Celtic v Hearts - Title Decider, Saturday 12.30pm

[Bandage]

1. Hearts 80
2. Celtic 79

Celtic need to win to overhaul the long-term leaders. Hearts must avoid defeat. The home side are going for their fifth title in a row & 14th in 15 seasons. Hearts are playing for their first title since 1960.

There was final day drama between these two in 1986 when Hearts lost to Dundee & Celtic won at St Mirren to steal the title on goal difference. But this is the first season in my lifetime (1981/82 to present) that the top two will be facing each other on the last day to decide the title.

Celtic have had three different managers in four separate spells this season, shambolic recruitment last summer (Balikwisha, Yamada etc) & in January (none of the six signings saw game time on Wednesday night), a fan base at loggerheads with the football hierarchy, a chronic injury list & general discord for large spells.

Their standard has dropped quite a bit while Hearts have improved markedly under Derek McInnes & following Tony Bloom’s investment in the club. They’ve essentially met in the middle of their usual point tallies.

Hearts are solid, organised, aggressive, physical, strong on attacking & defensive set pieces & have some quality in the final third with Shankland, Braga & Kyziridis. They’re not a flowing football team but they’re a disciplined & hard working unit.

Celtic wouldn’t have clawed their way back into the title race but for Martin O’Neill. While some displays have been scratchy, he’s restored belief & instilled a fight & winning mentality that looked to have been lost. Different individuals have come to the fore at crucial moments to turn draws into victories & they’ve won their last six league games in succession. They’ve earned 19 points with goals scored after the 80th minute in matches this season across all three managers, 17 of those coming with goals scored from the 85th minute onwards.

I’d back Celtic because of home advantage & the experience of their players in these huge games, even though they tend to play in patches. Hearts have been undefeated at Tynecastle but not that impressive away from home generally. However, they’ve won at Celtic this season already (albeit a Wilfried Nancy Celtic) & have 2 wins & a draw from the previous 3 games.

Celtic looked very leggy on Wednesday night, which was a concern, but both sides have to deal with 3 games in the last week. Hearts, though, were knocked out of both cups early & didn’t have European football to contend with whereas some Celtic players have loads of minutes in their legs due to poor squad depth & injuries to other players. On the other hand, Celtic have been boosted by important players like Johnston & Engels returning from injury recently but some key Hearts players have been ruled out (McEntee, Halkett, Leonard).

Celtic are likely to line up with a similar side to midweek, with possibly Tounekti dropping out. Iheanacho will probably be kept in reserve again. Hearts too should be along the same lines. The atmosphere will be electric despite the early start time - it’s a proper Buckfast for breakfast situation really.

Please enjoy the game & post responsibly.

[MogwaiC86]

@Bandage

But this is the first season in my lifetime (1981/82 to present) that the top two will be facing each other on the last day to decide the title.

Rangers v Aberdeen 1991.

[Bandage]

I wasn’t aware of that one. Please fact check the rest of my post.

[MogwaiC86]

You couldn’t hate these bastards enough.

[Bandage]

A significant portion of their support are AMAB from the PUL community (cc @Little_Lord_Fauntleroy).

[MogwaiC86]

Stephen Hendry is a big Heart Of Midlothian supporter. This pain inflicted by Stephen Hendry on me personally in the years 1990 to 1995 has not been forgotten. That pain has never really eased in the intervening years either. It still festers. Mr. Hendry deserves to feel some of that pain back tomorrow.

My first trip to Scotland was Friday March 25th, 1988 to Sunday March 27th, 1988. My two aunties worked for Aer Lingus so in the right and proper way that family of employees got freebies, meself, me oul’ fella and me granny got a freebie on what was called the Vomit Comet to Edinburgh (we were even brought into the cockpit on the way back). On the Saturday morning we went on the train from Edinburgh to Dundee over the two big railway bridges and I got four packets of football stickers at the WH Smiths or John Menzies (Ming-gus in Scotland) or whatever it was at Waverley Station. Me oul’ fella toyed with the idea of bringing me to Dens Park for Dundee v Rangers but thought better of it and instead we made for Glasgow on the train for Celtic v Dundee United. That finished 0-0 and there’s not much to say except I got a scarf under the Celtic End at half time which I subsequently lost coming out of Ireland v the USSR at Lansdowne Road on April 25th, 1990, and somebody hit the bar with an overhead kick at our end with about 15 minutes left, I thought it was Frank McAvennie but one subsequent trawl on the YouTubes said otherwise, I think.

