ian1964

By BARRY ANDERSON A NIGHT when Scottish football plumbed to unprecedented depths of despair. Neil Lennon attacked by a so-called fan while inside his technical area, Celtic supporters battling police and stewards while pretending to be Irish republicans, and two sending offs that verged on the farcical. One of the most controversial seasons ever is drawing to a close, however one last round of chaos at Tynecastle just about topped it all. After refereeing cover-ups, conspiracy theories and parliamentary summits to discuss Old Firm matches, season 2010/11 added another chapter to its book of infamy last night. In the 49th minute of play, Celtic's celebrations following Gary Hooper's second goal were cut short. A man leapt from Tynecastle's main stand to sprint down the track and assault Lennon. The surprised Celtic manager barely had time to react before stewards pounced on his assailant, but that did not stop Lennon swinging his boot at the flattened thug several times. In fact, twice he mistakenly connected with one of the grounded stewards as his rage took over. Few could blame him given the letter bombs, death threats, 24-hour security and everything else he has tolerated of late. No-one should be subjected to physical abuse for simply doing their job, especially when that job is managing a football team. Where was his protection? Lennon hurled a few expletives at his attacker as he was marched down the tunnel by police and the Irishman was later described as "shaken but fine" by his assistant, Johann Mjallby. Hearts may now be punished. It might only have been one brainless buffoon but that he emerged from a section of home supporters to attack Lennon leaves the Edinburgh club open to possible sanctions from the Scottish Football Association. Perhaps there should also be action taken against Celtic for the equally unacceptable conduct of their supporters in the Roseburn Stand. Groups of them fought with police and stewards in the aftermath of the attack on their manager, accompanied by deafening chants of "we are the IRA". Feet and punches were swung at the local constabulary as things threatened to get completely out of control in the away end. On the field it was actually quite the opposite. Celtic were in total command of a match they had to win to keep their SPL title hopes alive. David Obua, Hearts' Ugandan midfielder, was red carded on 32 minutes for an innocuous slap at Charlie Mulgrew. Full article here: http://edinburghnews.scotsman.com/heartofmidlothianfc/Hearts-03-Celtic-Jambos-crumble.6767032.jp?articlepage=1

Jelavic to Manchester United? Nikica Jelavic could fulfill his dream of playing in the Premier League soon. The potential Premier League champions Manchester United have been scouting him. Tipp3 Bundesliga | 05.12.2011 | 17:52 | JOHN KARNER Around the Ex-Rapidler Nikica Jelavic is the beginning of a real transfer story. The striker, who last summer moved from Rapid to Glasgow Rangers, has attracted the attention of the Manchester United scouts, according to the Croatian sports daily Sportske Novosti. Rapid is not involved in any resale. Jelavic, despite injury problems, has had a dream season with the Glasgow Rangers in Scotland, having played in 21 league games scoring 14 times and delivering six assists. In addition, the Croatian international striker has scored three goals in three cup matches. These qualities have not escaped the attention of the Manchester United scouts. As transfer the sum of 15 million pounds is rumored, that is 17.2 million euros. An amount for which the Rangers would look on kindly, as they paid "only" 4.9 million euros to Rapid. Particularly bitter for all fans of the Green White: Rapid would not get any resale money, because the Rangers rejected this during the negotiations. http://sport10.at/home/fussball/bundesliga/661630/Jelavic-zu-Manchester-United

Low scoring game for you then zappa??

I'm sure if he gets a decent defence Lawyer LB kicking him twice will be mentioned??.

For anybody that's bored,Boyd playing

Kilmarnock v Rangers - SPL Final Game (12.30pm KO - Rugby Park) Club open from 11am. Please note that entry will be for strictly members only. http://www.theweerangersclub.com/

I believe it is true mate,Frankie will no for sure

I do think we will keep up our recent high standard and hammer them on Sunday,let the party begin:rfc::spl:

Will the current wage structure still be in place now the take over has been done??

Nobody would want them,nobody wants them here. I'm fecking loving it when they are saying they don't care about the league now with all that is going on.......................HA!HA!HA!

The attack on TLB last night has already been stated as being a '' sectarian attack '', how do they know this?,the guy has not even made a statement!!!

