Getting closer to the title. Safety first for our supporters.

[Joe O'Rourke]

One ingredient needed to win leagues, is the ability to win football matches when not playing at your best, or when some star players are not available, I think we could say the match against Hibs on Saturday was one of those occasions. We have been playing with a reasonably settled midfield three of Callum, Reo, and Aaron, so we started without Aaron, then lost Reo pretty early with a hamstring, which hopefully will be ok in a week or two. That gave Bully and Matt a chance to come in and get valuable game time, which will help them as we move into the final part of the season.

It seems that every game we play now throws up the problem of the opposition reducing the amount of actual playing time, and breaking up Celtic’s fast aggressive football by making sure the game is in stop/start mode, petty fouls and blatant timewasting is evident every week, and match officials like Steven Mc lean seem to just ignore the tactics, except when for the second time a ball came onto the pitch from the Hibs dugout, and he booked the Hibs Manager, that was probably the only time during the match that Lee Johnson was not biting the fourth official’s ear, non-stop moaning from him.

At the end of the day three points were bagged, and we move a game closer to the title. It must really annoy the cheats like Steven Mc Lean and his supervisor Crawford Allan, that no matter how much they try to derail out title challenge, we just keep on winning. It will be interesting to see who Allan appoints to the next couple of Glasgow Derby matches, that’s his, and his accomplices last chance to try to stop Celtic from completing our fifth treble in seven seasons, as Big Ange says, we never stop.

The Big News at the weekend was the decision taken by Celtic Football Club to decline tickets for the next Glasgow derby at Snake Mountain after the split. The basic reason for that decision was safety of our small number of supporters attending. There has been numerous incidents over in Govan, including one of our backroom team getting hit with a bottle thrown from the hospitality section. I know Celtic have continued to ask for a return to the status quo in terms of ticket allocation, they have also suggested the possibility of introducing safety nets, but it has always been denied. I think the vast majority of our supporters will endorse the action taken by Michael, Chris, and the rest of the Board, the health & safety of our players, staff, and supporters must always come first.

I like to watch the highlights of the game on Sunday morning while having my breakfast, but yesterday morning was a shock to the system altogether. Now I know that over the years most of the pundits don’t tend to be Celtic minded, with one or two notable exceptions. Like Michael Stewart and Simon Donnelly, but this weekend was as far from impartial as you could possibly get. There were three pundits/commentators, or whatever you want to call them. The main man was Steven Thompson, ex Rangers, then we had Neil Mc Cann, ex Rangers, and finally, Richard Foster, you’ve guessed it, ex Rangers, absolutely scandalous. And what is actually more scandalous, two of those people were recipients of EBT payments from Rangers, which was money meant for taxes to fund things like the BBC. I can only imagine Foster wasn’t good enough to get into the EBT Gang of David Murray.

Glasgow’s Green & White …. We never Stop.