The SPL and the EPL have Started!

It's great to see the new seasons start over in the Scottish and English Leagues! I missed seeing all the action and great goals after the World Cup! So who will be the champions? Well for the SPL I of course will be picking Celtic to be champions come May 2011. A new manager, a new team and new enthusiasm to win should be enough to see them past a dilapidated and tiresome Rangers team. They certainly don't deserve to win 3 leagues in a row..... difficult even writing that...ugh..... Celtic started their long campaign with an away win against Inverness Caledonian Thistle! As for the EPL I still can't see past Chelsea ( did you see them destroying West Brom 6-0? ) and Man U fighting it out again for the top dog position. Man City may make their money work for them but that is a rarity in the EPL isn't it? ...... ha! ha! yeah right! Apart from Man Utd, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool of course....looks like Blackburn may be the latest team to be bought out by some daft billionaire who wants to spend 100,000 million dollars on a team that has the fan base of the New Britain Rock Cats! Why can't we have some eccentric billionaire/millionaire come and buy us out?? For the foreseeable future we will have to rely on our innate skills to make an impact on the soccer field!

Glasgow Celtic's European hopes this year rest on their next two games against Dutch team Utrecht. Thursday night this week is the first leg of their Europa League Qualifier......look out for the result that night!

Next Game analysis on our weekend opponents , the Albanian Eagles, will be out this Friday. They wouldn't sound so threatening if they were called the Albanian Sparrows or the Albanian Blue Tits would they!

Miracle Required for Celtic

I have tried to avoid giving an update on how Glasgow Celtic have been doing in the SPL this season in the hope that things would improve, but they haven't. In fact, things have gone from bad to worse! This year was always going to be a tough one for Celtic with a new manager and backroom staff coming in. However, Celtic's biggest rivals Rangers have not been at their strongest and are going through some real financial struggles that have forced them to sell players with no back filling. The season and the championship were clearly there for the taking but Celtic have failed miserably to rise to the challenge and with only 13 games left they sit precariously in second position a full ten points behind a weakened and bankrupt Rangers team. When Tony Mowbray took over at Celtic I must admit I was a bit nervous, because his experience as a manager had been limited. He coached a Hibs side to become a reasonably competitive SPL side and then took WBA up to the EPL playing an attractive style of football. But in the EPL they were found out and came straight back down again. When Mowbray then joined Celtic, he said he wanted to build an attacking Celtic side that fans would love to watch. Well, there have been moments that have hinted at that vision but the season has been pockmarked by some awful results; early elimination from the Champions league, a poor performance in the Europa League, a shock knockout from the League cup and 21 points dropped out of a potential 75 in the league. Hope was raised again in the January transfer window when Celtic brought in players of the quality of Robbie Keane from Spurs, Braafheid from Bayern, Kamara from Fulham and several others. Celtic certainly started to score more goals but their defence has been leaking goals like the proverbial sieve. The last straw for me was the recent away game against Aberdeen when Celtic managed to get 4-2 up with only 15 minutes left in the game......and yes....they lost two goals to draw 4-4 and effectively handed the league to Rangers. I do like to believe in miracles but for Celtic to win the league now they would have to put Lazarus into the "whatever" category.

All I hope is that the new players in the team start to gel and at least they make the final section of the league season as competitive as it can be. Beating Rangers twice before the end of the season would at least be some sort of consolation for such an awful campaign.

As for the other Celts, well they are in action again tomorrow night against Club Napoli, 7pm.

See you there

Susan Boyle; Celtic Fan!!

HOT OFF THE PRESS!! Just as we expected when she recently posted on our blog, Susan Boyle, the International singing sensation from the UK, is indeed a Celtic fan! I know, you may have to take a bit of time to digest this shocking piece of information but once you do I think we should invite her to one of our games and maybe ask her to sing the national anthem, what do you think? Maybe keep her away from our Bubba burgers though huh?
I know Jodingo!! loves her singing style and dress sense as does Roniildo so we could have a bit of a stand off for her......

In other news.......If you look at the bottom of the page you will see that we are getting close to our 5,000th visitor to the blog!!

By the time you read this we may even be past that number. As i have mentioned before, we have visitors to the blog from all over the World. Some only stay on for a couple of seconds but others are intrigued enough about the comings and goings of El gato, Bor, La Boca, Fribeka and crew to hang around and read a few more pages...... you guys may be famous in India!~

Anyway.......


Great win in the last game guys even with that crazy stakeholder trying kill our new debutant and spoil a fine victory! Our next game is coming up this weekend and it is a HOME GAME against our great local rivals Guilford Hawks!

