Back slapping all round as the Clydesdale Bank announced the winners of their Premier League awards for the season:
Manager of the Year: Walter Smith
Player of the Year: Methuselah...not really. David Weir
Young Player of the Year: David Goodwillie
Goal of the Season: Anthony Stokes v Rangers
Save of the Season: Artur Boruc v Hibs
There is a name in there that still makes me snigger every time I hear it. There's just something inherently, if immaturely, funny about the name Walter...
Boruc isn't the only winning Celt this week with Robbie Keane picking up an award as Celtic's Player of the Season, as voted for by the supporters.
Keane's scored a lot of goals since his arrival, although I feel his overall impact has been muted, but it says much about the season that his 13 or so games have been enough to take the award.
In other news the SPL has signed a new sponsorship deal with Clydesdale that takes them through to 2013.
Nice to know that the league will still have a sponsor even if half its teams go bust.
Showing posts with label Robbie Keane. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Robbie Keane. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
What next?
A win, as any manager will tell you, is a win. So Neil Lennon is likely to be relieved that Celtic were able to come back from Saturday’s humiliation to beat Motherwell last night.
Rangers procession to the title will at least last into the split. More importantly Celtic look certain to enjoy a five point lead over third placed Dundee United - at the very least - going into the last five games. Finishing second in a two horse race is poor. Finishing third in a two horse requires an almost forensic obsession with achieving incompetence.
Given the opprobrium heaped upon players, management and board this season, Celtic’s likely second place would suggest that the other ten teams would be better served by jacking in this football lark and taking up tiddlywinks. But in Scottish football we’re not all measured by the same yardstick.
As they looked around Celtic Park last night what would the Celtic board have been thinking? A ground less than half full (and some suspect that figure was slightly generous). Robbie Keane, the £65000 a week gamble that didn’t pay off. The ghost of Tony Mowbray haunting a weak team and still searching for his £900,000 pay off.
I'd they were asking themselves: "What the hell do we do now?"
Some among the Celtic support would no doubt argue that club’s current board has disqualified itself from making decisions about the future thanks to their gross incompetence in appointing Mowbray and then, transfixed by the horror of what was unfolding, failing to act decisively enough or early enough to put an end to this annus horribilis.
Fair comment as that might be, the simple facts remain. Whoever sits in that boardroom needs to take decisive action. They have to pinpoint a manager who excites the fans and somehow implement a transfer policy that will allow him to rebuild a squad that Mowbray left not fit for purpose.
A big name manager, immediately given the funds to make a couple of big name signings, would probably spark some life into a dormant support. Football fans are a fickle bunch, they never forget the moments of anguish but they’re well versed at moving on at the slightest glimpse of a new dawn.
That’s a simple plan but it’s beset by obstacles. Remember that last summer there wasn’t exactly an orderly queue of big name managers forming at the gates to Lennoxtown. Some of the names mentioned seemed to run screaming from the very suggestion of taking the job.
In some ways Tony Mowbray was a compromise candidate, selected when more attractive prospects fell through. It wasn’t the cheapest of compromises though with West Brom rumoured to have received a compensation package of £2 million. Add that to his pay off demands: Celtic could have spent close to £3 million in securing and then dispensing with a manager in the space of nine months.
Now Celtic are far from the days of biscuit tin penury and I’m sure they’ll be embarking on another lucrative Harlem Globetrotter style pre season. But any strategy of attracting a big name manager will cost them again.
Will the board have the stomach for that?
A cheaper option would be to stick with Neil Lennon. There can be no doubt of his Celtic credentials and he was lauded for his honesty in tackling the issues at the club after the Ross County game.
He’s also completely untried as a manager and while admiring his honesty on Saturday we must also accept it as a mea culpa. He was powerless to do anything to stop what was happening. A Celtic manager saying that he was “living in hope” at half time in a cup semi final against Ross County? I’ve heard more persuasive auditions. Even if I feel that it's about time chewing tobacco made a permanent return to Scottish football dugouts.
Somehow Celtic need to find the answers quickly. They only need to look back on the last season to see what happens if their solutions fail.
Rangers procession to the title will at least last into the split. More importantly Celtic look certain to enjoy a five point lead over third placed Dundee United - at the very least - going into the last five games. Finishing second in a two horse race is poor. Finishing third in a two horse requires an almost forensic obsession with achieving incompetence.
Given the opprobrium heaped upon players, management and board this season, Celtic’s likely second place would suggest that the other ten teams would be better served by jacking in this football lark and taking up tiddlywinks. But in Scottish football we’re not all measured by the same yardstick.
