I must say, based on my previous experience of pre-season friendly matches, Saturday against Newcastle United was very enjoyable. Newcastle are a massive club, with a massive fan base, who stick by their team even when things aren’t going too good, there are not many teams who could bring 10,000 supporters to Celtic Park for a friendly game, possibly Liverpool, or maybe even Newcastle’s nemesis Sunderland. The Geordie Army were in good voice until Celtic scored our second goal, and by the time the fourth went in, quite a lot of the 10,000 had returned to the nearest Zombie Pub.
Almost every visiting team and their supporters are made welcome at the home of the Champions, the Famous Glasgow Celtic, but when you indulge in singing certain songs to offend and show your disdain of Scottish Football and in particular Celtic Football Club, then that changes matters, and when your team gets pumped 4-0, then you are going to get some of that back at you. I worked with a lot of Geordie’s over the years working on the oil rigs, most of them seemed to favour Oldco who perished in 2012, so that would explain why they were seen partying in the Bristol Bar and similar establishments, you can guess the song sheet. You know the line in a famous Scottish song, “And sent them homeward to think again” they got a taste of that on Saturday.
It was a great run-out for Celtic, I realise we are a couple of weeks ahead of Newcastle in terms of preparation for the coming season, but they have a squad that was amassed costing a lot of money, so to beat them so emphatically will give our players a huge boost in confidence for the coming season, and prove that with the right mind-set and commitment, we should not fear any team coming to Celtic Park in hopefully the Champions League. As Brendan said there will be more players coming in, and obviously some more going out. The Bhoy’s who played on Saturday all did very well, I was impressed with Hayato Inamura, Dane Murray, and Johnny Kenny in the first half, and Callum Mc Gregor and Colby Donovan in the second half.
It was also great to see Kieran Tierney back playing at Celtic Park, and he didn’t disappoint the Celtic Support, he will be a massive player for us this season. Added to KT, we need to do all in our power to keep Daizen Maeda and Reo Hatate as well. Benji Nygren looks like a really good player, and it will be good to see Sin Yamada in action soon. We have a difficult start to the season, it’s disgraceful that the Champions begin our campaign on a Sunday with a 4.30 start, followed by another Sunday trip to Aberdeen with a 12.30 kick-off, then August 31st we visit Snake Mountain with a 12 noon kick-off, so in the first four games we play only one game on a Saturday at 3pm. Surely it’s time we did something about this nonsense, anyone who has to work on Sunday’s is getting ripped off, and it’s not Celtic’s fault, I believe we were the only team last season to decline the £75,000 from Premier Sports to change a game at Celtic Park for their broadcast. The vast majority of Celtic’s revenue comes from our own supporters, not from television, it’s quite probable that Celtic actually lose money because of television.
Glasgow’s still Green & White.