Anyway we had to go back to Edinburgh because we were staying there and on the Sunday morning we got a taxi to the airport. I don’t really remember this but me oul’ fella used to frequently mention it that the taxi driver was quite unpleasant when he heard our accents and that we’d been to see Celtic play. He was a Heart Of Midlothian supporter and apparently he quite pointedly mentioned the Volkswagen Passat or whatever it was that had been caught on camera reversing at a funeral in Belfast and you know the rest, as if we had been responsible.

Anyway two weeks Celtic later beat the Heart Of Midlothian 2-1 in the Cup semi-final with two late, late goals, so fuck you taxi driver.

[MogwaiC86]

Derek McInnes singing about being to up his neck in Fenian blood, surrender or you’ll die.

- YouTube

[Aertel220]

Listening to a bit of yesterday’s Indo podcast Bits and Bobs. It’s abundantly clear that Dan McDonnell can’t admit he was wrong on Martin O’ Neill being a far better option than Wilifried Nancy last December. A ridiculous “tongue in cheek” comment stating that if MO’N was that good he’d have Celtic 15 points clear. Then bizarrely bringing Stephen Kenny’s positive ambience around the team hotel into the equation. He’s still fighting a culture war despite being incredibly wrong. The veteran coach in his Indian summer reels in a big deficit but we hear Dan repeating that it’s not sustainable, while his chosen one flounders in a much lower ranked league (UEFA coefficients).

He also alluded to a very personable coffee shop which both he and Joe Molloy frequent. My thoughts immediately turned to the Orange Goat and I wondered if this might be the establishment in question. He didn’t confirm whether Brian Fenton used to be a regular but did mention a very courteous waitress/barista @Bandage.

[Corksfinedtboy]

Surprised by DanMcD tbh,
He should have shown MON a bit of respect,
He’s a legend.

[Aertel220]

Ah sure the Irish sports media (for the most part) were trying to run Martin O’ Neill for the last couple of years of his tenure. You had Alan Cawley calling him out for not having an exciting enough style of football after a 1-1 draw with Austria which kept Ireland top of the World Cup qualifying group in June 2017. I didn’t really listen to OTB on Newstalk during that period but I can only imagine the kind of shite that Ger Gilroy and Co were peddling.

[glenshane]

The way Derry men are treated in this country is an absolute disgrace

[Galaxy]

Who are they?

[MogwaiC86]

@Galaxy

Who are they?

They are then Celtic manager Neil Lennon and Heart Of Midlothian supporter John Wilson who entered the pitch/sideline area with the express purpose of assaulting Lennon during the penultimate game of the 2010/11 season at Tynecastle Park, and did indeed proceed to assault him.

For a moment it looked like some random nutter was about to assassinate Lennon again.

[ChairmanDan]

A Mark Hateley double secured the 1990/91 title for the Teddy Bears who needed to win. A draw would have sufficed for Aberdeen.

I am somewhat surprised that a fellow purveyor of the League of Scotland @Bandage doesn’t recall that one.

[Bandage]

I was using Celtic as the reference for my brainstorm but really should have considered that 5/6 year spell when the Bears were being challenged by other clubs.

[MogwaiC86]

@Aertel220

Listening to a bit of yesterday’s Indo podcast Bits and Bobs. It’s abundantly clear that Dan McDonnell can’t admit he was wrong on Martin O’ Neill being a far better option than Wilifried Nancy last December. A ridiculous “tongue in cheek” comment stating that if MO’N was that good he’d have Celtic 15 points clear. Then bizarrely bringing Stephen Kenny’s positive ambience around the team hotel into the equation. He’s still fighting a culture war despite being incredibly wrong. The veteran coach in his Indian summer reels in a big deficit but we hear Dan repeating that it’s not sustainable, while his chosen one flounders in a much lower ranked league (UEFA coefficients).

I think we see a growing phenomenon in football management where players respond best to an older manager.

There has been a sort of similar phenomenon in politics, especially broad left politics that takes an optimistic view of human beings, as described below.

@Cheasty

I was just thinking there that the era of the respected elder in the general centre-left to socialist space who enthused young people in many ways because they were old, this era is basically gone, or we’re at least at the fag end of it.

