I’m going to say it again, I hate International breaks, it does nothing for ordinary supporters, and certainly puts added pressure on players by adding to an already crowded fixture list. It will suit some teams to have the break, I’m talking about the teams who have few or no International players in their squads, teams like Celtic have a squad full of International players, so Lennoxtown will be a quiet place this week. One thing it did do, was give Celtic the opportunity to give some players much needed game time, players like Luke Mc Cowan and Luis Palma will have benefited from the game against Sligo Rovers, and it’s given Cameron Carter-Vickers extra time to get fit again.
The season so far has been very good with the exception of the games against Falkirk and Dortmund. I think Brendan agreed that he made too many changes against a good Falkirk team, and although Dortmund are a top class team, I think that defeat was more down to our own poor performance. I suppose you could also say that the game at Dingwall was not one of our finest either, but that has always been a difficult fixture for us, and had come after our trip to Germany. One thing I was disappointed with at Dingwall was, Kasper Schmeichel and his antics at the penalty awarded to County, if he was trying to gouge the penalty spot, he needs to stop that, that’s actions for other teams to use, certainly not a Celtic tactic.
So Aberdeen asked Celtic for a bigger allocation for games at Celtic Park, while continuing to reduce our allocation for games a Pittodrie, they have also struggled to sell their full allocation for the cup semi-final at Hampden next month. Aberdeen have had their best start to a season for a very long time, so they have increased their home support, but it’s been a very long time also since Aberdeen, or any other SPL team, (with the exception of Sevco} has brought a decent support to Celtic Park, it’s an unofficial boycott by some. The two biggest away supports at Celtic Park in a long time has been by two teams from a lower division, Greenock Morton and Falkirk, and both sets of their supporters backed their team positively, even when getting beat, so take a bow Morton & Falkirk, you put a few of the so-called big teams to shame.
Well done Celtic for refusing the extra cash for refusing to move this week’s game against Aberdeen. The majority of Celtic’s income comes from the pockets of our supporters, we have enough games being moved to accommodate the broadcasters, and although I sympathise with supporters who can’t get to games for health reasons etc, I think our default position on match times should be 3 pm on a Saturday.
Glasgow’s still Green & White.
