Charlie’s Blog - September 7

Tue, 7 Sep 2010 19:10:46 -0500

Alright troops? International week suck! Official. I am sure that its not just me that feels this but I have completely lost interest in international football. I sat down in front of the television on Friday evening to take in the Lithuania v Scotland game, the opening match of our 2012 European Qualfying campaign, and I must have lasted 15 minutes tops before my mind wandered to other things. The fact that I was doing the airport run later that night to pick my sister up off her flight from London didn’t help as that meant I had to endure the rot in front of me stone cold sober.

I could easily have turned the channel after hearing the team. McGregor, Whittaker, Weir, McCulloch, Naismith, Miller and Hutton. The team was lines up as a 4-5-1 formation, hell I almost expected the to be wearing a light blue strip with T*****T’S plastered across the front. So immediately I found myself cheering every heavy challenge made by the men in yellow as there was a very good chance that one of “them” would be on the receiving end. There was one sole Celtic player and two ex celts in the starting 11 in the shape of Scott Brown, Stephen McManus and Barry Robson and in the 15 minutes that the match held my attention I didn’t see Broony contribute very much. I did not catch any of the Republic’s game with Armenia as I forgot it was an early kick off.

I cannot wait to get back to league duty of Saturday against Hearts at Celtic Park. I have a couple of friends over from the States and it will be their first trip to Paradise. A game against the Wee Huns could be a baptism of fire from them but I am glad because it should be a good game and atmosphere between two teams and sets of fans that harbour no love for one another. I can honestly say that I feel exactly the same way about Hearts as I do that mob across Glasgow. I am hoping the game will be as entertaining as the previous home matches against Braga, Utrecht and St Mirren and that they can sample the true atmosphere that can be generated inside Celtic Park as I know that sporting events in America don’t really have fans singing and chanting for the duration the way they do here. I was gonna get our tickets next to the Green Brigade but I think that could have been a bit much for their first experience of attending a football match (I refuse to call it soccer).

It will also be a chance to cast our eye over new signings Anthony Stokes and Emilio Izaguirre. Granted Emilio made his debut in the 1-0 victory at Fir Park against Motherwell but it is always nice to welcome a new signing at home and see them in the flesh. Stokes could make his debut up front on Saturday but will probably do so from the bench although who knows what goes on it the head of Neil Lennon. Anything is possible after the omission of Kayal and Juarez against Motherwell. In saying that we have still to see what state our players return in from their worldly travels, another reason I hate International week. With players traveling to all corners of the globe, Iran, Montenegro, Mexico we truly do have a multi national squad and with saturdays match looming we all hope they come back fit and raring to go.

The match will also be preceded by a minutes applause to mark the 25th anniversary of the untimely passing of the late great Jock Stein who died after suffering a heart attack at Ninian Park in Cardiff in 1985. No Celtic fan needs reminding of the success that Jock brought to the Club with the fantastic 9-in-a-row run of League Championships in the late 60‘s early 70‘s, and you only need to look at the star that now sits proudly on our jersey above the club crest to see the legacy of the great man.

So thats it from me for another week. The quiet spell and my total apathy for the International break means I will cut my blog short this week. What do you mean Thank God?

Until next week
KTF

Charlie

Harper’s Blog - September 6

Mon, 6 Sep 2010 19:39:09 -0500

What The Hell Do We Care...

International football three weeks into the new season, what a drag.

I sit here with not a lot to say really. I like most Celtic fans, it would seem, only have one priority when these international breaks take place. I hope all our bhoys arrive home fit & well. It's one of the drawbacks of course of having a multi-national side. Almost our entire first team are off representing their homelands at varying age levels. It could be a good argument to have more Scottish players in our side as then less off them would probably be selected, if you know what I mean. I'm sure Shaun Maloney does.

Before I go any further I'd like to congratulate Jamie for his excellent thought provoking article last week 'The Plan'. I had other things going on and between one thing and another never made my editorial deadline. If Jamie keeps slipping in pieces like he did last week in my absence I'll be dumped permanently. Well done to the big new tim...

