"The monkeys start to squeal, lie and create conspiracy plots" - Scottish Football 2012/13

Jim been on his travels?

http://www.scotsman.com/the-scotsman/sport/football/corinthians-sorry-as-fans-get-shirty-with-celtic-fan-1-2565265

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/comments-suspended-on-football-articles-1374220

The comments on there were the worst but it's really sad its come to this. No doubt one teams supporters will blame the other.

Must have been a nightmare moderating those comments.

Fuck reading a Daily Record comments page, it's bad enough reading their articles.

And now we take our turn in 2nd. Best start to the season since 71/72 (under Ormond), with apparently 14 fit senior outfield players. Armageddon?

Mad that we're quarter of the way through the season and three points separate two thirds of the league.

Celtic's busy midweek calendar might delay the one horse race aspect a bit further, though they're a game in hand from making it a proper gap.

A wee run for Dundee United and it'll be Celtic, ten others, Dundee. I suppose that was always going to happen but it's good that the ten are so closely matched.

This thread is dead :(

Hib got Hearts in the cup!
Levein got sacked gardening leaved!
Celtic still limping in one horse trace!

Meanwhile: Armageddon II: Hector Goes East
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/20241385

Hearts have been issued with a winding-up order by the Court of Session in Edinburgh after failing to pay a tax bill on time.
The matter is unrelated to a £1.75m tax bill Hearts are currently contesting.
This latest order is understood to be for unpaid PAYE and VAT and BBC Scotland has learned the sum due is a substantial six-figure amount.

Levein got sacked gardening leaved!

Also, I guess Gogs is going to get the gig? Dunno how a man who sees himself as a track-suited training ground coach fancies a national job but I suppose £400k a year for 6-8 games is tempting for anyone.

I did mention him a while back as a possible in some thread or other - not on this one as this is my first post here??!!?

Was it on the "craig levein fuck off" thread?

Sounds like we're utterly fucked:

This isn't a bluff, this isn't scaremongering, this is reality [...] Without your help now, we could be entering the final days of the club's existence. There are limited options for the Board of Directors to take to avoid the catastrophic consequences that a funding shortfall would mean for the club.

Who'd have thought the Romanov thing would all end in tears eh..

Cannae stand Gogs but I was enthusiastic about Levein and Burley so I'm clearly an awful judge of these things. I, for one, welcome our new smartarsed ginger overlords.

I hear new clubs starting off in division 3 are all the rage these days.

Traynor was getting amazingly indignant at players being loaned to Kaunas to trim wage bill (Lithuanian PAYE being lower than equivalent in UK) on the radio a couple of weeks ago. He still never seemed to grasp it was vastly different to EBTs and undisclosed second contracts, the useless fud that he is.

by the by, this is a nice wee article by Cosgrove. Trumpet-blowing, aye, but still some valid points. http://scottishfootballmonitor.wordpress.com/2012/11/05/why-the-beast-of-armageddon-failed-to-show/

Sounds like we're utterly fucked:

I thought it looked bad enough that they had a cash shortfall in the month they had the Liverpool games. After losing that tie that was clearly going to be their biggest month of the season and they couldn't afford to pay the players.

They Really need an arse on every seat for the upcoming home fixtures.

(avoids making churlish point about Hearts reducing Celtic's away allocation)

Hearts have already taken the money off Celtic for a game they might not be able to fulfil :-(

xp cheers for that Cosgrove thing ailsa - good piece.

Guardian fella Ewan Murray made a similar point on twitter, Onimo - that it was weird/ironic that we'd end up so rooked in this of all years given cup success, liverpool tie, templeton money etc.

Have we had the customary Rudyard Kiplingesque monkey aphorisms from Vlad yet..?

Last I heard from Vlad was a couple of weeks back when he accused Celtic and Rangers of bribing refs.

lol

What an eventful day for Scottish football. Sounds like Edinburgh may soon be a 1-club town.

Celtic get St Mirren, Caley Thistle get Hearts (if they still exist come semi-final time).

Any venues or dates yet? I assume we're at Hampden. Might make sense to hold ICT vs Hertzco at Pittodrie.

ICT vs The Hearts at Easter Road, we're at Hampden.

Sorry, 26th & 27th January

Makes more sense to have it at Easter Road, means The Hearts can walk to it rather than waste money on petrol.

Should have gone to Pittodrie really - it's as close to equidistant as possible and it's a decent size.

26/27th January means enough of the transfer window is gone that Hearts won't have a decent player left, unless Vlad throws some money at the taxman.

"Remind me. How much does Rangers FC (deadco) owe Heart of Midlothian FC?"

