First of all, I don’t think it was a great idea to have Celtic playing in Paisley at 8pm on a Saturday night, and especially in late November when it is dark and cold at 8pm. We all know that the broadcasters control the timing of matches in the SPL, but the pittance Celtic receive for these decisions about timing, certainly isn’t worth the inconvenience for the supporters, I understand that any extra money for the smaller teams in the League benefits them, it certainly doesn’t benefit a lot of our season ticket holders, I have a mate I go to all the away games with, he works at Rolls Royce and has to work every second Sunday, so being in the Europa League means more Sunday games, of course the blame for that rests with Celtic for being in that competition.
It was far from a classic game on Saturday night, getting the three points was a bonus, and one I’m not sure we deserved. We know what we’ll get playing against St Mirren, it’s like playing against the Paisley Globetrotters, I suppose it’s handy them playing in Paisley, because they’re close to the Air Traffic Controllers at Glasgow Airport, since the ball is in the air most of the time. I suppose when Stephen Robinson is giving his scouts a profile of the players he is looking for, he’ll start with, must be at least 6ft 4in, must be very robust, and an added bonus if they can take a long throw-in. Celtic had a lot of possession, but it was mostly in areas that were not a threat to the Saints, I think our first shot on target was in the 88th minute, and the only other shot on target was the magnificent strike from our Captain Callum, the saviour once again.
We are certainly not at our fast free flowing best at the moment, but since Martin has come in we have managed to claw back most of the lead the Jambo’s had, and if we can keep winning we can go back to the top of the League in a couple of weeks, to do that we need to win next Sunday at Easter Road, beat Dundee at Celtic Park on the Wednesday night, then the Jambo’s on the Sunday, three games that we would normally be confident of winning, but with all that’s going on just now, maybe not as clear cut as that. I’m not going to go into the specifics of the disconnect between the Board and some of our supporters, all I’m going to say is this, if we want any type of success this season we need to find a way of unifying every part of Celtic Football Club, I don’t profess to know how, but we need to come up with a solution pretty quick.
The team battled well on Saturday night, but we have lost a few players through injury, and you can obviously see that our substitute bench isn’t as strong as we would want it to be, and the worrying thing is, quite a few of the injuries are long term, with CCV probably out until next season, nothing close with Jota AJ, Jamsie, or young Callum Osmand, and with the possibility of losing Daizen in January we are going to have to do a lot of work in the transfer window, one wee bonus was Colby Donovan back, I thought the injury he got with Scotland was a serious one, so it great to see him coming on in Paisley. Every Celtic supporter would agree that our squad should be stronger, there a few reasons for that being the case, but until the transfer window opens in January, there is nothing we can do about that.
It’s now onto Rotterdam on Thursday night, that will be another tough test, as will Hibs at Easter Road on Sunday, there is nothing else for it just now, we will just have to knuckle down, give everything we have, and leave everything we have out on the pitch. We have ten games between Thursday night and the end of the year, we need to get a new Manager in ASAP, give him a bit of a chance to assess the squad and make plans for new recruits ASAP as well, our whole season could revolve around how we get through those ten games, but never forget, We are Glasgow Celtic the Champions, and Glasgow is still very much Green & White.