I'm listening to RR.Some BHEAST on saying not only Lennon should quit Scotland but C****c as club should also quit...........................YEEEEEEESSSS PLEASE

They should ban the BHEASTS for life as well

Hearts fan,{????},on real radio saying that Rangers fans were in the crowd and were responsible for most of the songs and aggro!!!!!!!!

by George Galloway MP on Thursday, 12 May 2011 at 09:10 Forget that rather facile comment by a legendary manager about football being more important than life or death, to a present-day one it is about just that. Or rather more specifically, death. Neil Lennon, the manager of Celtic, is a Catholic, a republican and courageously outspoken. It shouldn’t be necessary to append these adjectives to his name but it is because of them that he has received his latest live death threat, a bullet in the post. Prior to that there have been deadly letter bombs and more bullets, his home in Glasgow’s West End is bristling with security devices, his wife has to go to a safe house with their child when Celtic are travelling and Lennon is under police protection, but clearly of the most cursory nature. On Wednesday evening as he stood on the touchline guiding his team to victory over Hearts at Tynecastle a home supporter leaped the wall scampered past what is laughably known as security and landed a blow before being overpowered by Lennon’s coaching assistants. His assailant hasn’t appeared in court yet but you couldn’t get odds anywhere that the man is anything other than a virulent and violent Protestant bigot. If Neil Lennon decides at the end of this week and the league campaign that he’s chucking it in then no one would blame him. Scotland, however, would die of shame. The reaction in Scotland has been curiously muted. It’s as if that because we’ve lived with anti-Catholic bigotry for so long it’s not unexpected, if slightly over the top. Some have even turned it onto the victims, that it’s really the Tims’ fault for maintaining separate schools. If those letter-bombers or that attacker had just shared a sandwich with a Catholic at play times if would never have come to this. Some even went further. George Foulkes, Baron Foulkes of Cumnock, is a former chairman of Hearts, the club the attacker follows. He’s a lickspittle Labour man with a despicable record. In 1993, he was forced to resign as Shadow Defence Minister after being convicted of being drunk and disorderly during in incident in which he struck a Police officer. And in September last year he, along with 54 other public figures, signed an open letter stating their opposition to the Pope’s state visit to the UK. On Sky News on the day after the Lennon attack Foulkes joked that if Celtic moved to the Irish league that would solve the problem. Bigotry is clearly in the genes too. His son Alex, another Hearts supporter, is a sectarian football hooligan. He was convicted of hurling abuse at Celtic fans – the longest and most sustained police officers had witnessed - and when arrested told the police they’d be in trouble because his father was an MP and his mother was on the police board. No one would argue that Celtic fans are spotless – one was jailed this week for racial abuse of a Rangers’ player – but they have never been guilty of the sustained, anthemic, sectarian chanting and singing that the Rangers support has disgraced itself over more than a century (Rangers will have to play their next European away game supporterless because of it). Their songs are rebel ones about their heritage, rather than foul abuse at the other half of the Old Firm’s religion. And it was only in the mid-1980s that Rangers signed its first Catholic player. Pele couldn’t have got into the team before then. It took UEFA, the football authority, to bring the first official sanction on Rangers. Rafts of politicians, councillors and sheriffs could have done it for aeons before, but didn’t. And the police have traditionally stood back and allowed the support to ‘fuck the Pope’ and bathe in ‘Fenian blood’, despite the flagrant breaches of at least two laws. Only in the last match between the two sides, after what us Scots would call a previous touchline stramash, have the police promised zero tolerance. Where were they when this crazed numpty, who could have been carrying a knife, jumped over the barrier and launched his attack on Lennon? Given the previous history plod should have been in the dugout with him, or at least hovering in the technical area. And what about the stewards who are meant to stop these incursions? Missing in inaction! Tynecastle, Hearts ground, should now be closed until there are guarantees that such an incident can never re-occur. As should Ibrox, Rangers ground, at the first chirrup of what used to be called a party song but is better described as sectarian bile. It isn’t just the authorities who have been craven over the decades in the face of this, the left are equally guilty. In the wake of the last letter bomb to Lennon I tried to organise an anti-sectarian rally in Glasgow’s George Square but my erstwhile political colleagues deliberately scuppered it. There had to be a ‘balanced slate’, you see, not just Catholics or Celtic supporters – presumably a Church of Scotland minister and a former ‘Gers player who had recanted! – because it couldn’t just be about the victims. It wasn’t intended to be, but why the hell not! If Lennon had been black or Asian, or a Sighthill asylum seeker they’d have been out on the streets at the drop of a leaflet. Scottish piety about being a tolerant country has been exploded by the sustained sectarian attacks on Lennon. It’s the bigotry which dare not speak its name. To his credit the First Minister Alex Salmond, another Hearts supporter, has condemned the attack. But until there’s drastic action against these sick-making Protestant hate-merchants it’s just so much mouthwash. We all need to stand behind Neil Lennon. Or, perhaps more accurately, in front of him.

