving us and anybody but Rangers.
A packed our Murrayfield sees green smoke.
The first half was pretty scrappy stuff with Hearts veteran striker Steven MacLean grabbing all the headlines via standing a mile offside as he placed the ball into the Celtic net only for it to be flagged and also grabbing a handful of Eboue Kouassi’s testicles into the bargain. He’s since been cited for it and according to his ex-St. Johnstone teammate James McFadden on last nights Sportsound he’s known for it so I’d imagine he’s facing a ban. Then again Morelos got his red card rescinded for trying to volley Scott McKenna off the ball at Pittodrie earlier in the season so who knows.
Hearts talisman Steven Naismith also walked off early doors with a knee injury and you sort of suspected any chance they had of beating us walked with him.
That aside Scott Sinclair had an excellent effort saved by the Hearts keeper but by in large it was competitive but uninspiring stuff to such an extent the guy sitting beside me announced he’d had enough and staggered out leaving a full bottle of Peroni and an untouched whiskey chaser behind him. Outrageous.
In the second half, we got a spot-kick after Ryan Christie went down under a Ben Garrucio challenge – hardly a stonewaller but the type of incident which is given all the time these days – and Sinclair stepped up to smash it home. Then the Herts keeper Zdenek Zlamal tried to gather a speculative Rogic drive which escaped his grasp and trundled over the line before he clawed it clear. James Forrest was on hand though to bury it and put to bed any necessity for the linesman to make a call. And just in case there was any lingering doubt Ryan Christie capped off a fine few days in a Celtic jersey following on from strong display away in Leipzig on Thursday night as he buried a 25-yard piledriver past the despairing Zlamal on 72 mins.
Thereafter it was a bit of a turkey shoot as Celtic rained down wave after wave of attack on the Jambos goal but a combination of Zlamal atoning for his earlier error plus some last-ditch defending kept the score respectful. Though one of my mates was gutted as he had us to win either 4-0 or 3-1 with the bookies. A sore one indeed.
All in all, it was a professional performance and Celtic have now won 21 consecutive cup ties and have booked their place in their fifth consecutive cup final in doing so. The ‘Treble-Treble’ now really is on plus we also got to shut-up serial moaner Craig Levein who despite his pre-match defiance saw his side ultimately check out with a whimper.
Of course, this was all pretty much night and day compared to Thursday night’s display away in Germany where a toothless Celtic side limped to a 2-0 defeat to Red Bull Leipzig.
Having the suspended James Forrest back was undoubtedly a factor – as was the inferior opposition of course – but also returning was the imperious Tom Rogic and central defender Filipe Benkovic both of whom hadn’t made it for Thursday nights game. No one is really talking about it but personally, I’m a bit disappointed that Sunday was clearly given precedence over an away tie in Europe and one which I honestly think would have been very winnable against Leipzig’s second string if Rogic and Benkovic had been involved. The notion that they suddenly returned to full match fitness in the space of 64 hours is, of course, total bollocks.
Europe now does seem to now be firmly regarded as a pipe dream with domestic success being given the superior status based on decisions like that.
Anway we’re in another cup final on December 2nd so the question is who would we be playing?
That game, of course, took place later on that evening at Hampden Park where Steven Gerrard’s apparently rejuvenated Rangers would battle it out against Derek McInnes’s toiling Aberdeen.
Even with their only real striking options out for this one just about everyone I knew made the Govan side the clear favourites with most regarding it a mere formality.
It proved to be anything but as the Dons produced a classic smash and grab performance that ex-Rangers manager Walter Smith himself would have been proud of as the nephew of Barry Ferguson headed home the winner on 79 mins. He’s called Lewis Ferguson by the way and he won me a not unsubstantial amount of money as I found the long odds on the reds to be too tempting not to indulge.
Even with over 10 mins plus injury time remaining my money looked safe as the toothless light blues failed to breach a pretty rock solid Aberdeen defence and 1-0 is how it finished.
Stevie G congratulates Goldson on their loss.
So it’s Aberdeen in the final in five weeks. I must admit to being a tad disappointed as an Old Firm final would have been far more appetizing and despite undoubtedly impressive results at home and in Europe, the Stevie G project looks decidedly shaky anytime it’s taken out on the road with Sunday being a perfect example of that.
What with them out of the first domestic competition of the season combined with sitting only joint fifth in the league I wonder if rumours will now abound of an unsettled dressing room, player fallouts and acrimonious relationships between the manager and the board? Or is that only reserved for our manager? I think we all know the answer.