As they looked around Celtic Park last night what would the Celtic board have been thinking? A ground less than half full (and some suspect that figure was slightly generous). Robbie Keane, the £65000 a week gamble that didn’t pay off. The ghost of Tony Mowbray haunting a weak team and still searching for his £900,000 pay off.
I'd they were asking themselves: "What the hell do we do now?"
Some among the Celtic support would no doubt argue that club’s current board has disqualified itself from making decisions about the future thanks to their gross incompetence in appointing Mowbray and then, transfixed by the horror of what was unfolding, failing to act decisively enough or early enough to put an end to this annus horribilis.
Fair comment as that might be, the simple facts remain. Whoever sits in that boardroom needs to take decisive action. They have to pinpoint a manager who excites the fans and somehow implement a transfer policy that will allow him to rebuild a squad that Mowbray left not fit for purpose.
A big name manager, immediately given the funds to make a couple of big name signings, would probably spark some life into a dormant support. Football fans are a fickle bunch, they never forget the moments of anguish but they’re well versed at moving on at the slightest glimpse of a new dawn.
That’s a simple plan but it’s beset by obstacles. Remember that last summer there wasn’t exactly an orderly queue of big name managers forming at the gates to Lennoxtown. Some of the names mentioned seemed to run screaming from the very suggestion of taking the job.
In some ways Tony Mowbray was a compromise candidate, selected when more attractive prospects fell through. It wasn’t the cheapest of compromises though with West Brom rumoured to have received a compensation package of £2 million. Add that to his pay off demands: Celtic could have spent close to £3 million in securing and then dispensing with a manager in the space of nine months.
Now Celtic are far from the days of biscuit tin penury and I’m sure they’ll be embarking on another lucrative Harlem Globetrotter style pre season. But any strategy of attracting a big name manager will cost them again.
Will the board have the stomach for that?
A cheaper option would be to stick with Neil Lennon. There can be no doubt of his Celtic credentials and he was lauded for his honesty in tackling the issues at the club after the Ross County game.
He’s also completely untried as a manager and while admiring his honesty on Saturday we must also accept it as a mea culpa. He was powerless to do anything to stop what was happening. A Celtic manager saying that he was “living in hope” at half time in a cup semi final against Ross County? I’ve heard more persuasive auditions. Even if I feel that it's about time chewing tobacco made a permanent return to Scottish football dugouts.
Somehow Celtic need to find the answers quickly. They only need to look back on the last season to see what happens if their solutions fail.
Friday, February 26, 2010
Referee!
When does a conspiracy theory eat itself?
Consider this: An unnamed source at Celtic accuses SPL referees of incompetence (at best) in their handling of the club's matches this season. Some Celtic supporters are already convinced they are conspired against by the authorities and see this as legitimising those claims.
When the BBC report both the complaint and the SFA's denials, some Celtic supporters claim that they are victims of a BBC-SFA conspiracy to undermine the club before Sunday's Old Firm clash.
Thus, I think, does a conspiracy theory become the victim of a conspiracy theory. Seriously, all this is making Richard Nixon look like one of the least paranoid, sane men ever to hold public office.
The distant rumbling that they can hear at Celtic Park is the sound of every non-Old Firm supporter in the land chuckling at Celtic's apparent distress.
Celtic's timing has been bad, possibly fuelled by antagonism between reffing supremo Hugh Dallas and whoever Celtic dispatched to raise their concerns. By allowing someone to go off the record the week before such a big game they've made themselves look petty and desperate.
If the BBC had got hold of the story then Celtic could have said: "We are always keen to discuss issues with the SFA but would prefer to keep those discussions private."
Doesn't kill the story but it would have kept Celtic above the fray, at least in the febrile atmosphere of the build-up to an Old Firm match. Even after the story broke they could have distanced themselves from it, has John Reid never rubbished the claims of an unnamed source before?
It's all a bit grubby, tagging the Robbie Keane offside complaints on at the end of the litany of moans certainly convinced this observer that this was a cack handed attempt to pressurise the officials on Sunday.
Like everyone else I've seen some shocking displays by referees this season (an opinion apparently shared by Dallas himself) and some decent ones. But Celtic have just added pressure on referees, pressure that is likely to diminish quality rather than enhance it, likely to harm any hopes of real accountability.
But then I've also seen some shocking displays from Celtic this season and I'm far more inclined to blame that for their league standing than refereeing standards.