Anyway back to the European Championship qualifiers, yawn, yeah sorry. First up as I was nightshift I managed to catch the Republic of Ireland game away in Armenia. The 4pm kick-off obviously had a few familiar faces in the line-up for Celtic fans with both captain Robbie Keane and Spartak Moscow's Aiden McGeady starting for the boys in green. Doesn't really sound right and after the events of the transfer window last week there is a part of me that wishes Aiden hadn't been let go to just balance the books. The game in itself wasn't too bad actually and Ireland deserved the one nil victory after controlling much of the contest. The only goal coming from ex-Drogheda United now Birmingham player Keith Fahey. Fahey was in fact playing for St Pats only a couple of years ago and I distinctly remember Celtic being heavily linked with him before he moved to the Brum. Good player that got away there. Keano missed a couple of half chances and should have had a stonewall penalty. McGeady did ok too without setting the heather on fire and was eventually replaced by Fahey in the 2nd half. It was a good win away for my adopted home country, especially since a good few of the starting eleven were starting a competitive game for the 1st time this season having fallen out of favour at their clubs.

Later on then on Friday evening it was Scotland's turn to lay down a marker for the campaign ahead. While the no score draw in Lithuania wasn't a terrible result the performance hardly inspired confidence of greater things to come. Scott Brown was the only Celt on view and had an average if competent showing. There's not much else to say really but I hope Rangers play like this every week and Gordon Strachan might want to plan for retirement.

The dullness of the encounter was helped at 8pm when Housey started to broadcast his Over and Over Rebel Radio & Celtic chat show on Ustream. I muted the match and settled down to some great tunes and craic in what is now part of my Friday night routine from 8pm until 10pm. Housey is doing some great work there and if 'Irish' music and good banter is your thing tune in and join in the fun. His show is available here and you can also listen to archived recordings too http://www.ustream.tv/channel/over-and-over just one thing I wouldn't play it in ear-shot of young kids. The language can get a bit fruity...

The Scotland match finished then without any goal being breached and all in all its just a bit meh! I want to see Scotland do well and Ireland for that matter but such is the expectation of mediocrity its hard to get excited these days. Don't get me wrong if we found ourselves in a qualification situation or by some miracle reach a finals I'll jump on the bandwagon with everyone else. It's just hard to watch a team thats full of players I despise most of the time.

It was easier to support Scotland when most of our charges were plying their trade with top sides in England. Those days are long gone now and its doubtful they will ever return. That is unless Jamie Burchell fly's over to Glasgow from Houston and rams his plan down the SFA dinosaurs throats. Then maybe just maybe we'll develop a forward that plan will get us excited about Scottish talent again.

I wouldn't get the Bay City Rollers scarf out the attic just yet though.

Harper

Chris’ Blog - September 5

Sun, 5 Sep 2010 11:46:20 -0500

So what’s it really like to be an Exile?

What’s it really like to be a Celtic supporter living away from home? What do you miss? How do you keep in touch? What do you take for granted living “Back home” that us exiles would give their right arm for? When you go back to visit, what makes you go aaaghhhhh, “Now, I know I’m home”?

Well, lots of things are different of course, some for the better, some for the worse. It is not as glamourous as you initially think. Here’s what you miss – Family, Food and Football. The classic three “F”s.

The Family part is obvious, there is nothing as good as coming home and sitting in your parent’s living room and getting a wee cup of tea with six o’clock news making a noise in the background while everybody comes in and out and in what seems like a revolving door. The kettle never cools and the characters never stop popping in with a cheery greeting and an excuse to run off again.

The Food, another easy one. Nothing like your mother’s home made grub. Be it hot potatoe farls freshly baked for the fry before mass on a Sunday or stopping at the local take-away for chips drenched in salt and vinegar and wrapped up in that paper that emits the aroma of it’s delicious content.

But it is the Football that has you pining for a return to the old turf too. Sure, when you leave, you look up the internet to see where your closest Celtic Supporters Club is so that you know you will have comrades gathered from day one to keep you right and keep your tradition going every week of trotting along to get your “fix” of this thing they now call soccer.

So everything is good right? You talk on Skype to your folks, you get your “red cross” parcel from home with all your favourite snacks and you can watch the footy on the TV in the bar with like-minded Tims – all good? Well, not really….

It is good for a while, things feel exciting, like you are on an extended holiday and there are loads of new things to do and see. New people to talk to and lots of local traditions to sample and explore. All very glamourous right? Well after a while this all starts to wear off. After a while you are back working a job that is exactly that, a job. The summers get too hot or the winters get too cold depending on which part of the globe you pitch your tent and after a while you long for what you used to take for granted. This all sounds like me being ungrateful or sour grapes but it’s not meant to sound that way. It is meant to sound like I am enjoying my new “Home” (for now) but I still miss some things that made me who I am and that yearning never goes away.