Oh, and what happened to that Richard Wilson’s tweet from Thursday evening which claimed that after Sunday was out the way there would be ramifications due to the performance and result on Thursday night? It’s Tuesday and still nothing. Maybe it will all kick off tomorrow. Or maybe it was all bullshit to start with.
So on Thursday night, we travel to Germany and Leipzig to be precise.
There we will be playing literally the most unpopular team in the country.
Why you may ask when Bayern Munich have been sweeping all before them for years now without any significant resistance?
Well Bayern, unlike our hosts have a real history unlike Leipzig, a club literally manufactured by the Austrian based soft drinks company Red Bull in 2009 after they purchased fifth tier German side SSV Markranstädt – or their licenses at least, it’s all a little confusing as a team called SSV Markranstädt continued to operate as an affiliate of the new entity – and from there the team we now know as RasenBallsport Leipzig e.V., was born and play in, you guessed it, the Red Bull Arena.
Most clubs in Germany are of course still primarily fan owned with the sale of significant never mind controlling share interests to large corporations or wealthy individuals generally discouraged as not being in sync with the culture of fan representation on club boards. It’s known as the 50+1 ownership rule and has led to Borussia Dortmund having 15,000 members. RB Leipzig, on the other hand, has just 17 and their ability to circumnavigate the rules has unsurprisingly led to other clubs, Bayern being chief amongst them, to call for the rule to be scrapped so that significant investment can be brought in.
The 50+ 1 rule states that: “No single person or entity may possess more than 49% of the voting rights in a German club’s professional football division, preventing the sale of a majority stake to outside investors, protecting clubs from irresponsible owners and maintaining the democratic nature of fan-owned German clubs.”
Despite this a quarter of Bundesliga clubs currently don’t follow the 50+1 rule to the letter, while some clubs have been granted certain exemptions. However, Leipzig really is the black sheep as they have pretty much discarded the rule altogether.
For more info on all of this, I’ve embedded a video at the bottom of the page featuring a short documentary on RasenBallsport Leipzig’s controversial origins from Copa90.
In the nine seasons since Red Bull created their own footballing Frankenstein, they have won the fifth tier German league – aka NOFV-Oberliga SĂĽd- in their maiden season and then spent two seasons in the fourth tier Regionalliga Nord failing to gain promotion in each one with fourth and third place finishes respectively.
It then moved to another regional fourth-tier league the Regionalliga Nordost – God only knows why – which it won with an undefeated campaign in 2012-2013, hence promotion to 3. Liga which you won’t be surprised to hear is the third tier of German football.
It finished runners-up in its first season there leading to promotion to 2. Bundesliga and the top flight was now in sight.
The 2014-15 season saw them finish only fifth but they bounced back the following term to finish runners-up and with that, they had finally gained promotion to the hallowed Bundesliga within seven seasons, one less than Red Bull had originally targeted when they launched the new club back in 2009.
Much to every other German supporter’s chagrin outside of their own, they made quite the impact in their first top-flight season spectacularly finishing runners-up to runaway leaders Bayern whom they had now replaced as the nations most loathed footballing entity due to their somewhat artificial beginnings.
Last season was a bit of a reality check for them though as they dropped to sixth in the division however this was of course still enough to deliver them a Europa League place.
And now to this season which is of course what concerns us the most.
They are managed by veteran Ralf Rangnick who’s been in the coaching game for over 30 years, all of which has been spent in his native Germany.
He actually managed them before back in 2015/16 when they gained promotion to the Bundesliga but was replaced by Ralph HasenhĂĽttl despite this success but got his own back in May of this year when HasenhĂĽttl left and now Ralf with an ‘f’ is back in the big chair.
That’s Ralf.Â
They were hammered 4-1 at the Westfalen by Borussia Dortmund on Matchday One of the new season but have bounced back strongly with an undefeated run of seven games featuring four wins and three draws scoring fifteen – through six of them came in a 6-0 rout of FC NĂĽrnberg – and conceding just four in the process and sit fifth in the division on 15 points.
In the Europa League, they have navigated through three rounds defeating Swedes BK Häcken 4-1 on aggregate, Romania’s CS Universitatea Craiova 4-2 over the two legs and in the playoff round they overcame Ukraine’s FC Zorya Luhansk 3-2 on aggregate.
Interestingly though they were undefeated in the qualifiers they never won a game on the road with three wins at home and three draws away. That gives us some hope for the home match but not much for Thursday night.
They were turned over 3-2 at home in the group match opener by their namesake Red Bull Salzburg.
2-0 down at one point they did come back to equal things up but fell to a late Fredrik Gulbrandsen strike for the visitors.