That unnamed Celtic source has managed to shift the focus from an underperforming side as they face a must win game. But even Deepthroat himself will only consider that a job well done if the players actually get a result on Sunday.
If not it looks like sour grapes. Mr Mowbray, it's over to you...
Consider this: An unnamed source at Celtic accuses SPL referees of incompetence (at best) in their handling of the club's matches this season. Some Celtic supporters are already convinced they are conspired against by the authorities and see this as legitimising those claims.
When the BBC report both the complaint and the SFA's denials, some Celtic supporters claim that they are victims of a BBC-SFA conspiracy to undermine the club before Sunday's Old Firm clash.
Thus, I think, does a conspiracy theory become the victim of a conspiracy theory. Seriously, all this is making Richard Nixon look like one of the least paranoid, sane men ever to hold public office.
The distant rumbling that they can hear at Celtic Park is the sound of every non-Old Firm supporter in the land chuckling at Celtic's apparent distress.
Celtic's timing has been bad, possibly fuelled by antagonism between reffing supremo Hugh Dallas and whoever Celtic dispatched to raise their concerns. By allowing someone to go off the record the week before such a big game they've made themselves look petty and desperate.
If the BBC had got hold of the story then Celtic could have said: "We are always keen to discuss issues with the SFA but would prefer to keep those discussions private."
Doesn't kill the story but it would have kept Celtic above the fray, at least in the febrile atmosphere of the build-up to an Old Firm match. Even after the story broke they could have distanced themselves from it, has John Reid never rubbished the claims of an unnamed source before?
It's all a bit grubby, tagging the Robbie Keane offside complaints on at the end of the litany of moans certainly convinced this observer that this was a cack handed attempt to pressurise the officials on Sunday.
Like everyone else I've seen some shocking displays by referees this season (an opinion apparently shared by Dallas himself) and some decent ones. But Celtic have just added pressure on referees, pressure that is likely to diminish quality rather than enhance it, likely to harm any hopes of real accountability.
But then I've also seen some shocking displays from Celtic this season and I'm far more inclined to blame that for their league standing than refereeing standards.
That unnamed Celtic source has managed to shift the focus from an underperforming side as they face a must win game. But even Deepthroat himself will only consider that a job well done if the players actually get a result on Sunday.
If not it looks like sour grapes. Mr Mowbray, it's over to you...
Tuesday, February 02, 2010
Hopes and fears
The revolution, when it came, was televised.
Throughout the day yesterday Sky Sports News was awash with rumours of comings and goings at clubs across Britain. But it was in Glasgow’s east end that they found the most productive negotiations.
If Tony Mowbray had arrived at Celtic in July with a grand, but long term, plan he has redrafted it before our eyes since the turn of the year. Gone is the gradual reshaping of the team, replaced by an impressive cull of established players and the recruitment of eight players in a few short weeks.
Some of these players are relatively untried. But, stung by his experience of life back in Scotland, Mowbray has chosen to live or die by men of his own choosing and will see it as a vindication of his philosophy if the new players adapt quickly to the brand of football he demands.
That so many of the players he has jettisoned were keen to join up with their former manager at Middlesbrough would suggest that Mowbray has failed to win their hearts in the way that Gordon Strachan did. That will not bother him in the slightest if he can prove that he is stronger without them.
We can see this transfer window as the biggest gamble of Mowbray’s management career. He has sought redemption in change, recasting the rest of the season and the title race as a permanent revolution at Celtic Park. At the moment, of course, the success of all this is open to question.
Mowbray’s new arrivals were, in the main, the kind of young, inexperienced players with potential that he relishes working with, the sort of players that he can mould into his vision of the modern footballer. Commendable but not exactly the guarantee of immediate success that fans are clamouring for.
But Celtic had one more trick ready. In the last bit of business of the day, they unveiled a marquee signing. Scottish football was supposed to be finished with big money signings, the Old Firm were supposed to have quit competing with even smaller English clubs.
But here, remarkably, was Robbie Keane holding the number seven shirt and being unveiled as the highest paid player ever to ply his trade in Scotland. An enduring fixture of the English Premier League, suddenly Keane was walking amongst us, promising to sprinkle his stardust across the SPL.
Even as a short term loan deal this must be seen as one of the biggest coups in Celtic’s history. The biscuit tin would seem to have been dynamited out of the boardroom.
But Keane has not been signed as a luxury. Of all the new arrivals it is the Irishman who is going to have perform the most important roles as the season reaches its crucial period.
