Pre-season games are torture, when we beat Sporting Lisbon and Newcastle it was deemed as great display’s, then we got gubbed off Ajax and in the eyes of some it was a disaster. I believe we were ahead of the Geordie’s in terms of preparation, and we were behind Ajax in the same terms. In the final game against Al-Ahli, we managed to win on penalties. All these games were different, in most Brendan completely changed his line-up at half time, I have to say Benji Nygren looks like a real talent, and the little we saw of Sin Yamada gives up hope that he can be our first choice striker. The transfer window is difficult for us at Celtic, we are trying to shop in a different shop to all the other teams in Scotland, the power lies with the selling team if the player is still under contract, and lets be honest, Scotland has many attractions, but sunny weather is not one of them, the big attraction will most definitely be the Champions League, and the whole Celtic experience, the Celtic Support and Stadium has been praised by the best players in the world, like Ronaldo, Messi, Maldini, and Andres Iniesta, but the biggest problem with signing players now are agents, these guys have no scruples, they don’t care where their player is going to, they only care about how much they will make. When one of our young player left for England last summer, his agent demanded one million pounds for his services, needless to say, he didn’t get his one million, but the player still moved anyway. All we can do now is make sure we are ready for next week’s flag day, we must absolutely start on the front foot, St Mirren will play the exact same way they played in our last game against them, they will sit in, try to swamp us in midfield, and hope to get a penalty our set-piece goal. We also need to be ready for the Champions League qualifier in a few weeks, that is a must win game, so everything needs to be done to guarantee we do exactly that, if that means to a bit extra in the money being offered, then we must do it, there is far more to gain by reaching the group stages, we have already sampled that in the new format, and we should be hungry for more.
Huge congratulations to Association President John Andrews who turned eighty last Thursday. John has been a magnificent servant and supporter of both the Association and Celtic Football Club, more importantly, he’s one of the Good Guys, and I’m glad he’s a good friend to myself and many more.
Glasgow’s still Green & White.