We talked on the podcast many times about experiences we had while following the Celts or my local Cliftonville from Belfast and they were fun times. Cold wild nights following your team, either into dark little towns in the North of Ireland, or racing along the Ayrshire coast hoping the boat wouldn’t see you marooned at the dock again leaving you to work up an excuse for why you would be late home to the wife or miss work the next morning. I miss that feeling of a game going into extra time and you looking nervously at your watch. Big Jim Mervyn’s last word were always “Right lads, straight back to the bus – no dilly dallying for F-ing hamburgers or chips” I can still see his face glaring at me as I slipped past him knowing that there really WAS a chance that he would leave without me. Leaving me “goosed” as we would say in Belfast.

But there is more to it than that. I miss that feeling of driving up to the ground. Coming off the motorway and seeing the top of the stadium come into view. The excitement on the bus from the young buck on his first pilgrimage to the Aul Fella who was widowed and ninety years old that came every week because this all he had. The coach was always a buzz as people talked excitedly about where they would be going before kick-off and who they would be meeting up with. I miss that buzz.

I miss that excitement. Getting off the bus and walking up London Road with the street vendors selling programs and rebel tapes, badges and fanzines. Cries of “Larsson on the flags, Larrson on the T-shirts” “That” smell of the grease loaded food enticing the hungry punters mixed with the fumes of the generators – ahhhh, special cuisine, you can keep your burritos and your tacos thanks very much.

I think about the excitement. Walking through the rain with the floodlights flickering on in the dark distance and checking and double checking that you still had your ticket in your back pocket all the while chatting about what part of the ground you were going to stand in or sit at. You would look around and see thousands of people just like you walking like insects attracted to the light of their Mecca, their “other” home. I still long to stop at the badge sellers and look through them for something that might look nice on your scarf or as a wee present for the kid down the road who played football in the street every day in his hoops but had never yet made the trip but waited on you every other Saturday night to see if you brought him a programme or a badge and was waiting to hear the stories about your visit to Celtic Park.

But there is one feeling that I miss the most. Not the singing of the songs and the screaming and shouting. Not the feeling of exasperation at a missed chance or the elation of a goal scored. For me it was always the same. THAT feeling of coming up from under the stands and seeing the illuminated green pasture of the pitch, the seats, the crowd, the faces and the joy that Celtic meant to all these people.

Even now when I make that trip home I stop before climbing those steps. I let my friends go ahead for a few steps, just to drag it out a little bit longer. To have my son with me for the first time the last time I visited was extra special. To hold his hand and go up together was the best feeling I had ever had. There is no computer, no TV, no 6.00am kick off where you sit sometimes on your own chatting away on a message-board or Twitter that could ever make you feel like that.

The next time you go up those stairs – remember the Exiles. If only we could be there too.

Krys’ Blog - September 4

Sat, 4 Sep 2010 17:42:26 -0500

It’s international week again. Didn’t we just have one of these? No, my eyes don’t deceive me, it really is just THREE WEEKS since the last international break and already Celtic’s newly put together team of internationalists is being split up once more to go and play for their various countries.

For some, it’s not too much of an issue. Shaun Maloney hasn’t made the Scotland squad for instance - the original one OR the more recent call ups. Something that apparently went completely unnoticed by the commentators who were too busy criticising Celtic for not having enough Scots in their team. There’s a very good reason we don’t have many Scots - Scottish players are currently, more or less, garbage. I watched the shambles against Sweden through my fingers and not one of those players looked like someone I would want to see in a Celtic jersey. Well, with the possible exception of James McFadden who looked ridiculously isolated that night. So the fact Scotland have such a lack of talent makes it all the more bizarre that Craig Levein should have overlooked the man who has been making Celtic tick in the three SPL games so far this season. No, it’s only Scott Brown who will be featuring against Lithuania and Lichtenstein from the Celtic squad.

James Forrest will also be making his national debut for the under-21s after getting his first call up for the games against Belarus and Austria. Another bizarre choice if you ask me. The bhoy has been getting great write ups in our Under-19s and in Lennon’s Development Squad for at least a year now and he’s only just now getting a call up to the younger Scotland squad? He’s in the first team of the club sitting top of the SPL right now! Keep up!