Good point from Mr/Mrs Rangerstaxcase on Twitter. Hearts face a winding up order for less than the money Rangers owe them.

That was pretty much the first thing my Hearts-supporting stepdad mentioned.

Nothing surprising from Steve Brown on Sportsound tonight, as much as I've enjoyed our recent relative success I expect some brutal belt tightening at McDiarmid in the near future as a preventative measure if nothing else. Worth remembering we survived 7 years in the First division recently. Unfortunately we don't really have a youth program to speak of, probably as a result of that.

WDILL watching football - I'm halfway between the section 441 and 442 entrances, black jacket, green white and gold scarf. I've managed to find a few people I know scattered around the stadium.

http://tag.huggity.com/fanpic/049-2012-celtic/app/index.php

hmmm, Celtic have hired a GAA coach for youth development :/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/northern-ireland/20254492

"Donegal's All-Ireland winning Gaelic Football manager Jim McGuinness is to take up a role with Celtic as a performance consultant.
A statement from Celtic on Friday confirmed speculation that McGuinness would be joining the club to help with the development of young players."

Spotted you. My old seat still behind a pillar, I see :)

This is a fantastic way to scratch your head and waste your time. I got 33, missed a couple of blindingly obvious ones:

http://www.sporcle.com/games/ThomDubya/first-spl-goalscorers-by-nationality

I started doing earlier today that then chucked it because I couldn't be arsed working out how to spell.

I spent ages trying variations on Johansen/Johannson/Johanssen before realising there was probably someone else Finnish before him. Forgot fecking Brattbakk, which is ridiculous when you realise I remembered the existence of Thomas Flogel and Hicham Zerouali.

Can't really expect to win games with only one player awake - and he doesn't get on till half time. St Johnstone defended really well. Celtic possibly spent so long without the ball on Wednesday they've forgotten how to use it again.

Hasselbaink's a lively wee pain in the arse. Lomas never seems to play him and Tade at the same time against us, which I think would be more effective.

Well done to the supporters today on a respectful 90 minute's silence.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2012/nov/14/scotland-football-success-scott-murray

That's great.

^^^good read

I was going to start a "come anticipate Billy Stark's 90 minutes in charge" thread but I couldn't be arsed.

Quality shite goal for Rhodes puts us 1-0 up vs Luxembourg. Positive line-up with Rhodes, Shinnie, Miller* and Naismith all sharing forward positions.

*I suppose when you fly from Canada for the game when a dozen others called off you guarantee yourself a start. Hopefully another goal before half-time will see Griffiths replacing him at the break.

Not a lot of caps of this bench, maybe an all-time low?
Samson, Webster, Barr, Davidson, Kelly, Griffiths, Bell.

Brave new dawn.

Floodgates open. Rhodes again for 2-0.

On the march wi' Billy's army

FUCK OFF BILLY STARK

Didn't really see that much of it, because my dad insists on watching with the sound off which leads my mum to yap all the way through it, and it's very distracting. Looked a mixture of "zzzzzzzzz" and "yay we have a striker that isn't Kenny Miller and has actual instincts, wooh", tbh, but as I say, wasn't exactly giving it my full attention. Shinnie a keeper? (as in "should we keep him", not "would he be more convincing between the sticks than Matt Gilks", to which I suspect I know the answer...)

Good game so far. Aberdeen looking threatening on the ball - McGinn and Fraser both troubling the Celtic defence. Celtic are mostly in charge but looking a bit out of ideas up front. We seem to have adopted the long throw as a key attacking strategy :/

ESPN commentator* has twice described Gavin Rae as a "midfield general" - I think that's once more than Rae has touched the ball. He must mean one of those generals who sits back and sends everyone else into battle.

*Is it Derek Rae? Maybe they're related.

Midfield General Gavin Rae hooked at half time.

Aberdeen's biggest crowd in three years, good to see.

Aye, most of our chances at one stage were coming from set pieces or our conversion of Adam Matthews into Rory Delap :(

Nice assist from Wanyama for Lassad's goal though.

Maybe he meant he looked like Midfield General, the chubby babyfaced dj who hung about with fatboy slim

What has happened to Hibs?

also lolling at concept of Gavin Rae being babyfaced

Maybe-not-over-the-line goal then a penalty a couple of minutes later seems to have killed a game Hibs were very much in.

Surprised to find us top of the league after today.

Worst league in the world to bet on atm - only five points separating eight teams who all look as likely to lose as win each week.

Only 6 out of 42 Scottish football managers have been in post for longer than three years. Rookie new boy Neil Lennon is the 9th longest serving manager in the country o_O

Blimey, that's a stat. Who are the six - Brown, Butcher, Billy Reid, maybe McCall?