Your video has also been removed Gribz!!!!

I see your video of Lennon assaulting a Hearts fans has been removed Zappa!!!!!

Only a few weeks ago, Walter Smith, the Rangers manager who is set to stand down at the end of this season, expressed relief at the prospect of taking his leave of the stew of sectarianism that is the all-too familiar backdrop of top-level football in Scotland. His view is unlikely to have been changed by what happened at Tynecastle last night. It would be nice to think that the Hearts fan who appeared to attack Celtic manager Neil Lennon early in the second half of the two sides' SPL match in Edinburgh would make the whole of Scottish football stop and think about the depths it has recently plumbed. Nice, but events of the past few weeks have suggested that rancour is a bottomless pit in these parts. Of course, Lennon had plenty of insights into that long before he took over as Celtic manager just over a year ago. Feisty, flame-haired and never one to step back from a challenge, he was, to be frank, the kind of player opposition fans love to hate. But couple those factors to an upbringing as a Northern Ireland Catholic and his arrival at Celtic in December 2000 was a particularly red rag to fans from the other side of that most divided of football cities. Controversy seemed to attach itself to Lennon like a shadow. The hard-tackling midfielder was always likely to amass a stack of yellow cards, but he had a particular gift for collecting cautions in matches against Rangers. Famously, he was sent off for an altercation moments after the final whistle in a game at Ibrox in 2006, an incident that served only to reinforce the apparent hatred that Rangers fans reserved for him. Lennon secured his status as a hate figure for Rangers supporters when he announced his decision to retire from international football in 2002, by which time he had collected 40 caps for Northern Ireland. It was reported, though not actually confirmed, that he had expressed a wish to play for an all-Ireland team, and he decided to stand down after receiving death threats soon afterwards. All things considered, he might have been expected to develop a liking for the quieter life when he left Celtic in 2007 and subsequently saw out his playing career with spells at Nottingham Forest and Wycombe Wanderers. However, he returned to Celtic as an assistant coach in April 2008. Generally speaking, things had been quiet between the Old Firm for a few years by then, but his arrival stoked up the dormant fires of mutual loathing and took hatred to new heights. Or rather depths. Lennon's wry, chippy style was a red rag to the Rangers bull, with supporters of the Ibrox side believing he took delight from taunting them, but things took a sinister twist earlier this season. From the Celtic camp, there were accusations that the club was shown no favours by referees, and Lennon did nothing to defuse the tension. Yet things really kicked off two months ago, when Lennon and Ally McCoist, the Rangers assistant manager, had an angry exchange at the end of an Old Firm game. The incident provoked predictable hand-wringing, but pious words did nothing to take the heat from the situation. Over the past few weeks, the bile and acrimony have reached levels never previously seen even in the febrile world of Scottish football. The nadir was reached when parcel bombs were allegedly sent to Lennon and a couple of high profile Celtic fans a few weeks ago. It should have been a moment to stop and think, but the tension has mounted since. Lennon, for one, has done nothing to defuse the situation, fuelling the fires with claims that other teams were giving Rangers too easy a time of things in the run-in to the SPL title. His words were probably rash, certainly ill-advised. It cannot be said with certainty that they provoked last night's incident, but there is no question that he enraged fans of many sides. Nothing can excuse what happened at Tynecastle, but you have to wonder just how long Lennon – a sensitive individual who has admitted so suffering from depression in the past – will consider it worth his while to stand in the line of fire for the sake of his club. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/celtic/8508677/Celtic-manager-Neil-Lennon-in-the-line-of-fire-as-hatred-continues-to-grow.html

Liewell,Dr Death & TLB have created a massive amount of trouble this season and yet still it's everybody else fault.It's time they were brought to task for their despicable behaviour,again. They have intimidated refs and opposing fans to the brink of something serious happening,and it has.The SFA have also let down Scottish football by allowing them to continue their attack on the refs and Scottish football. They should all hang their heads in shame.

You reap what you sow

Worst day in Scottish football history

Judgement day indeed. Killie 0 The Champions 4 Jelavic,Lafferty,Davis,Naismith :spl::robbo:

Aye,I know,need to keep of the cider

http://leggoland2.blogspot.com/2011/05/villarreal-and-creep-questions.html

Sore back,the last thing I remember is slipping on my arse at Tynecastle:shock: