Morning
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Absolute state of these cunts in their standard grey tracksuits. Itâs hilarious that Celtic fans seem to take the moral high ground on anything.
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Iâve never heard of the journalist here, Ken Early, but this is an enjoyable read & picks up the theme @Cheasty has oft mentioned - MONâs ability to manage people & bring them with him overcoming tech bro analytics. A real victory for the little guy. 
Ken Early: Martin OâNeillâs Celtic salvation act was a victory for the romantics
Veteran managerâs title success achieved by old-school values against a data-driven opponent
I never picked up the Celtic bug as a kid. But over the last few weeks, I somehow found myself becoming weirdly invested in Celtic beating Hearts to the Scottish league title and thus crushing footballâs underdog story of the year.
What is wrong with me?
Heartsâ title challenge obviously had the ingredients of legend. They were taking on a sporting supremacy unmatched anywhere in the world. For 40 years, no other club has been able to stop one of Celtic or Rangers winning the title.
This oppressive dominance has obviously been bad for Scottish football and bad even for the two clubs themselves. Rangers became so obsessed with beating Celtic by any means necessary that they became a bandit club that was ultimately liquidated by the authorities. Since Rangers collapsed, Celtic have become so dominant that winning has become boring. The emotional vacuum has had to be filled with malicious delight in the failures of others.
What fair-minded person could hope for anything other than the downfall of these gloating ogres?
The first glimmer of a new challenge came in November 2024, when Hearts announced that they had entered a partnership with Tony Bloomâs firm, Jamestown Analytics.
Bloom, the legendary pro-gambler and entrepreneur, owns Brighton & Hove Albion and has stakes in Union Saint-Gilloise, Melbourne Victory and, since the summer of 2025, Hearts. His analytics company Jamestown works with selected partner clubs across a number of leagues, including Como in Italy and, since last year, Shelbourne.
According to then-Hearts boss Neil Critchley, the Edinburgh club were fortunate to have been picked out as the local vessel of the wider Jamestown project. ââŚIf you like, theyâve chosen Hearts," he said. âI think thatâs a big thing for the football club. I think thatâs something we should be very proud of as a club.â
Fifteen years ago, in the days when Brad Pitt was playing Billy Beane in Moneyball, the link-up might have been a feel-good story. Early-2000s Beane seemed a prophet of enlightenment and emancipation. Here was a way to use science to sweep away the cobwebs of ignorance and prejudice that held us all back. And here was a way for the little guy to win.
We know now that the widespread adoption of Moneyball methods took only a few years to ruin baseball. âIt turns out that the smart way to play baseball is boring,â Moneyball author Michael Lewis told the SF Chronicle in 2024. âItâs much less fun having geeks from MIT running the baseball team than it was having colourful, tobacco-chewing former players who you knew. Itâs much less fun when the manager is clearly less important, more like a middle manager.â
The effect has since spread to all professional sports. NBA fans complain that half of the charm of basketball has been optimised out of existence. The widespread annoyance with the English Premier League this season is rooted partly in the sense that football is going the same way.
The conquest of sport by rich and secretive data guys is one small dimension of what feels like an all-pervasive process working through all aspects of life. What a journey weâve been on together over the last 15 years, as the innocent dream of âBicycles for the Mindâ has given way to the Age of Shit.
The tech that once seemed liberatory now exudes a dark aura of menace. More and more it feels as though the very stuff of our daily experience â the things we see and feel and react to â is conditioned by proprietary algorithms owned by insane billionaires.
Clearly, Tony Bloom is no Musk, Thiel or Alex Karp. Yet the scouting services Jamestown can provide to its lucky clients are reminiscent of the Tolkien talisman Thiel and Karpâs Palantir is named for. âGaze into our seeing stone and behold the next Scottish Player of the Year, plugging away in the obscurity of Norwayâs Second DivisionâŚâ
Bloomâs role in Heartsâ title charge drew the attention of the Wall Street Journal, which profiled the club last week. âEven the clubâs most devoted supporters canât quite grasp the sorcery of their recruitment policy,â wrote sports editor Joshua Robinson. He quoted Foundation of Hearts chairman Gerry Mallon, who said: âItâs a black box to us. It feels like weâve got the cheat codes to football.â
Most of the players involved in this heroic Hearts campaign were there before Jamestown got involved. But can you be a true underdog when you have Tony Bloom in your corner giving you the cheat codes?
Their rivals for the title was a club apparently bent on wasting every one of their many advantages in the most incompetent way possible. Itâs hard to believe how much chaos Celtic managed to cram into one season. A spectacular falling-out with Brendan Rodgers was followed by a spectacular falling-out between the board and the fans. The Green Brigade ultras were banned for five months. The board hired Wilfried Nancy as manager, watched him lose six matches out of eight and sacked him a month later.
You then had the unimaginably corny twist of the legend coming out of retirement to save the season â twice. Martin OâNeill, who famously scoffs at the very concept of expected goals, happens to be the perfect antagonist to the football data revolution represented by Bloom. By some mysterious process, the story of the lurching giants began to feel more compelling than that of the focused, intelligently-maximising challengers.
OâNeillâs success in instantly transforming the losing sides of Rodgers and Nancy into winning sides is one of the most interesting things to happen in football this year. It suggests that even as the game becomes ever more complex and choreographed, the key skill of a coach is still the ability to get the players into the right frame of mind to play.
In the end, it comes down to making your players believe what Celticâs Canadian right-back Alistair Johnston told the Sky cameras on Saturday: âWe just felt we were gonna f***inâ find a way.â
They didnât play that way in the first half. They were nervous and tentative and it became the kind of match Hearts were hoping for. The challengers took the lead with the archetypal goal of season 2025-26: a well-worked inswinging corner. But Celticâs penalty equaliser a few minutes later rattled Hearts, who played hardly any football in the second half.
Celtic played hardly any football themselves until desperation kicked in with about 15 minutes to go and they started to flood forward in numbers. After Daizen Maedaâs goal, 10 minutes of utter frenzy. Any semblance of tactics, of patience, of organisation â of reason itself â was hurled aside as both teams slashed wildly at the ball and crashed into each other at 100mph. This was a magnificent spectacle of pure, uncut, military-grade Scottish football.
It finished with Celtic running the ball all the way up the field into the unguarded Hearts net amid wild celebrations which culminated in the pitch invasion people will probably still be complaining about in 50 years.
Was the crowdâs behaviour a sign of civilisational decay, or the natural irrepressible response to such an incredible ending to an extraordinary season?
The most famous line of football commentary in the English language includes the information that a pitch invasion is taking place. Sometimes people just canât help themselves â and making them feel that way is what this game is all about.
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ooofffttttt
That is some volte face by Ken
Ken gets it. Iâve always said Ken gets it. Iâm sure if Ken had had the column centimetres, he would have mentioned how Celtic v Heart Of Midlothian, like Hungary v Ireland, showcased the genius of the away goals rule, both games simulating the situation where a game can never be level, which creates the extreme drama at all stages.
Heart Of Midlothianâs obsession with statistics did not extend to their goalkeeper Swallowâs decision to blunder forward into the Celtic box for a free kick at 97:15 with 8 minutes of added time having been announced.
To me Chick, this looked like a stupid and ego driven decision on the part of Mr Swallow. He was imagining his name up in lights. But there was still time left. Precious time.
As the Heart Of Midlothian free kick was taken, there were 45 seconds left before the 98:00 mark. Usually - not always but usually - thereâs a stoppage or a delay within stoppage time itself so that the official 8 minutes can become 9 minutes or 10 minutes or even 11 minutes.
Clearly the situation was getting rather desperate for Heart Of Midlothian at that stage, but even if Celtic cleared the ball, as they did, Heart Of Midlothian could have realistically expected at least one more attack, possibly two - if theyâd had a goalkeeper or an outfield player to retrieve a clearance. Instead they bet everything on that one free kick.
I think back to Hungary v Ireland in Budapest, and how when Ireland got two throws with 94:20 and 94:40 gone, where there was an expectation the ball would launched into the box (and it was), CaoimhĂn Kelleher did NOT take an ego driven decision to galavant forward and instead stayed back to mop up a Hungarian clearance, which he duly did at 95:05 - five seconds after the designated five minutes had run out. Kelleherâs decision to hang back as a retriever was essential to Troy Parrottâs goal.
If Kelleher had galavanted forward for those throws, Troy Parrott would never have scored that goal, Hungary might well have scored in a breakaway, and we in Ireland would not be looking forward to following Ireland in the World Cup.
Kelleher showed exceptional situational awareness which Mr. Swallow did not.
Statistics and probability me hoop.
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Looking at that youâd never believe that James Forrest is 35 this year.
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Do they need to replay this match in full or just partially? Canât have unfinished matches being allowed for the INTEGRITY of Scottish football
The tradition of football teams releasing records has died out sadly but I think the Celtic team should now release a cover version of Massive Attack, entitled âUnfinished, No Sympathyâ.
One thing I was slightly disappointed about as regards the pitch invasion was that there was no fella in a wheelchair pushed around like when Aidan Ryan scored that goal in the 1991 Munster hurling final replay.
A replay that the calendar zealots regret ever happened.
I would be focusing on the utterly dreadful delivery from that free kick rather than the goalieâs decision to bomb forward.
If a match is abandoned, like it was on Saturday, you replay the full match.
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Imagine the drama that could bring? All eyes will the on the Scottish league
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Rules should be rules and all that but the rules donât really seem to apply to Glasgow Celtic so I am not anticipating a re-fixture.
All wumming aside is there a genuine reason why the match either is or isnât being replayed?
Was it abandoned before the end or not? Is there a precedent etc etc
Another thing Ken didnât have the column centimetres to go into is that football is about tribalism and IDENTIFICATION and the feelings these things drive inside the base savage level of our brains, our souls and our heart of midlothians.
What Martin OâNeill symbolised when he became manager of Celtic in the year 2000 was the feeling of a rising Ireland, the Ireland that we dreamed of. This was a new constructive, hopeful, optimistic Ireland, an Ireland that would win the war through peace.
The Troubles were over. House prices were rising, which made every house owner richer, your monetary wealth obviously being defined solely by the notional monetary value of the house you plan to live in for the rest of your life.
Wages were rising, Ireland had a smashing crop of young, skilful footballers who we KNEW would take us to the World Cup in Japan and Korea, and Portugal 2004 and Germany 2006 and Scotland/Ireland 2008. Ireland was no longer a joke in rugby, at least since February 2000. Our HORSES were making us proud. Our Formula 1 racing cars were making some oddballs in the country proud.
Ireland had even hosted the very presteejus MTV Europe Music Awards which was SERIOUS music. We were leaving behind the embarrassing tweeness of the Eurovision Song Contest which we now felt embarrassed to have ever taken seriously.
We had two new television stations - T na G, which rhymed with Gina G (Ooh Ah Just A Little Bit), and TV3. RTE would do elaborate ads trumpeting themselves, filled with pictures of young, modern, CONFIDENT Irish people. Theyâd superimpose a hologram of Seashell Myth flashing her gold medals onto the Rock Of Cashel with an RTE lorry driving past it in the foreground.
In the North, we now had the Good Friday Agreement. Martin McGuinness had unseated Willie McCrea in Mid-Ulster and had been chaired shoulder high coming out of the count centre. Gerry Adams was now an MP again. Michelle Gildernew was about to take back Fermanagh/South Tyrone. The greening of the west as they called it.
Ulster teams had come out of the doldrums in the GAA. Down, Derry and Donegal had risen. Tyrone were coming, Armagh were coming. Crossmaglen Rangers were the kingpins of Ireland.
