An Old Firm game that showed Celtic in its true light

[ian1964 10,409]

By Kevin McKenna

 

Celtic fans have little to cheer as Rangers return to the top table of Scottish football

 

 

 

 

It is never a pleasant experience watching your football team being well beaten by your oldest and keenest rivals in a match your team was expected to win comfortably. At the end of such encounters, you head sullenly for the exit, bitterly resenting refereeing decisions and your manager’s tactical myopia while wondering why your highly paid defenders were made to look like Teletubbies. Several hours later and only with deep reluctance might you be forced to acknowledge the other team’s superior skills and desire to win, your mood having been softened perhaps by the caress of South American liquor.

 

Last Sunday’s Scottish Cup semi-final between Celtic and Rangers was a bit different. Long before the end, even though Celtic took the game to penalty kicks (football’s version of Russian roulette) you knew that they had had their arses well and truly skelped by Rangers all over the park. Midway through the first half, when Rangers were giving us a lesson in movement and one-touch passing, something happened that I’d never before encountered in a game involving our two great clubs.

 

All around me high up in Hampden’s south stand, Celtic supporters were espousing grudging admiration in low growls for the manner in which Rangers were playing. “When was the last time you ever saw a Rangers team playing the ball out from the back like this?” “We look like the lower division team here.” “That’s the way we’re supposed to play.” An industrial-strength challenge from the Rangers left-sided midfielder Barrie McKay, the best player on the park, would normally have been met with howls of rage. Instead, there was respect. “I wish more of our players had that attitude.” Obviously, I have omitted several words beginning with the letters “f”, “c”, “b”, “d” and “w”, lest you think that the most passionate club match in the world had become gentrified.

 

In the end, a Rangers team that, following financial ruin and liquidation, had spent the past four seasons playing the likes of Peterhead, Alloa Athletic and Arbroath had shown what can be achieved with a proper football coach and a strong unity of purpose. In doing so, they might also have rendered Celtic a massive favour as well as a dose of reality.

 

During this period, many Celtic fans have done little more than obsess about the legal status of Rangers while mocking the hubris and sense of entitlement that led to their financial downfall. Would that there had been a similar level of scrutiny of Celtic’s financial arrangements in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and 1980s before Fergus McCann arrived to save the club in 1994.

 

The Rangers pantomime has averted our eyes from the catastrophic mismanagement of Celtic in recent years. It has taken a historic defeat by a Rangers team playing in the lower leagues to show that Celtic are in turmoil and have been for a while. The first casualty of this, inevitably, was Celtic’s hapless young Norwegian manager, Ronny Deila. By the middle of next month, he will probably have delivered a second successive league title, but in a league shorn of Rangers’ presence and with a budget dwarfing that of every one of their opponents, this was the least that could have been expected of him.

 

Celtic's hardest task is finding spare seats for all the expensive flops who do nothing more than top up their pensions

 

His two-year reign has been characterised by a style of football best described as leaden. It has seen Celtic beaten in the big cup competitions by Ross County and Inverness Caledonian Thistle and humiliated in Europe over and over again. The first team squad is bloated, with so many players that a system of shifts must now operate to use the dressing room showering facilities. The most difficult task at the end of the week is finding spare seats for all the expensive European flops who have gathered in Glasgow’s East End to do nothing more than top up their pensions. At their training academy in Lennoxtown, on the outskirts of Glasgow, I’ve been told that the atmosphere is unpleasant. With one exception there has been no pathway into the first team for the disillusioned young native talent that Celtic rear to go out on loan to their rivals.

 

Deila is a rookie manager, a low-budget appointment who I hope might yet blossom into something better. He was appointed because Celtic thought they could hoover up all the prizes in Rangers’ absence for a minimum outlay. The blame for Celtic’s decline lies squarely with a board of directors as dysfunctional and out of touch as any that have ever served this great club. Celtic have one of the poorest and most socially disadvantaged fan bases in British football, yet they still refuse to sign up to the national living wage campaign for their lowest paid employees.

 

The club’s majority shareholder is one of the UK’s richest men whose name cropped up in the Panama Papers. They market the myth that they are “more than just a football club”, implying that they are St Francis of Assisi in a world of Donald Trumps. Last year, club chairman Ian Bankier said some fans were criminally racist for daring to criticise his fellow director, Ian Livingston, a Conservative peer who had voted in favour of cuts to tax credits, a measure that would have adversely affected many of the families who support Celtic. This occurred at an annual meeting presided over by a chief executive on a salary and bonus package of £1m a year.

 

I welcome Rangers back to the top flight of Scottish football; I’ve missed our passionate, dramatic and occasionally ugly encounters. Ours is a rivalry based on culture, politics, ethnicity and faith. Many of the men and women who participate in it have had their identity and dignity stripped bare by the political classes, whose gerrymandering of wealth and influence in this country has silenced and subjugated them. These people condemn the inevitable antisocial consequences of the Celtic/Rangers games while refusing to address the deep-rooted health and social inequalities that proliferate in those communities where the rivalry is most keenly joined.

 

In 1993, a grassroots, supporter-led organisation called Celts for Change was established and succeeded in overthrowing a previous dysfunctional and incompetent board regime. The leaders of that campaign are all still happily with us. Perhaps it’s time they got together again.

 

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/24/glasgow-rangers-celtic-scottish-football

Edited April 24, 2016 by ian1964

[ranger_syntax 3,755]

That’s the way we’re supposed to play.

 

Oh . . . my aching sides . . . if only success was the result of repeatedly telling people about how great you are.

[alexscottislegend 2,056]

Celtic have one of the poorest and most socially disadvantaged fan bases in British football, yet they still refuse to sign up to the national living wage campaign for their lowest paid employees.

 

Tells me all I need to know.

[cooponthewing 1,139]

There is a tidal wave wave of financial turmoil being hidden at the piggery! They can't keep it out of the public domain forever, they have been able to use our circumstances as a convenient deflection tactic for a he last four years as their support is either willingly blind or unable to comprehend looking deeper into what's financially happening there! Their obsession with us engulfs their every waking minute.

Edited April 24, 2016 by cooponthewing

[ian1964 10,409]

 

 

[MacK1950 2,230]

Cheers this has put a smile on my face,have you sent these to media after all they are in respect of the team they all support are they not:devil:

[ian1964 10,409]

Spelling is not their strong point!,''Lawell''(I think they mean Lawwell), and the 'D' in 'EMPTY STANDS' is back-to-front.

[Bearman 9]

Do you not need to wash a jersey before it shrinks???

[boabie 230]

I sincerely hope that McKenna is suffering deeply.

It's called Karma Kevin. You were one of the ones looking for your side to put the foot down and go for six at least. We told you what might happen but you didn't want to listen. Now you join the real bigots amongst your support and look for regime change to bring in somebody more seelik-minded, not to prop up a top heavy squad but to press this deluded resolution 12 garbage and do harm to Rangers. Be honest pal - you'd be happier at Rangers in bother rather than another Euro cup .

Edited April 24, 2016 by boabie

[pete 2,494]

Spelling is not their strong point!,''Lawell''(I think they mean Lawwell), and the 'D' in 'EMPTY STANDS' is back-to-front.

 

Unbelievable! They can't even get the name right. Reminds me of their card displays. They can't even do a card display anymore as not enough turn up.