I'm getting the roster call started by saying I will make myself available for selection this coming Sunday. Tested the ankle and so far so good! So the count starts at 1.

OK, who else is in for Sunday? And let's try and get our numbers collated by Thursday mid day!

Scottish Premier League Update

Even though we are only 7 games into the new Scottish premier League season Celtic have managed to eek out a slender one point lead in the table over their arch rivals Rangers. The lead could have been much greater if Celtic had not suffered a controversial 2-1 defeat to Rangers last weekend. Three stonewall penalties should have been awarded to Celtic during the game but only one was. These mistakes were so blatant that the referee came out after the game to admit his mistake.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/leagues/scottishpremier/celtic/6263381/Referee-Craig-Thomson-admits-penalty-error-in-Old-Firm-match.html

Of course post match apologies are no help for Celtic when these sort of errors occur in such a significant game even this early in the season. Celtic have to start taking the game changing decisions out of the referees hands and into their own by winning games with a bit more flair and confidence. Celtic's new manager, Tony Mobray, is clearly taking time to settle into the role and design a team shape and consistency that will allow Celtic to kill off games and accumulate points. To do this Celtic have a few issues that they need to resolve and quickly. To ensure a successful season in the SPL and in Europe they need to get their frontline scoring more regularly than they are currently, the defensive line has to get back some of the solidity of previous seasons and finally they need a creative midfielder to make the team tick. There have been some encouraging signs with a few of the summer signings like N'Guemo, Fortune and Zheng Zhi and even some excitement as a signing from last year Paddy Mc Court finally started to show his "Messi like" potential. Check out his recent wonder goal against St Mirren;

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/3453994/paddy_mccourt_v_st_mirren/

Over the next 7 games I'm sure Celtic will increase their lead in the SPL but will have to improve considerably if they want to advance further in Europe, even though it is only the Europa Cup.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/leagues/scottishpremier/celtic/


In other news, we need to start getting in the YES/NO numbers in for the home game against Prospect on the 18th. At the time of writing this we have only 3 players saying yes, 1 maybe and 5 no. We still have 9 guys to say one way or another.

Conclusive Proof that Eduardo is a Diver and an Expert Jumper!

Celtic were cheated!

Glasgow Celtic: Season update

OK, I did mention that I would give you an update on how the "real" Celtic
are doing this season.

So...... After 23 games in the Premier league Celtic are sitting top of the league on 54 points with their big rivals, Rangers, second on 50 points. Celtic have won the last 3 Scottish premier leagues and this year are chasing 4 in a row! It has been a bit of an up and down season so far for Celtic. A series of bad injuries to some of their best players early in the season really wrecked Celtic's Champions League campaign this year with a 4th placed finish in their section seeing them drop out of Europe much earlier than expected. However, Celtic managed to remain competitive in the league and the two cup tournaments during this bad European form. Celtic are in the semi final of the league cup and also in the 5th round of the Scottish cup. In the league, Celtic got off to a stuttering start and had to endure a 4-2 defeat at home to Rangers! To their credit, after that horrendous start Celtic went on a 12 game winning streak hitting the top spot in the league. Celtic also gained some measure of revenge by beating Rangers 1-0 at Ibrox park in the last league game of 2008 stretching their lead to 7 points. Since the start of the new year Celtic have had a bit more of a sticky patch drawing at home to Dundee Utd and losing 4-2 away at Aberdeen taking their lead at the top of the league down to only 2 points. Today's 3-1 victory against Hibernian along with Rangers draw against Aberdeen restored a 4 point gap and hopefully Celtic will go on to consolidate their lead even further.

Celtic are well on track for a trophy treble!

Scottish League Starts This Weekend!

I know most of you will not care one bit but the Scottish Premier League starts it's new season 08/09 this weekend. Celtic play St Mirren on Sunday and are aiming to win the league for the 4th consecutive time! Their biggest rivals, Rangers, have been knocked out of Europe already and are desperate to win the league to keep their disgruntled, and largely ugly, fan base happy. Aberdeen, Dundee Utd, Hearts and Motherwell seem to be the perennial "also rans" in this league but you never know, one of them may have a good enough run to pip Rangers to second spot. I will give you selected highlights of Celtic's progress as the season starts.

I have added a poll to see if you can predict who will win the Scottish Premier League, go ahead and vote!

In other news.....congratulations to Jody, or as we should now call him, Tenbrinhosa, for winning the midfielder of the summer season vote with a narrow one point victory of Roniildo! Fribeca came in third even though he did not vote for himself......