Celtic cruised to a pretty routine 3-0 win over Motherwell at Celtic Park last night.
The game was all over by halftime with Celtic going for the jugular early and it was great to see young right back Anthony Ralston getting his first start in a very long time. I actually think we haven’t seen him in a Hoops jersey since way back in September 2017 truth be told.
Motherwell held out until almost the half-hour mark when Edouard played through Ralston who put it through the ‘Well keepers legs to score his first ever goal for Celtic. James Forrest was then scythed down only four mins later by a reckless Charles Dunne challenge in the box and Scott Sinclair stepped up to put us 2-0 up from the spot. That’s actually the first pen we’ve scored in four attempts so good to put an end to that unwelcome stat. Unfortunately, French Eddy had to depart the scene with an apparent groin injury but his replacement young Mikey Johnstone came on and rattled one in on the stroke of halftime and that was pretty that.
Olivier Ntcham should have done better with an effort in the second half but by then the visitors were just playing to keep the score down.
Brendan and the players take the acclaim.
I was initially really puzzled by Motherwell’s approach to the game. This was our third outing in six days and on the back of two defeats and with several key players missing you would have thought that the Lanarkshire side would have smelt the faintest trace of blood. Instead, though they decided to drop five players from their surprise away victory on Saturday against an in from St Johnstone with star men David Turnbull, Allan Campbell and strikers Curtis Main and Danny Johnson all benched.
It would appear manager Stephen Robinson had written the game off with Saturday’s home tie against lowly St.Mirren prioritised. Fair enough and to be honest with you pretty welcome considering our recent exhausting schedule which clearly showed at Easter Road on Sunday.
What can’t be ignored though is the number of absences we now have. With Leigh Griffiths out for an unspecified period of time and Edouard’s departure early doors last night, we are now literally left with no recognised striker. The big question is how long will the Frenchman be out for?
Kieran Tierney and Tom Rogic were rested last night as they were on Sunday and Ryan Christie, Dedryk Boyata and Mikel Lustig are also being given as much time as is required to make full recoveries. There’s a good chance we’ll see them all back over the coming nine days as we face three league matches.
But news has just come down that the Australian FA has selected Rogic along with three players from Hibs for the Asia Cup next month which means they may not be allowed to be involved in their respective clubs derbies on December 29th. Hopefully, that can be resolved in our favour as I would feel much better about our chances of turning over Rangers once again in their own stadium with Tom with us, as opposed to being without him.
Talking of the men in blue they were held to a 0-0 draw by Hibs at Easter Road last night. Hibs were in our faces all day on Sunday but were rather standoffish last night in a game which generally saw them under siege and on another day Morelos could have scored a hattrick. Alas, a combination of Hibs keeper Adam Bogdan as well as the Colombian’s poor finishing saw the Leith men hold out for a draw and in doing so our victory propelled us back to the top by one point over our city rivals with a game in hand.
So back to the top we go and even with a slightly weakened side you’d think we’ll be too strong at home on Saturday against a struggling Dundee side who were hammered 5-1 at Pittodrie on Tuesday night by Aberdeen leading manager Jim McIntyre to promise a major squad overhaul in January. So it won’t be a very Merry Christmas for some of the Dens Park men this festive period as they look for employment elsewhere it would seem.
So finally the SPFL have come to an agreement over the new TV deal something which has been getting discussed far and wide across the Scottish footballing spectrum for the past 18 months or more.
And the winner is…….Sky. That brand that we all know and love with wonderful coverage being provided by the gorgeous Hayley McQueen flanked by the stunning pairing of Kris Boyd and Kris Commons.
Dream Team
Safe to say it isn’t the winner we wanted. By we, I don’t just mean Celtic fans but all of Scottish football. A recent online poll found that 90% of Scottish football fans surveyed would prefer BT to win the rights as they generally provide superior coverage with far more in-depth analysis and passion for the game up here.