But Salzburg, as we know, are a team in incredible form this season having claimed 16 wins from 19 matches so far with no defeats in all competitions and 48 goals scored in the process so no shame in a tight 89th-minute loss to them.
We, of course, showed up pretty well against them in the opening 45 mins before being bulldozed in the second half.
Last time out in Europe Leipzig romped to a 3-1 win in Trondheim against Rosenborg, a team who as we experienced ourselves in the Champions League qualifiers are no slouches at home.
Anyway, aside from Leipzig’s form they also made some notable moves in the transfer market this summer. And it’ll be of no surprise to hear that like so many clubs that we come up against in Europe now they are on a totally different level from us financially.
This summer alone they spent €43 million on three players, defenders Marcelo Saracchi and Nordi Mukiele as well as striker Matheus Cunha. All are under 21 so they are definitely targetting youth with resale value, a similar policy to our own.
Uruguyuan Saracchi arrived from River Plate, Mukiele from Montpellier – where he’d made 50 league appearances in two seasons – and Brazilian Cunha from Swiss side FC Sion where he scored 10 league goals in 29 games last season.
They did, however, rake in €72.8 million primarily from the sale of star man Naby Keita to Liverpool (€60 million) along with Brazilian full-back Bernardo to Brighton for €10 million.
Another player they released was Israeli forward Omer Damari. He was a goal machine at club level in his native Israel but couldn’t hit a barn door in Germany failing to score once in his three-year stay there.
Their main men in the wake of the departure of Keita are Austrian internationalist Marcel Sabitzer who has weighed in with 23 goals from 106 games in midfield and the striking partnership of Danish internationalist Yussuf Poulsen and the star of the team, German internationalist striker Timo Werner.
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Poulsen and Werner have 91 goals between them in the Red Bull colours as well as 50 international caps with Poulsen hitting the net six times already this season and Werner bagging four.
The 22-year-old Werner though is bound for bigger things and has struck 21 goals in each of the last two seasons. It’s actually a testament to Leipzig’s financial backing that they have been able to hold onto him for so long in the face of fierce competition for his signature.
One bit of bright news is that Swedish internationalist Emil Forsberg, who generally pulls the strings from the midfield, has been ruled out with a groin strain but one player does not a team make and despite his absence they still have pretty intimidating five-pronged threat of the aforementioned Augustin, Cunha, Poulsen, Werner and 23-year-old Portuguese winger Bruma who is also a bit tasty on his day.
I mean this would be a tough ask even on home turf but away it looks really difficult. Like, really, really difficult. Just our luck we have two teams in our group that just happen to be two of the form teams on the content right now.
We are of course inform ourselves hitting 10 in two matches but this is a huge jump in opposition and despite the likes of Forrest, Rogic, McGregor and Edouard currently being on fire I don’t think it would be smart to go toe to toe with them especially in their own stadium. Something similar to what we produced in the first 45 mins away to Salzburg but this time maintained for the full 90 mins will be required which seems more feasible with Filipe Benkovic back in for the hapless Jack Hendry.
Our away form in Europe is, of course, feeble to the point of being shockingly bad and I guess there’s no point in going over all of that again.
I felt similarly pessimistic for our away tie against another German side Borussia Mönchengladbach almost exactly two years ago and that turned out okay with an unexpected 1-1 draw which could have been even better if Callum McGregor had held his nerve with a gilt-edged chance in the dying embers.
Maybe Thursday evening will be the start of a bright new beginning for us on the road in the continent. I mean stranger things have happened. Right?
Celtic and Hibs played out what must be undoubtedly the game of the season on Saturday afternoon.
As expected ex-Celtic manager Neil Lennon set-up his team to attack and as a result, a very open and free-flowing game occurred with Celtic’s superior firepower seeing us emerge with three points in a spectacular end to end game.
In total there were 30 shots on goal between the two teams with 12 of those on target as well as 12 corners shared and Hibs even had 46% of possession which is highly unusual for a domestic team visiting Celtic Park.
But despite the stats looking fairly even the reality was that this would have been a travesty if Celtic had not emerged with the three points. Along with the four goals the Hoops hit the post three times and the opposition goalie Adam Bogdan had one of the games of his life.
Tom Rogic gave Celtic the lead as he played a one-two with Forrest, the man whose goals he had mostly helped conjure up at St.Johnstone a fortnight ago, and lashed a curling left-foot drive past Bogdan on eight mins, a goal highly reminiscent of his strike against Rangers at Ibrox in the 3-2 triumph last season.
“How’s about that for a strike?”