He passed his first test with flying colours. A team that finds itself ten points behind in a two horse race needs a fairly spectacular stunt to try and wrestle the momentum from their rivals. Signing Keane is a fairly spectacular stunt.
Supporters will suddenly find themselves galvanised at the thought of seeing, however briefly, a fitting heir to Henrik Larsson. Optimism will be rediscovered, empty seats filled again. If the flipside of this enthusiasm at Celtic is an outbreak of jitters among the faithful at Ibrox then just by holding his shirt aloft Keane has done a grand job.
Secondly he needs to hit the ground running. None of the other signing have as much experience as the 29 year old Keane. If they are to be afforded the luxury of having time to settle, then he has to take the pressure off them by making an immediate impact. He might even be asked to take the captain’s armband and lead from the front.
And finally he needs to act as the catalyst for a massive team effort. They somehow need to reel in the ten point gap they have conceded to Rangers. Keane’s presence - and his goals - will be expected to kick start the comeback and then ensure that it lasts the distance.
If he can achieve all this then Robbie Keane, with the assistance of Dermot Desmond’s largesse, will ensure the survival of the Mowbray regime. If he flops then Mowbray’s gamble will have failed and both he and Celtic, chastened and poorer, will be back to square one.
Throughout the day yesterday Sky Sports News was awash with rumours of comings and goings at clubs across Britain. But it was in Glasgow’s east end that they found the most productive negotiations.
If Tony Mowbray had arrived at Celtic in July with a grand, but long term, plan he has redrafted it before our eyes since the turn of the year. Gone is the gradual reshaping of the team, replaced by an impressive cull of established players and the recruitment of eight players in a few short weeks.
Some of these players are relatively untried. But, stung by his experience of life back in Scotland, Mowbray has chosen to live or die by men of his own choosing and will see it as a vindication of his philosophy if the new players adapt quickly to the brand of football he demands.
That so many of the players he has jettisoned were keen to join up with their former manager at Middlesbrough would suggest that Mowbray has failed to win their hearts in the way that Gordon Strachan did. That will not bother him in the slightest if he can prove that he is stronger without them.
We can see this transfer window as the biggest gamble of Mowbray’s management career. He has sought redemption in change, recasting the rest of the season and the title race as a permanent revolution at Celtic Park. At the moment, of course, the success of all this is open to question.
Mowbray’s new arrivals were, in the main, the kind of young, inexperienced players with potential that he relishes working with, the sort of players that he can mould into his vision of the modern footballer. Commendable but not exactly the guarantee of immediate success that fans are clamouring for.
But Celtic had one more trick ready. In the last bit of business of the day, they unveiled a marquee signing. Scottish football was supposed to be finished with big money signings, the Old Firm were supposed to have quit competing with even smaller English clubs.
But here, remarkably, was Robbie Keane holding the number seven shirt and being unveiled as the highest paid player ever to ply his trade in Scotland. An enduring fixture of the English Premier League, suddenly Keane was walking amongst us, promising to sprinkle his stardust across the SPL.
Even as a short term loan deal this must be seen as one of the biggest coups in Celtic’s history. The biscuit tin would seem to have been dynamited out of the boardroom.
But Keane has not been signed as a luxury. Of all the new arrivals it is the Irishman who is going to have perform the most important roles as the season reaches its crucial period.
He passed his first test with flying colours. A team that finds itself ten points behind in a two horse race needs a fairly spectacular stunt to try and wrestle the momentum from their rivals. Signing Keane is a fairly spectacular stunt.
Supporters will suddenly find themselves galvanised at the thought of seeing, however briefly, a fitting heir to Henrik Larsson. Optimism will be rediscovered, empty seats filled again. If the flipside of this enthusiasm at Celtic is an outbreak of jitters among the faithful at Ibrox then just by holding his shirt aloft Keane has done a grand job.
Secondly he needs to hit the ground running. None of the other signing have as much experience as the 29 year old Keane. If they are to be afforded the luxury of having time to settle, then he has to take the pressure off them by making an immediate impact. He might even be asked to take the captain’s armband and lead from the front.
And finally he needs to act as the catalyst for a massive team effort. They somehow need to reel in the ten point gap they have conceded to Rangers. Keane’s presence - and his goals - will be expected to kick start the comeback and then ensure that it lasts the distance.
If he can achieve all this then Robbie Keane, with the assistance of Dermot Desmond’s largesse, will ensure the survival of the Mowbray regime. If he flops then Mowbray’s gamble will have failed and both he and Celtic, chastened and poorer, will be back to square one.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)