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

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?

Billy Reid
Harry Cairney
Gardner Speirs
Dick Campbell
Ross Jack
Terry Butcher

Cheers, thought Brown and McCall might've sneaked in there. Have no concept of passage of time.

Barca winning tonight means we are in some kind of Europe after Christmas. Good stuff. A wee draw or better tonight would be nice.

Tony Mowbray's first 14 league games at Celtic: W9 D3 L2 F30 A14 - 30 points (and one of those defeats was to Rangers)
Neil Lennon's last 14 league games at Celtic: W7 D4 L3 - F24 A13 - 25 points (with no Rangers to drop points to)

We had four more points last year when we were 10 behind Rangers and everyone was calling for Lennon's head!

american 20 yo juan agudelo trailing with celtic, might transfer. promising, needs to work harder, played on a terrible mls team last year

Thanks anky, someone mentioned a new signing today and I had no idea what they were talking about.

Feel slightly vindicated for not being entirely Team Lennon despite entire timternet disagreeing (apparently beating Barcelona negates chucking 57 year record against Killie - not for me). Also notice slump in home form coincides with me not attending games any more.

Feeling "vindicated" by defeat seems an odd reaction imo. Like us losing justifies your lack of faith in the guy who managed to turn a shit team around last year, win the league, qualify for the Champs League and do mad unheard of things like scoring and winning repeatedly away from home in Europe. Beating Barca doesn't justify losing to Killie, but neither does losing to Killie negate all our good results.

The league form is poor and he's making mistakes. I think he and the players are being too complacent about the league challenge.

- he needs to bite the bullet and bin Brown out of the team until he's either fit or retired
- he needs to stop switching Samaras to centre forward every time it's going wrong as that rarely makes it go better
- he needs to train Commons out of shooting from ridiculous impossible positions when he's missing easy chances
- he needs to sub players who aren't playing. How Hooper stayed on the pitch longer than Tony Watt is beyond me. Watt was poor too but he at last got on the ball
- he needs to stop arguing with clowns on twitter at 1.30am when he has a match the next day. If he wants professionalism from his players he needs to show it himself

I think they're struggling to adjust from chasing the ball in Europe to being expected to dictate the game domestically. Spending repeated midweeks having better players run you around the pitch can't be good for confidence. Injuries aren't helping either, he's having to cobble teams together every week and can't get any kind of consistency in any of his pairings.

I don't rate Lennon as highly as others seem to, never have, get roundly pilloried for it, feel constantly like I'm challopsing, and people are starting to agree with me and I'm glad that I'm not entirely mad and unique in not having emperors new clothes syndrome. I never said I *enjoyed* any of it.

I read this in the barber's this morning. Not often I say it but Bill Leckie is mostly bang on.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/scotsol/homepage/sport/columnists/billleckiesports/4665776/Blind-as-a-brat.html

Oh come on, does any Celtic fan seriously think that they might not win the SPL? Losing at home to Caley must suck but it's not like it will effect where the title goes