Then on 19 minutes, Olivier Ntcham doubled the lead with a fine sweeping low finish from inside the box past Bogdan after a lovely pass from Rogic.
This was no more than Celtic deserved considering that in the first seven mins alone Edouard had crashed one off the post after chesting down a clipped cross to the back stick from McGregor and then McGregor himself nearly caught Bogdan off his line with a free-kick from distance just going over the bar.
Celtic really should have made it three and finished it off in the first half when Scott Sinclair cracked one off the post when it seemed easier to score after being the first to meet a save from Bogdan who had denied the oncoming Edourde. The rebound came to James Forrest but the less said about his attempted finish the better. Needless to say, he scuffed it a mile wide from close range.
With it all being such one-way traffic it was easy to forget that Hibs have actually been in great form this season but they served up a sharp reminder when ex-Celt Efe Ambrose floated a cross into the box that was met perfectly by Martin Boyle requiring Craig Gordon to produce a wonder save to put it past the post.
Into the second half and Hibs continued to threaten and credit where it is due as Florian Kamberi produced an absolutely wonderful finish from just inside the box to reduce his side’s deficit to 2-1.
Odsonne Edouard was determined not to be outdone though and rampaged forward, skinning three Hibs defenders in the process before his curling finish came back off the bottom off the past with Bogdan well beaten.
But any doubts it wasn’t going to be his day were erased when James Forrest burst down the left wing towards the byline, leaving Mark Milligan in his wake before cutting back for Edouard to finally deliver a well-deserved goal and restore Celtic’s two-goal cushion.
You’d have thought that would be all she wrote but Hibs were never going to throw in the towel that easy with Neil Lennon as manager and again they broke away with Martin Boyle bearing down on goal before clipping it over the despairing Craig Gordon to make it 3-2.
Frenetic stuff.
The game continued to rage from end to end and Bogdan made several excellent saves before Celtic put it beyond doubt on 88 mins when Tierney passed it forward to Edouard who backheeled it on the spin beautifully to the onrushing McGregor who floated it back over to him in the box and the Frenchman brought it down before finishing superbly past the Hibs keeper to seal the three points.
Brendan tells French Eddy he’s worth his weight in goals whilst KT does that pose with his hands on his hips pose that he often does.Â
What a performance and there is no doubt that an ambitious and high flying Hibs team brought out the best in Celtic. Let’s not forget that Celtic could only record one win from four league meetings against the Edinburgh side last season and even that was only 1-0.
It really does look like we’re back to where we were for the first season and a half under Brendan with a pace and tenacity about the play as well as some absolutely wonderful combination play at pace as Celtic constantly looked to go on the offensive.
When you play like that the opposition will always get some chances but in fairness, both of Hibs goals were top drawer finishes the likes of which we will seldom see from visiting teams in any season domestically at least.
It would appear that we are now back to our best and that all of the nonsensical talk of divisions in the dressing rooms etc is just that. Scott Brown going off injured is definitely a blow as we clearly missed him away against Salzburg and will again on Thursday in Germany if his injury is as bad as initially feared but with the likes on Edouard, McGregor, Forrest and Rogic in red-hot form who knows.
Anyway, a review of Thursday nights opponents will follow tomorrow but at the very least we are definitely back at the races domestically.
Just before the international break, our manager made it pretty clear that there were too many players at the club and that some were going to have to go.
The press picked up on this briefly and it was interesting listening to the Sportsound team in the wake of the St.Johnstone mauling trying to figure out who he could be making reference to.
Ryan Christie, perhaps they wondered? Even though he’s been actually making the squad quite regularly this season.
Then they moved onto Nir Bitton before apparently hitting a brick wall.
Yep, they were absolutely flummoxed as to who Brendan could have been referring to.
It actually just goes to show just how far out of the picture some of our players are that football analysts paid to research and discuss the game on national radio couldn’t even think of anyone outside of two players, one of whom is clearly not one of the individuals Brendan was alluding to.
Christie might still be moved along in January and I’d be surprised if he’s still here next season but currently, he is involved albeit sparingly.
Bitton would definitely be one on the list and of course, he hasn’t been helped by a recent spate of injuries the legitimacy of which I doubt. After all, he’s made it quite clear on social media that he is more than happy to sit on the sidelines and collect his wages until his contract runs down.
But as well as those two there are some pretty startlingly obvious candidates that must be right at the top.
Firstly Scott Allen who joined us from Hibs in the summer of 2015 and has played about 17 times all in mostly from the bench.
Like many, I presumed he would be back off to Hibs permanently after a successful loan spell there last season but it would appear that Hibs handling of the John McGinn situation hit them with the double whammy of ultimately receiving less money and not having a prayer of being entertained by the Celtic board in regards to any further transfer business.