The likes of Chris Sutton, Steven Craigan, Michael Stewart and Ally McCoist might not be everyone’s cup of tea – each one’s popularity usually depending on what team you support – but they sell the game as opposed to Sky who’s coverage often borders on apathetic to the point of disrespect.
Commons was a wonderful servant to the club but he usually gets lost in his own analysis and Boyd wavers from boring to confusion then onto anger and all in one sentence. Either way, both are pretty limited pundits and would be blown out of the water by the BT guys.
Hayley does her best to fit in what she can from her meagre surroundings in the blink and you’ll miss it introduction and post-match analysis segments and there is a general air of disinterest about the whole thing. The general impression is that they can’t wait to get back to their beloved English Premier League
BT, on the other hand, are fronted by wisecracking Darell Curry who is often required to act more like a referee as opposed to a presenter in order to reel in the often hilarious quarrelling that occurs between Sutton and the rest of the panel. Added to that every game no matter how seemingly inconsequential it might appear in the grand scheme of things is given a worthy amount of build-up and analysis so in other words…..respect.
The BT boys delivering the goods.
So bearing all that in mind it’s come as a surprise that BT was so easily outbid by Sky and not only that have lost all rights to the Betfred League Cup as well.
That means that BT will in just over 18 months have literally no relationship with Scottish football at all which is pretty shocking considering the effort they have put into promoting the game during these past five years.
Now as much as I would have preferred BT to have gotten the rights the facts are that they refused to put their money where their mouth is. The deal has now been unofficially confirmed as being worth £160 million over a five year period beginning the season after next with Sky Sports having inclusivity to all 48 top flight live matches.
I can’t mention my source but all I will say is that he is a board member of a Premiership club. All members were asked to take a final vote yesterday at around 2pm and the decision was unanimous. Some had earlier baulked at Sky’s offer believing the rights could be worth somewhere in the region of £40-50 million per season but the facts are that BT’s preference was to continue the current carve-up between themselves and Sky whilst individually investing less and that the likes of Amazon, Eleven Sports etc when sounded out just weren’t really that interested. Sky’s offer of just over £32 million per season was by some distance the best financial package and an initial offer of three years was actually negotiated up to five to give extra long-term security. The deal was apparently brokered by a consultant who had been involved in the English Premierships’ last round of TV contract negotiations and he was keen to point out to the members the fact that TV sports rights in the UK across the board are generally decreasing in value as opposed to increasing.
The EPL themselves have seen their own rights tumble pretty dramatically from £5.1 billion for a three-year deal to £4.775 billion which begins next summer. That’s a drop of £325 million, around about £108 million a season. Even then those figures are pretty optimistic with some sources claiming the drop was nearer the £500 million mark.
The final two packages available in the first round of bids back in February actually went unsold and weren’t negotiated until six months later when Amazon and BT picked up what was left. Not long after Richard Scudamore announced he was stepping down from his role as the EPL’s Executive Chairman which he had held (though previously called Chief Executive) since 1999. Coincidence? Hardly.
As much as I, like just about everyone else it seems, prefer BT’s coverage the facts are that they were have thrown the kitchen sink at both Champions League and English Premiership TV rights to such an extent that they have hardly any money to invest in anything else. So it shows where their priorities lie. The SPFL is not the only rights they failed to retain as they have also lost the rights to Serie A, UFC and NBA with all being picked up by the new player Eleven Sports.
This unsurprisingly goes hand in hand with the departure of chief executive Gavin Patterson who back in 2013 led BT’s assault on live sports rights. The hope was that impressive sports packages would also entice new broadband customers but this strategy has failed dramatically as the number of new subscribers each quarter having apparently collapsed. As a result at the time of the announcement about Patterson’s future, or lack of, BT’s share price had fallen around 14% over the previous four weeks alone with full-year results showing a 1% drop in revenue, not helped by the company dealing with the aftermath of an accounting scandal at its Italian division, which resulted in a £530 million write-down and a major fall in its share price last year.
Neil Patterson in more affluent times.
Shareholders at BT had wanted Patterson out for some time and with the news, any hopes of BT being capable of competing with other major providers for sports rights renewals went with him.
The new deal will see 48 matches – a reduction from the 60 shown previously between both Sky and BT – all appear on one format each season along with six playoff matches and kicks in the season after next. We can only hope that in that time Sky takes on board the feedback and improve their coverage to match a significantly increased investment.
It’s not only the league games though that BT failed to retain. They’ve also let the Betfred League Cup slip through their fingers and into the hands of Irish broadcaster Premier Sports. Again their coverage there was spot on and they played a big part in changing the format so that it would feature regional league matches played in the summer by teams not competing in Europe. This coverage came at a cost of a measly £8 million over four years but was by all accounts much better than the previous deal in place with the BBC. Premier Sports offer whilst apparently better wasn’t significantly so but BT once again failed to invest and just as with the league games their coverage will cease to exist from the summer of 2020 onwards.
The Scottish Cup rights are a whole other kettle of fish with Premier Sports and the BBC sharing them with Sky letting them go, and of course, the BBC has also renewed their deal with the SPFL which will see them retain league highlights as well as showing 20 live Championship games per season starting in a few months, on a new channel, to be unveiled next year.
I’ve seen some people unfavourably comparing the deal to the new one signed by the EFL down south which is a £595 million contract over three years. The thing about that is it covers 130 matches per season across three leagues and 72 clubs and also includes League Cup games so actually in the grand scheme of things most English clubs have got a poorer deal than the SPFL.
All in all, it’s more money. How much more is difficult to quantify but we do know that it was widely accepted that the total pot of TV income was £21 million last season with £17.5 million of that coming from the league TV deal alone. This new deal secures at least £32 million per season and could be more when factoring in a new foreign TV rights deal with beIN sports as well as the new Scottish Cup and League Cup deals.
Is it what we wanted? No. But is it the best deal we could get……yes. And just like in every other aspect of life money talks and there was no way Scottish football was walking away from an extra £10 million plus per season.
I like BT. We all like BT. But the fact is they obviously don’t like us as much back. That and the fact that they are skint.
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.
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.
Another international match under Alex McLeish and another defeat.
The reason I bother with these international reviews is because our players generally feature pretty significantly in proceedings.
For this one, Kieran Tierney was allowed to drop out due to a ‘loading issue’ which is bullshit football ‘tech-speak’ for him being tired due to the number of games he’s played so far this season.
No doubt Brendan’s been on the phone and requested that he be rested as opposed to being played out of position in a pointless friendly.
Leigh Griffiths, of course, hasn’t featured in the last two internationals now as he tries to improve his fitness. Of course, we know the real reason is that he can’t stand Big Eck and his banal ongoing decision to choose Johnny Russell and Steven Naismith up front ahead of him.
Craig Gordon was back in after being fairly dropped for the on form Allan McGregor and also back in the line-up was James Forrest, ludicrously not started against Israel after scoring four times for us the weekend before, and ex-Celt Stuart Armstrong. Callum McGregor also got his latest cap. Jack Hendry also got a start which was purely due to Charlie Mulgrew and John Souttar being unavailable.
On the whole, it was much better performance though ultimately another bad result as the ruthless Portuguese punished every error from Scotland, proving that even without the scandal-plagued Ronaldo why they are rated number seven in the world rankings.
Just another day at the office.
Portugal’s goals came in the following order:
Hélder Costa (43′minutes),
Macedo Lopes (74′minutes),
Tué Na Bangna (84′minutes)
Costa’s was a tap-in after an Andy Robertson mistake but the other two were fabulous goals. A great header from Lopes after a floated cross to the edge of the box and a peach from Banga just inside the box subsequent to skinning Graeme Shinnie.
