calscot

Celtic taking action? That will be some winter...

I think it's obvious that you need a separate court to rule when a club is punished and they don't think they actually broke the rules of the competition. They have to abide by the rules but as we've seen with our own league, the rules are not always fairly applied and are occasionally subjected to agendas from those in high places of the governing body. You need independent arbitration in all aspects of life as people involved find it difficult to remove their subjective point of view. One of the problems here is that Sion went to a court of law instead of CAS when UEFA see the latter as the ONLY legitimate appeal court. Basically the whole thing should have been taken to and sorted out by CAS before the qualifiers started.

I don't think it's fair to say Weir was "axed". He played in a friendly after recovering from injury but while he was injured the two player that have filled the centre back positions have formed a fantastic partnership which is a keystone of the reason for this thread in the first place. To break up that partnership against one of the hardest teams in the league to play against (or any team for that matter) would be totally illogical. When you have something working so well for so long, you don't start swapping half of it out. There is no evidence Weir is being "faded out", he's a 41 year old who resigned as defensive cover that lately hasn't been needed - not even close. It's like saying your car insurance is being faded out because you haven't had an accident... He was always going to be a squad player this season and the combination of his injury and the fantastic form and lack of injuries of our two first choices has meant he naturally hasn't featured since the start of the season. However, he is an immensely able back-up that could prove to be invaluable later in the season, and he brings far more to the squad than just his ability to do a job as a player. He has an immensely wise and experienced head on his shoulders and I would be shocked if that's not being exploited by the coaching staff. Maybe Hemmings is being "faded out" also...

I think the ironic thing is that even if the documentary was decent journalism, bringing on Speirs would have ruined its credibility. In the end it was indicative of the agenda the whole project.

Isn't that why the fridge is always on top of the freezer these days? No bending over to get your beer. I think if a beer was as heavy as a 25kg dumbbell and needed to be lifted from the floor to the mouth in a standing position, I'm sure we'd all either drink a lot less or be a lot fitter... In fact that sounds like an idea for an invention - a 25 kilo beer holder...

Absolute nonsense. Are people on here so ignorant about what happened in the last 5 years? Walter didn't play 21 year olds? You really need to pay attention.

I believe it is normal journalistic protocol to allow the subjects of such programmes a viewing before it is aired. It's also far better journalism if the person is actually offered an interview in the programme. Not allowing a pre-viewing would be sleazy journalism at best.

With his earlier quote that concludes that he himself has a big problem...

This may be true, but I don't see how it answers my point. My point is that comparing his behaviour to your average employee is completely disingenuous and I would even say incredibly naive. I fail to see why it should either, but it patently does. It seems to me the more money you earn, the more rights you have. That's a good laugh. If you don't agree with the immoral actions and greed of the top tier of earners then you must be jealous and hypocritical. It doesn't matter that these people are trying to fleece a general public who in turn think they have done very little to deserve what they earn. I think it is very sad that you need to learn that there is a lot more to life than money, and the moral actions of the highest paid become more and more sickening to the general population as we become more enlightened to their sleaze. People may be jealous of some of the money earned by the top tier of society but they are not the ones showing the same scale of greed and hypocrisy as the high earners. I've known quite a few more average earners who quit a job on principle, because their position became intolerable, or because they didn't get on with their new boss, and then spent all their savings while desperately looking for another job. I don't know anyone who has worked for a few years for a company where they got the job due to crony-ism, performed the job in a way that was ridiculed in the press and by customers, publicly bad mouthed new owners and boss after a takeover, and then sued them for well over a year's wages and bonuses, while freezing some of their bank account, after not being considered not good enough for the job - then having a high likelihood of walking into another highly paid position. I really don't think there are many people "jealous" of that - just incredulous. You may as well accuse those who didn't like the behaviour of Michael Carroll as being jealous of his previous wealth... I'll say again, the situation and behaviour of these guys are light years away from your average earner so as to be incomparable.

Maybe my memory is tainted as I remember him several times coming on as a sub and doing absolutely nothing of value. He didn't look interested at all. Recently I seen him at MK Dons in a playoff to get to the Championship. He came on as a late sub when it was 0-0, looked the worst player on the park and when it came to penalties he blasted the last one over the bar to lose the tie. I really don't remember him doing much after Chelsea including for Rangers but perhaps he did stuff when I wasn't watching...

Most definitely. Flo has been an overpaid waste of space at every club he's been since Chelsea. We lost 6M plus huge wages in one year on a guy who couldn't tie Mols' shoelaces. We only lost about 1.5M on Beattie.

