Saturday certainly wasn’t one of our best displays, but it was a victory and another three points on the board, I will take that every week if it means winning every game, I know the Celtic way of playing, and wee Bertie always talked about going out to entertain the supporters, but for me the most important aspect of football is winning, if we can do that and entertain, then brilliant, but getting a winning mentality is more important.
It was a decent game, and we were pretty comfortable, that is until we lost a poor goal in the second half, which left us with a nervy last twenty minutes, but we managed to get there. It should have been a reasonably easy win, but we managed to miss a few great opportunities, Benji Nygren had one of those games that we could have played all day and he wouldn’t have scored. Camilo Duran showed us again that he can be a very important player for us, but we need to get him through the middle, we probably need to change to 4-4-2, or a 3-5-2, I suppose it depends on which players are available.
I thought Haissem Hassan had a very good hour before going off, I think when we can get his fitness levels up we will have a very good player in our team, especially if Big Kasper is out for a while and we need to play Camilo as our main striker. It has been reported that Kasper and Kieran could be out for several months, that would be a big blow, as we are running out of time to find replacements, although we have always known we need cover for Kieran, and in my opinion there is a replacement right under our noses in Will Ferry at Dundee United, we have until 5pm on Thursday to get the players in we need to improve the squad, I understand it isn’t easy, but we need to find a way of getting it done, no matter what it takes.
What is it with the Goon’s over at Govan offering us 300 tickets for a League Cup tie at Snake Mountain, it looks like the Yankees are following in the footstep of Dodgy Dave King in pandering to the Onion Bears and the rest of the Bams. I know Celtic have already written to the SPFL who run the competition, we would hope that common sense will prevail, and a reasonable allocation would be agreed, but putting reasonable and Sevco in the same sentence seems strange, so the SPFL will need to make a ruling on it, I would imagine that may need a vote of all the teams in the SPFL, and so be it. There are only two alternatives to a common sense outcome that Celtic agree to, and that is, either tell them to stick their 300 tickets, or my preferred option would be, stick your competition, and withdraw from the League Cup, I know there will be contractual issue’s, but we need to take a stand on this.
Another strange decision from the powers that be, was to decide that both sets of supports were equally responsible for the pitch invasion and trouble at the Scottish Cup quarter final tie at Snake Mountain last season. Celtic are 100% correct in stating that the punishment is disproportionate, the Celtic Supporters went on to the pitch after winning the penalty shootout (I’m not condoning that) to celebrate a victory, not one Celtic supporter went further than the eighteen-yard line, most were on the track behind the goal. The Sevco supporters came on the park with absolutely nothing to celebrate, they’ve just been gubbed out of another competition, they came on to attack anyone connected to Celtic, they attacked Celtic Players, Celtic Staff, Celtic Supporters, and Police and Stewards. It’s nothing new when it comes to attacking anyone connected to Celtic, especially at the Bigotdome. We had bottles thrown into the Celtic goalmouth, we had a physio hit with a bottle thrown from the hospitality section, we had one of their thugs try to assault Scott Brown, this clown was allowed to run back to his seat, I could go on all day. It’s now time again to make it clear, we either get the full Broomloan Stand, or we take none, and obviously they get none for Celtic Park.
Finally, the punishment dished out by the SFA won’t affect Celtic Football Club, and they should know that, because we don’t get drawn at home in the cup.
Glasgow’s still Green & White.