Sadly from a Celtic perspective, Mexico have friendlies against Ecuador and Columbia while Honduras have friendlies against El Salvador and Canada. That of course means long haul flights for both Juarez and Izaguirre. Izaguirre especially since both Honduras matches are away. Fortunately FIFA have actually tried to do something about this issue by moving the Saturday/Wednesday games to their new slot on Friday/Tuesday. Or in the case of Kayal, Thursday/Tuesday. Kayal’s Israel have already beaten Malta 3-1 and our bhoy played the full 90 minutes. He’ll no doubt feature again against Georgia.

Another two players have the longer trips to make of course, with both Cha and Ki in the South Korean squad to face Iran. Hopefully we’ll get them both back fit and well, along with Juarez and Izaguirre, long before we have to play Hearts next weekend. Of course, since most of these game are being played on Friday night that means that by the time this blog appears the first lot of matches will have been played. Well done/what the hell Scotland/Ireland. Delete as applicable! No USA for our Jamie, they don’t have any friendlies this time round.

All in all, Celtic have quite a few players away this week. As well as Brown, Forrest, Juarez, Izaguirre, Cha, Ki and Kayal, Ledley is in the Welsh squad to face Montenegro, Majstorovic is in the Swedish squad to face Hungary and San Marino, and Samaras is in the Greek squad to face Georgia and Croatia. Yes, that means at some point Kayal and Samaras go head to head - next month to be specific. That’s ten players that have all featured recently for Celtic. Throw in the possibility of Maloney being recalled to the Scotland squad if Levein ever shows sense and Paddy McCourt being told the door is still open for him for Northern Ireland and these international breaks really start to add up. If Stokes keeps up his hard work it won’t be long before he gets further call ups for Ireland - he did get promoted from the Under-21s for the Argentina game last month - while Forster and Hooper are rising English stars who still have plenty of time to make that squad. Assuming Capello knows where Celtic Park is - it’s not as if his predecessors in that job have a great track record there!

Is it just me or have I listed quite a few of the ELEVEN signings that Celtic have made in the summer there? We must have been doing something right. Okay, so the transfer window has now closed and Celtic are sitting with more money in the bank than they were at the start of it but I don’t necessarily see that as a bad thing. The squad has had a massive overhaul - one that it desperately needed. Although I admit I’m staggered by the sheer volume of turnover that Gary mentioned in his blog. It appears that the “young and Scottish” squad Strachan was so proud of building has apparently been ripped up and thrown in the bin. Or sold to Middlesbrough on bulk as it’s also known. Youth is all very good and well, but above all else you need quality and our movements since Strachan’s departure are a giant luminous sign suggesting that quality was not something we had. The lack of silverware would also say that. The four points from four games Middlesbrough have is another great indicator.

The players that have come in now though have all offered something more than the players that have left. Now that’s going to sound controversial and possibly a bit presumptuous given how early we are into this campaign. However, I’m trying to be positive here and I genuinely believe we’ve improved the squad. That’s despite the loss of two of our heroes of recent seasons in this transfer window.

I can’t have been the only one that thought McGeady was starting to stagnate. Forrest coming through offers something fresh and new while offering McCourt a dozen fags is enough to produce a champagne moment in any game. The sad truth is it had got to the point where everyone in Scotland could guess what McGeady would do. Not that they could always stop him doing it anyway of course! But how many times, especially last season, did teams double up or even treble up on McGeady, and in doing so isolate him and make Celtic as a whole fairly toothless? My hope is that, now that McGeady has left, Celtic will stop relying on a single player so much and we’ll get a team who can function week in, week out and not suffer if that one person has a bad game or just gets isolated out of it. Hopefully McGeady also goes on to thrive in the Russian league as a fresh challenge may make him an even better player. It’s not like we got bad money for him and while his parting words won’t have made him any friends elsewhere in Scotland, he’ll always be welcome back at Celtic Park.

As for Artur Boruc... the major disappointed was to lose him for so little money. But has he ever punched Glenn Loovens in the head?! No, the holy goalie is definitely a loss despite what I’ve said. Sure, his form wasn’t quite what it was when he first came, but I can’t help but think the defence had something to do with that. I’ll miss him, but at least we got SOMETHING for him and he didn’t leave for nothing. He’d been picking up injuries a lot more recently, and you got the feeling he was going to go sooner rather than later anyway. Lets face it, both him and Lee Naylor got to leave Celtic with their last act being getting it right up the Rangers. Who among us wouldn’t love to say that?