Along with him, there is Eboue Kouassi who has been at the club since January 2017 yet has only had a total of 19 outings despite costing us a pretty hefty fee of around £3 million from Krasnodar. He’s still only 20 but by all accounts had it made pretty clear to him in the summer that he had little to no future at Celtic Park. He then did himself no favours with a shambolic performance against Hearts at Tynecastle in August as we lost 1-0 and after that, his days were numbered. But as the transfer window shut Kouassi decided he’d prefer to continue to cut a forlorn figure on the bench this season as opposed to actually playing football somewhere else.
Then there’s Jonny Hayes. Jonny has been a serial bench warmer since arriving from Aberdeen in the summer of 2017. Despite suffering a serious injury in his time at the club he has actually pulled on the hoops 20 times scoring once but has failed to make anything like an impact. He basically looks out of his depth if truth be told and it didn’t help that he was effectively taking over the position occupied by Paddy Roberts the season before. There was, of course, a marked difference in quality between the two and last seasons upsurge in form by James Forest made Hayes potential contribution to proceedings look even more redundant.
We then get to Cristian Gamboa. He arrived for a ÂŁ1 million from WBA not long after Brendan took over the hot seat and after being thrown to the wolves against Barcelona in the Nou Camp for his debut in which we were beaten 7-0 he has never really recovered. Indeed since then, he has made only 19 more appearances but after an impressive showing, this summer at the World Cup with Costa Rica hopes abounded that he may be given a new lease of life especially considering the increasingly worrying displays by the faded Mikel Lustig at right back. And to begin with, Gamboa did slot in for the Swede who was still returning from his own extended World Cup duty at the start of the season with a particularly impressive display away against Rosenborg in the Champions League qualifiers coming to mind. But since then it’s been a case of ‘as you were’ with Gamboa now rarely even featuring in the squad and this is despite Lustig continuing to look a shadow of his former self.
But I do of course save the best for last. That being the fabled Marvin Compper who has now achieved a mythical status of that approaching the Yeti or Bigfoot. A man so far out of the picture rumour has it he’s training at Barrowfield. A man so seldom seen in the clubs colours they say he cites Martin Hayes and Freddie Ljungberg as his Celtic heroes.
Good old Marvin eh?! A player so good our top-notch recruitment coach Lee Congerton tried to sign him three times at previous clubs before finally reeling in his man at Celtic. Oh yes. Lee only says yes to the best.
This is Lee Congerton if you were wondering by the way.
Who’s to say why Compper hasn’t made it. Clearly, he had a fallout with John Kennedy back in January during our winter break training camp in Dubai. God knows what he said but it was bad enough to have him excluded from events for the past nine months barring one runout in a Scottish cup tie against St.Mirren last season. Even with a centre-back crisis for our crucial Champions League qualifier against AEK Athens Marvin wasn’t even considered. And of course, this has led to other rumours surfacing with the old chestnut that he slept with another players wife even doing the rounds though of course nobody actually knows who’s wife it was or if the player even plays for Celtic.
It could just be that Marvin is mince. His fleeting display against the Buddies would appear to give some weight to that. To be pretty blunt about it he looked pish.
The real worrying aspect though is not that he was signed but how we’ve dealt with it ever since.
Sometimes clubs sign bad players. Sometimes players get homesick and just don’t fancy it. Sometimes payers turn out to have a reputation abroad built on sand and to not actually be up to what it takes to play for a club like Celtic or any other big club for that matter. And sometimes they blatantly only want to collect a wage and couldn’t really give two-stuffs about what anybody thinks. Ian Wright anyone?
But when it hasn’t worked it hasn’t worked so you deal with it. Marvin should have been punted in the summer. If he didn’t want to leave then pay him off. Better he counts his money at another club as opposed to hanging around Lennoxtown bumping his gums about what he thinks of the coaching staff to other players and creating unnecessary levels of innuendo amongst our own support and mocking from our rivals.
I mean at least Mohammed Bangura had the good grace to go out on loan.
There are now rumours that Daniel Arzani might be returning to Manchester City much earlier than his initial two-year loan deal suggested. So another Charly Musonda then.
It all begs the question what the hell is going on with recruitment at the club?
Is it Lawwell? Is it Congerton? Who knows. Either way, it has to be addressed in the next transfer window both in terms of incoming and outgoing and before then the board has to be run over the coals for this at the next AGM.
Apparently, Marvin Compper will be in attendance. Here’s his latest picture just in case you go and can’t spot him.
....Always A Tim! 