Yes but the only team we weren't good enough against that counted was the Czechs - and then we weren't far off. All we had to do was gain equal points to them in our two games as we drew with Lithuania and they lost - suggesting our draw wasn't that bad. The Czechs are suffering from the same disease as us and in the scheme of things should usually be one of our peers. Losing to them is no disgrace but for the sour taste comes from the fact that we were actually capable of beating them. Spain are in another league and the only way I can see for us to get a result against them is to use Wattenaccio like we did against Barcelona. And that's NOTHING in common with 6-4-0. Lithuania are the type of team that will give us a banana skin just as we are sometimes capable of a draw against Spain. In the end, it wasn't that bad for a small country with a football crisis.

I think Beattie was better value than Tore...

I think the worst crime (apart from 6-4-0) was the Lithuania game although a win there wouldn't have qualified us. I don't think a 1-0 loss away to the Czechs was unexpected although the manner was excruciating. However, the biggest deciding factor seems to be that dodgy penalty. Had they not been rewarded for an obvious dive, we would have been in second place.

I can't believe people even care what kind of football Scotland play. If we played the most boring football in the World but did a George Graham's Arsenal and kept winning 1-0 to qualify for every competition and get to the next round, I'd be very happy. We are a small nation who don't have the luxury of pretending to be aesthetic - at best we'd be like an international Falkirk under Yogi. Playing "football" is no consolation for getting played off the park against Spain, especially when you think about how we "boringly" we recently played against France and Italy... I think Levein has done just enough to have a stay of execution but I'd have Walter back in a second. It's no wonder we're so bad with that kind of attitude. We used to have the Hampden roar and a tough, tenacious team who got stuck in and punched above their weight, but now all we have is powder puff football with the fans only caring about how pretty we look. We're crap now because we've abandoned what we were actually good at. It seems obvious to me that you don't fight a guy twice your size by using the Queensberry Rules - you kick him in the nuts and then give him a Glasgow kiss. Not pretty but pretty effective. We need a Begby rather than a Gay Gordon.

350 miles on Dutch/German trains, doesn't sound too bad and I would imagine quite cheap compared to here. Still a lot of money and hassle for a friendly unless you have something else to do in Hamburg...

Not many of us would expect the type of redundancy that he does for such a short time in a job. Bad mouthing your new boss before he takes over is always going to reduce your chances keeping your job especially after the contentiousness of his employment - you'd think a normal person would have quit and found employment elsewhere - or at least used the five months of getting paid a fortune to do nothing to find one. Sorry, he's not even slightly normal compared to most of us and in comparison is definitely a money grabbing chunt. Seems when you get to the really high earners, you seem to get a lot more of that. It's funny that when poor people get sacked they get nowt, when the rich get sacked they often get more than most earn in a lifetime... Maybe he's in the right and it's just better justice for the well-off while the rest of us get shafted, but when it's the less well off who don't have that privilege that end up having to pay for it all, it's not easy to stomach.

Sounds more interesting - but still not in November.

Don't know how it's taking the piss, it's a Hamburg game and you don't get flights and hotels for free. I'm not the kind of person who would pay over £250 for a day trip but it's the kind of thing I'd be interested in if it coincided with a four day or more holiday somewhere. However, I'm not personally that interested in seeing the city of Hamburg in Summer far less in November.

That's what I was going to say too... 100% agree. Panorama is gutter journalism at it's worst, you're better off looking to the Daily Star for accurate stories.

Got to say I agree with Craig's point of view. We may have no in form keepers but that doesn't mean it's valid to compare MacGregor in the Squad against Wylde. You have to pick a few keepers in the squad even if they are all out of form. Same goes for right backs. Whittaker may not deserved to be picked but you have to compare another right back if you want to compare who deserves to be picked ahead of him - he may be the most in form right back available. To compare with Wylde you need to look at other wingers. Craig is just trying to steer away from a facile debate.

It's not a typo in the slightest, it's proper punctuation. When you are quoting a person you open the inverted commas; if in their speaking they start a new paragraph you don't close the inverted commas, you start a new paragraph with open inverted commas again. If you closed the inverted commas before the new paragraph, you are signalling that the next paragraph is spoken by a different person. I don't know - back to school for you lot... :fish:

It actually is in quotes...

Anyway, as Leggo repeatedly points out - the IRA of the 20's were guilty of mass murder in the name of sectarian, ethnic cleansing. Also, how do Celtic fans explain this when they also sing "P.I. P.I. P.I.R.A."?

Some are forgetting that in the last game against the Czechs, Scotland were the better team and were ultimately very unlucky and hard down by not to win - and Levein might not be brilliant but he has got his act together somewhat. So if we don't rate our own chances against Spain, what reason is there to rate the Czechs? No matter our woes, with the way we've been playing lately I can't see anything other than 3pts from the Lichtenstein game. I really don't know where the Negative Nancy stuff is coming from. I think some people need to show a bit more backbone when following their country rather than meekly capitulating before a ball is even kicked.