I’m thinking of your Tony Benns, your John Prescotts, your Bernie Sanderses, your Jeremy Corbyns, your Joe Higginses, your Michael D. Higginses. Pugilistic types.

There are really no more of this type around. I think Catherine Connolly thought she might be able to tap into that idea but she’s failed fairly miserably so far.

Younger people genuinely relate more to older politicians than to younger ones. They relate more to the way they speak, they relate more to their knowledge, they relate more on pretty much every level. The young despise young poltiicians as a rule.

Catherine Connolly, despite starting slow, did indeed end up occupying the space of respected elder, and when she did the Harlem Globetrotters dribble, she immediately occupied the space of respected elder who is cool.

Your Sanderses, Corbyns, Higginses, Prescotts and Benns, an essential part of their appeal was younger people believed they were cool, miles cooler than younger politicians who were PR obsessed. They were cool because they were uncool, as once described by Homer and Marge Simpson. Cool in a sort of Neil Young sense of being cool.

Like, who’s cooler and more credible, John Prescott or Wes Streeting?

So many younger managers now in football seem awful squares, slaves to rigid ideologies, they haven’t done it as players, they come across a bit like those horrifically awful tech bros. And belief in ideologies is collapsing and continues to collapse.

And then you’ve your Martin O’Neills, Carlo Ancelottis, Louis Van Gaals, David Moyeses.

The Super Grandads. The “I’ll work it as we go along because I have the knowledge and credibility to work it out as I go along” types.

Younger people, ie. footballers, respect these types. They’ve fucking done it. They know what they’re doing. And they’re so much cooler. They’re not EMPTY CORPORATE COMMUNICATION wafflers like most of the younger managers or headbanging MEMELORDS like Wilfried Nancy.

They’re cooler style wise too. Martin O’Neill wore that tracksuit top because that’s what they gave him, not because he was looking for something cool to wear. And he immediately, completely without intention, became Mr. Cool Style Icon, Mr. Aura.

Ideology and coaching courses and book smartness and statistics were for so long seen as THE FUTURE by the “progressives”. But we’re now seeing it’s not. Arsenal are demonstrating the unintended consequnces of utopian ideology. VAR is demonstrating it. Wilfried Nancy and Stephen Kenny and Liam Rosenior and yer man at West Brom who got sacked after a month demonstrated it.

Football management is really 85% man management and WHO you are. That’s your black bit of a pint of Guinness. There’s another 15% that is necessary - the head - you wouldn’t drink a pint with no head - but you can’t have the head on a pint of Guinness without black stuff underneath it.

[ChairmanDan]

The Teddy Bears won 0-3 at 2nd place Glasgow Celtic in season 1998/99 to clinch the League of Scotland title. Possibly not a last day title decider though. I think there was actually another game or two still left after that. That was the day that the unfortunate referee Hugh Dallas had his head split open with a coin thrown by rioting Glasgow Celtic hooligans.

[MogwaiC86]

@ChairmanDan

The Teddy Bears won 0-3 at 2nd place Glasgow Celtic in season 1998/99 to clinch the League of Scotland title. Possibly not a last day title decider though. I think there was actually another game or two still left after that. That was the day that the unfortunate referee Hugh Dallas had his head split open with a coin thrown by rioting Glasgow Celtic hooligans.

Wasn’t the last game. It was a Sunday evening 6:05pm kick-off May 2nd 1999. I watched it in the Botanic House after Dublin beat Armagh in a National Football League semi-final replay.

I have no recollection of any of the league games that happened after that date or how many there were but the Cup final wasn’t until May 29th (Sky advertised that Cup final with the track “Clubbed To Death” by Rob Dougan) so that would indicate there were at least two.

I would go to the Celtic 1998/99 season Wikipedia page and have a look and see how many there were but I have to go and put on a wash on the night saver containing my bumblebee 1996/97 CR Smith jersey and my 1997-99 home Celtic jersey made by and sponsored by Umbro with the triangle collar, which was the jersey Celtic wore in the Hugh Dallas game. An hour on the line in the morning and they should be good to go.

[Alphakrul1]

O Neill half-time teamtalk to win it.

[Batigol]

Anyone who has LOI connections seems to be mandated to say that, contrary to all tangible evidence, Stephen Kenny was good as Ireland manager