Boruc aside, as far as I can see, Celtic have improved not just the squad but more importantly the first team in this transfer window. We’ve a younger, taller goalkeeper who we’ll see in time how good he is but he comes with a good pedigree (and right hook). We’ve got a big, menacing presence in defence for the first time in several years - even if we are lacking a bit in strength in depth back there we have midfielders who can drop back and cover holes. We’ve got overlapping fullbacks who can cross the ball to other Celtic players rather than the crowd behind the goal for a change. We’ve got a midfield who not only have a bit of dig, but one that can pass the ball quickly and accurately. I can’t remember the last time I saw that at Celtic Park! Well I can, but it was Barcelona when we faced them in the last 16 of the Champions League, not us. Up front we’ve spent half the money to get double the goals in selling Fortune and bringing in Stokes - thanks to Harper for pointing that glaring stat out to me earlier this week. On top of that we’ve got a 30 goal a season striker in Hooper, and we’ve still got Samaras. Well you can’t have everything. Maybe someone will teach him to properly harness the skill he obviously has.

Of course, all this action hasn’t stopped the support moaning that we didn’t get the blue chip signings. Is that Celtic’s fault though? This summer alone we got linked with Jimmy Bullard, Sol Campbell, David James, Craig Bellamy and Robbie Keane. The first three of those all knocked up back to stay in England. Spoiled brats was my reaction. Players that are far too obsessed with money that would rather play for a team that have very little chance of winning anything instead of coming up to play in front of a bigger crowd with a chance of having something shiny to show the grandkids. Celtic are better off without journeymen like that. Craig Bellamy I could understand - he wanted to go home and most of us would do the same in his position. Robbie Keane... well, Conall’s covered him. I’m not convinced he was ever a viable target for a number of reasons, not all down to Robbie himself. He is still at Spurs despite interest from several other English clubs after all, so was he ever really for sale? Maybe if the Van Der Vaart thing had come off quicker for Spurs it would have been different, but we’ll never know. I’m sure the regular rumour will make a return in January though!

Enough of those that didn’t come. Those that have signed up are looking good to me. Throw in a fit again Maloney who is starting to look more like the player of the year we saw a few years ago, another talented product of the Lennoxtown conveyor belt ((c) The Scottish Media) in James Forrest, and the man who appears on Lionel Messi’s pyjamas - Paddy McCourt - and I think we’ve got what we need for year one of the Neil Lennon era. A Celtic capable of regaining the SPL title.

Now that we’ve got them, lets just hope they all come back fit and well from the international matches.

Conall’s Blog - September 3

Fri, 3 Sep 2010 19:05:15 -0500

Celtic's No.7. The Robbie Keane Rant.

So firstly Robbie Keane was in Glasgow airport, then he was on his way to Celtic Park for last minute talks, then the deal was off and then finally he was meeting Lawwell at a Glasgow hotel. All while being followed by people on twitter. What would any Celtic fan do? I phoned my dad's uncle's pal who was once a passenger in a taxi that happened to drive by Glasgow Airport. He couldn't confirm anything so I was none the wiser. There was a definite sense of disappointment among the support as after a long summer of speculation there was no signing present of the type that had been touted previously, both as speculation and direct confirmation from Neil Lennon. No Campbell, Bullard, James, Bellamy or Keane. I had high hopes on Keane signing both as a result of his loan move and the increased speculation throughout the summer and leading up to the end of the transfer window but rightly or wrongly my opinions of him have changed for the worse.

It may be put down to sour grapes at not landing a quality player but my opinion of Keane has most definitely faltered since he came to Celtic on loan and ultimately turned us down. It might not be a popular opinion to have and people will no doubt have their own views on the subject but I don't really see him as the legendary character we all believed him to be. His talents are there for all to see and he would automatically be the best player in the SPL had he joined Celtic, he would also have been the idol of the fans for the rest of his days. It's his character that I question.

He claimed to be thrilled at joining Celtic on loan, the club that he has supported all his life and a club his late father would have been proud to see him play for. All else being well then surely a guy who feels so strongly about our club would have been able to influence or engineer a move from Spurs like so many other players have been able to do in the past, most recently Milner at Villa to Man City and across Glasgow with Jelavic from Rapid. It happens all the time, Ronaldo to Madrid last summer and almost Fabregas to Barca this summer. I think Robbie merely paid us a lip service and was happy to collect Dermots wage each week safe in the knowledge he'd be back in London before long.