Stevie Naismith posted a consultation at the death resulting from a beautiful back-heel from another ex-Celt Gary Mackay-Steven which set him up for a tap-in.
Scott McKenna had missed a stick-on opportunity to equalise earlier with a diving header that went inches past.
All of the Celtic players did okay with the exception being Jack Hendry who continues to look way out of his depth when faced with any opposition remotely resembling quality.
For McLeish, the 4-4-2 formation with an actual left back playing in position worked better and with the recalls of Forrest and Armstrong there was a lot more vibrancy to the team but the same old errors continue to be punished. Rather like Celtic in Europe Scotland look completely incapable of keeping the back door shut for 90 mins.
Anyway, Big Eck staggers onto the doubleheader with Albania and Israel next month after this sorry weekend brought his record to two wins and six losses. Willie Miller remained optimistic that his friend could pull it off in the Sportscene studios last night obviously completely oblivious to what has occurred so far under his former central defensive partner.
Finally Celtic produced a performance worth raving about after a pretty tepid opening few months to the season as they found not only their shooting boots but some actual form in Perth.
It’s been a bit of a slog so far this season with elimination from the Champions League qualifiers, no wins away domestically in the league and generally pretty monotonous and uninspiring play week in, week out.
That all changed though at a wind and rain swept McDiarmid Park on Sunday.
After a ropey start where the Saints clearly fancied their chances and decided to take it to us, no doubt believing we would be drained both physically and mentally after a second-half roasting by RB Salzburg on Thursday evening, and created a few decent chances with a Danny Swanson volley from close range stinging the palms of Craig Gordon.
For the first 10 mins, Celtic were struggling and you couldn’t help but think ‘here we go again.’
Thereafter though it was a slaughter.
Celtic rained down attack after attack on the Perth sides goal and eventually took the lead after 15 mins when an Edouard shot was saved by Zander Clark only to rebound back to James Forrest whose shot made it into the back of the net after an unsuccessful attempt by Clark to claw it away.
Edouard, who had been unlucky not score only minutes previously, then did get on the score sheet only seven mins after the opener, finishing from outside the box with a neatly drilled finish into the far lower corner.
French Eddy and Ross Callahan compare dance moves.
In the final 15 mins of the half, the floodgates truly did open as Forrest added another three to his previous effort, combining well with the majestic Rogic for each one and showing some wonderful finishing ability with both feet.
All of those three goals were special with the first seeing him finish off a 1-2 with the aforementioned Rogic which cut the Saints defence apart and then the Aussie playmaker feed him through to finish with his right foot and seal his hat-trick. Forrest’s final goal was probably the pick of the litter though as he played another 1-2 with that man Rogic again and raced through on goal from his own half before finishing low past Clark also again.
A liquid finish from the impressive Forrest.
In amongst all of that, a Leigh Griffiths free-kick effort from 30 yards produced a wonderful save from Zander Clark who was actually having the game of his life in between picking the ball out of the net.
Nobody could have predicted 5-0 at halftime in their wildest dreams and a shellshocked looking Tommy Wright was clearly regretting his decision to play expansive football and attack an apparently bedraggled Celtic.
A beleaguered Tommy Wright demands the ref blows the final whistle.
As is often the case after that kind of first half the goals dried up in the second period with Callum McGregor tapping in a sixth after some neat build-up play on the 84th-minute mark.
Previous to that Danny Swanson got a straight red card for hacking down Forrest who was on the charge again. Swanson had clearly seen enough of that in the first half and refused to stick around for more.
It was quite a day, easily Celtic’s best domestically so far this season, notwithstanding the Rangers game, and before we unilaterally dismiss the level fo opposition let’s not forget that St.Johnstone had been unbeaten at home since late February.
So Celtic now climb to the third spot in the league, only three points off the top and with a vastly improved goal difference. Not a bad way to go into the international break and let’s just hope this is a return to the dynamic free-flowing football we had previously associated with Brendan’s reign at the club.
....Always A Tim! 