If you looked at all these teams, they were festooned with lads who were university students or graduates. Engineers, barristers, solicitors, accountants, dentists. They were the growing Catholic educated middle class who were products of the culture that had grown where Northern Catholics from GAA backgrounds had decided that their revenge was going to be to get educated.
WE were EUROPEANS. WE were tech savvy. WE were educated. Themmuns were lumpen, proud of their ignorance.
Martin OâNeill was a product of that culture of âour revenge will be educationâ.
And now he was coming to Celtic and using that culture of our revenge will be our education to put Celtic back on top.
The 6-2 in August 2000 was not just a symbol of Celtic unceremoniously shoving Rangers off their perch but a demonstration of a new, confident Fenianism that was going to win the war through peace and most of all through education.
As those six goals smashed into the Rangers net with the power of a peaceful form of Semtex, Martin OâNeillâs face symbolised shrewdness to their stupidity. Our nimbleness to their lumpenness. Our belief in hope, inspiration and light to their belief in darkness.
We knew this man was a Messiah. A Messiah forged in tumult. A leader. A Fenian Moses who would lead us to Seville in the sun.
What Martin OâNeill did above all was to make Celtic supporters and the Celtic associated diaspora FEEL THINGS. He made us feel good, feel GREAT.
And yet he left with unfinished business. In the most glorious year of 2003, he won nothing. In 2001, 2002, and 2004, he won by such a distance that the moment of victory was not a moment at all, it was an elongated plateau, something more like the way women experience sex than the way men experience it. And then 2005 and the ghost of Fir Park. And that was it. He was gone.
Celtic FC never recaptured the vital energy of those years in the interim. Despite appointing a manager from Armagh and a manager from Antrim - twice, for each - they did not have the total package that Martin OâNeill had. The Armagh man had the fire, but not the smarts and the eloquence. The Antrim man had the smarts, but not the fire. His eloquence was more corporate.
The feeling about Celtic FC in the years 2005 to 2025 was one of slow stagnation.
Celtic supporters believed that they could never again FEEL things in the way that Martin OâNeill made them FEEL things. But they were wrong, because Martin OâNeill came back.
Immediately, it was like being transported back in time. Martin OâNeill immediately brought back the sort of deep emotional investment in the cause of Celtic Football Club that had not been there for 20 years.
The deep incompetence and deep sloth that led to the situation where Martin OâNeill had to return was a necessary step to reawkening these feelings. This incompetence and sloth brought CHALLENGE and JEOPARDY.
Celtic Football Club had proceeded for most of the previous 20 years on the basis of certainty, of certain deeply boring victory.
Now suddenly everything was at risk, Martin OâNeillâs heroic return was at risk, and indeed was abruptly ended. But then shambles and chaos returned, and then the Messiah had to return for a second time.
There was never a feeling of certianty. There was always a feeling of âthis could end at any timeâ. But it didnât end because the Messiah who knew, KNEW. He BELIEVED. And he got others to BELIEVE, and now the believers KNOW.
He is the Messiah.
I probably better stop now because Iâm descending into parody, but anyway.
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My understanding of the rules of the game are that there has to be a tip off in the centre circle if a goal is scored at the death, before a game can conclude. There is a handy and convenient narrative going around now that gets the Scottish Football Association and Glasgow Celtic off the hook that the referee Don Robertson blew his final whistle as soon as there was the mass pitch invasion after the third Glasgow Celtic goal. The game could not conclude though at the very earliest until there was a tip off in the centre circle. It was an abandoned game.
the ref blew up mate
Abandonment of a game is at the discretion of the referee. If fans invade the pitch it is not an automatic abandonment and the referee is encouraged to restart the match if they deem is safe to do so.
The match was supposed to restart but Hearts went back to the dressing room rather than go back on to the pitch and the referee declared full time as there were seconds left.
wouldnt be surprised if Hearts got hit with a fine
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Referee canât blow full time after a goal until there is a tip off in the centre circle is my understanding of the rules. That makes it an abandoned game.
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ok, happy to clear up that your understanding is wrong, technically the ref blowing up saved Hearts from a forfeit & a 3 nil defeat
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