I have no respect for a player who has such an emotive link to a club like Celtic, a club that is desperate for him to sign, has the money to pay for him and has the fans to adore him yet would rather sit on the bench for a Sky TV side. One with little chance of trophies, whose manager has openly been trying to replace him all summer and cannot guarantee him a game at all. People berated Anthony Stokes for a similar scenario where he turned down Celtic while on loan at Falkirk but he was young and still had a chance of success in the EPL, who could blame a young man for wanting to take his chance. Keane on the other hand has had his go, has made his money and played at big clubs at the same level all his career. Admittedly he is going to take part in the Champions league this season and play weekly in what one midweek TalkSport caller referred to as "the greatest league the world will ever see" but surely a man like Keane whose has been at that level for so long and won nothing of note would see that joining Celtic would lead to personal greatness and of course medals.

I know our lack of Champions league football and loss of finances may have put a dampener on the deal but I don't believe for a second we only went in for Keane with days left of the transfer window, if we were in any way competent(this of course is up for debate) then the foundations of a move would have been laid while Keane was on loan and he would have been made priority number one while we were still in Europe and Tottenham were not guaranteed Champions League football. I think Keane wasn't just as keen on Celtic as he made out to be and I seem to remember the same generic cries of "the club I supported as a boy" when he signed on at Anfield. I would have had more respect for him had he been honest and said, I still see myself as a premiership player, Scotland isn't for me, Celtic can't afford me, the pitches are crap and the officials are crooked.

I just think that after all his loose talk he has came out looking like a very self centred and selfish person. Some might say I am the same for wanting him to sacrifice playing in the EPl but thats how I see it as a Celtic fan. I will qualify my Keane character assassination by stating that it could well be that our penny pinching board wouldn't stump up the cash and of course I'm not in the know when it comes to behind the scenes at Celtic but from Lennons early interviews and the talk of Celtic cyberspace it seems that he just didn't fancy a move to Parkhead.

Having not attended a Q+A session I am not privy to exactly what was said about summer signing targets by the manager and chief executive. However, from talking to people who did attend I gather that they left with assurances we would sign players of great experience and of a great degree higher quality than that which was already at the club, also all season book money would invested in players and from tv interview's Lennon seemed confident that the McGeady money would be reinvested in the squad. Of course our disastrous European exit and the release of our financial statement had a detrimental effect on our ability to spend big but despite all the negativity surrounding the lack of a big name player I think we have a good squad and have brought a few exciting players which have been of better quality than last season. I would be more confident with a Bellamy or Keane on board but I still think we have the ingredients to win the SPL. Three wins and three clean sheets is encouraging and is a good basis to start the season as to be behind R*ngers so early would see heads go down.

I think it's only a matter of time before they drop points as although their first eleven is quite strong their squad depth is critically low and injuries will hamper them immensely. Not to mention the mountain of cards their thugs will pick up along the way to make up suspensions. Our only problem is being able to capitalise on their mistakes and avoid what happened too often last season where we failed to maximise our points after matches were R*ngers had drawn or lost.

I really have been a moaning bugger this week but I'll finish off with one final complaint that seriously grinds my gears among the media and admittedly some of our own support. It is the double standards when analysing games and results. Take our game at the weekend against Motherwell, a tough game by all accounts against a side managed by the very capable Craig Brown in a rather hostile away ground. It was by no means spectacular and we didn't play particularly well but it was job done and we will no doubt see plenty of games of this ilk if we are to win the league. The thing that annoys me is people jumping on the managers back over one lacklustre game, albeit on the back of Utrecht, and helping the black cloud over Celtic park to grow. Part of it can be put down to media frenzy and Celtic fans who persist with the Scottish Press but when R*ngers win games 1-0(usually having been on the back foot for 85 minutes) people, including Celtic fans, are quick to praise their ability to see out games, their team spirit and their never say die attitude. After Sundays result it was getting to the point where people were losing confidence in Lennon, the players were crap, we need this and we need that and we need it now. Our standards are higher than the huns in terms of wanting to see exciting football but we can't have it both ways. After the disaster of last year we all agreed that we needed to toughen up and be pragmatic in games that were going to be tough, against teams that are hard to break down. I think we all need to calm down, ignore the person whose glass is continually half empty and let the manager go about things his own way. As Gary said we have 11SPL wins on the bounce, Europe is a sore point but be positive and look forward to a good season.

No doubt i'll have more to moan about next week after the International break and as a citizen of the Occupied Six Counties of Ireland I would like to wish Slovenia the best of luck in their game and live in the hope that their hardest defender breaks that gypsy looking giraffes legs. You all know who I mean.

All the best for now.
Conall