Great TFK Vindications - The Stopped Clock Thread

[Special_Olympiakos]

@binkybarnes

Miriam o Callaghan is going to have to chair a Prime Time Special on the sort of nepotism and conflicts of interests that is endemic in Irish Politics

Whilst interviewing the next leader of FF !

[Cheasty]

You either get it or you don’t.

@Cheasty

What Celtic should do is the following. Announce an extension to the interim O’Neill period that goes at least up to November 23rd.

Then they can decide another extension to the interim period to take in December 14th. Then you let inevitability take its course.

Football has an essential element of sentiment. If it doesn’t have that it has nothing.

What Martin O’Neill epitomises is the idea of the Super Dad, now Super Grandad persona. The type of manager who and GETS a club and comes in and immediately the supporters of that club are mentally lathered in a warm, soothing balm. The balm of “everything’s going to be fine”, because Super Dad/Super Grandad is minding us, and he knows.

As the song goes, we’ve got Jack to mind us and the fans behind us.

The mental image all Celtic supporters have of Martin O’Neill is of O’Neill intensely staring as Henrik Larsson applies the finishing touch to a ball that the Celtic Park crowd are literally sucking into the net on a BIG European night which is all of October 2001 and March 2003 and March 2004 against Juventus and Liverpool and Barcelona, and O’Neill doing a little run and then a jump into the air with his arms high into the air.

Celtic supporters want Martin O’Neill to remain as Celtic manager for the same reasons they want to attend Oasis concerts in 2025. They cannot forget how this person made them feel.

What Celtic supporters imagine is that Martin O’Neill is an all knowing, otherworldy force.

You have to allow this force proceed.

Martin O’Neill at Celtic is BIGNESS. If ever a club needed BIGNESS, it’s Celtic right now.

But at the same time, given Martin O’Neill’s age and the fact that he is not a tactics guy - he’s a “you go out and play for me and you will be guided by the force” guy, you have to create the impression that this return of the otherworldly force is non-permanent.

You have to create the impression that this force is ephemeral and under threat and is about to depart. That is what makes the force more potent.

Celtic need to proceed in short steps. This is not a time for “stability”. This is a time when you carefully channel the emotion in a particular way to make the emotion the most potent it can be.

@Cheasty

It can’t be full time. It must be a series of short term extensions until the period of inevitability kicks in in December, the period of inevitability that ends with a 4-1 victory over Rangers that secures a domestic treble on a sun kissed day at Hampden Park in May 2026, when Martin O’Neill walks away into the sunset forever.

@Cheasty

Martin O’Neill had a rolling one year contract with Celtic. Perhaps he should now move to a rolling one month or even rolling one week contract.

Celtic should not be led by a technocrat. I read fellas on Celtic forums making ridiculous analogies like saying “it can’t be Christmas all the time, you can’t live on Quality Street, you eventually have to go back and wear non-elasticated trousers.”

I read fellas saying that some Danish fella I’ve never heard of named Knutsen should be the new manager.

I see some fella I’ve never heard of named Schmidt being touted.

Fuck that. FUCK THAT.

The whole world of politics and anything associated with politics now runs on delusions and fantasies.

The one place where delusions and fantasies are utterly appropriate and NEEDED is football, and Celtic Football Club is one of a select few special clubs where delusions and fantasies are not delusions and fantasies, but are in fact the real pragmatism - and where “pragmatism” is the real delusion and fantasy.

@Cheasty

This fella has never managed outside of the MLS. His team didn’t pull up any trees in the MLS this year, finishing in 7th place in their conference (there are two regional conferences of equal standing) and they were knocked in the round of 16 in the play-offs at the weekend.

Surely Celtic can do better than this.

I’d suggest Martin O’Neill.

@Cheasty

That’s a very good header in fairness, but this ain’t good, ain’t good at all.

Martin O’Neill would want to be keeping February free.

@Cheasty

Celtic managers are supposed to be messiahs.

They are not supposed to be seen using tactics boards. The optics of this are utterly horrific.

Unfortunately it looks like the decision makers at Celtic Park have been fooled into believing they were signing Gil Scott Heron rather than a Fisher-Price Ruben Amorim.

After less than one game, it already looks like the players have decided “who they fuck is this guy?”

@Cheasty

With Celtic not winning the league is an absolute disaster. Celtic’s effective advantage over Hearts at the time of Nancy taking over was three points.

Losing the league from that position would be a sackable offence.

At Celtic you win or you get out. To be fair that’s pretty much every serious club these days. But it probably isn’t the case at Dundalk or in Norway or MLS or at the third club in Portugal who aren’t expected to win the league. You get time there, with not much spotlight on you. This then leads to overpromoted tactix lads who are written up as fellas who can crack the code, but in reality aren’t cut out for a serious level of management with pesky stuff like expectations and demands and pressure and serious media scrutiny. It’s like if a proficient bedroom guitarist suddenly was put on stage at Slane.

Everything I’ve heard and seen of Nancy so far smacks of a cooler looking Stephen Kenny.

@Cheasty

Martin O’Neill could be back before Christmas and I’m not joking. If the rest of this game continues in this vein it’ll be a paddling. The crowd are livid.

The League Cup final then becomes a game which if Nancy loses, he’ll already be fatally undermined.

Then Dundee United away next Wednesday suddenly looks a mammoth task.

An improving Aberdeen team at home looks a big task.

If you lose four in a row to start, how can you turn it around? If you lose five in a row, how can you remain in the job?

@Cheasty

It’s the same squad Martin O’Neill had pissing all over Feyenoord in Rotterdam two weeks ago.

It’s mostly the same squad which were 45 seconds from taking Bayern Munich to extra-time in the knockout stages of the Champions League.

This Nancy fella is clearly one of these fellas who thinks football is a lab experiment and pays no heed to the on the ground reality of the sociological context and expectations of Celtic Football Club.

He’s already lost the players.

@Cheasty

The optics of these easy forward presses for Roma and then Celtic trying and failing to escape with a scuffed pass to a wing back who hasn’t a hope or a scuffed pass into touch, christ they’re awful.

St. Mirren must be laughing. Celtic WILL turn up with the same formation and game plan again on Sunday and it’ll turn to shit again and this time they won’t have the excuse of playing a team which has been leading their league this season.

[starryplough]

You have to call a chancer out when you see one

Celtic Non-Matchday Discussion

poll

[glenshane]

Alexandros Marinos 🏴‍☠️ (@alexandrosM) on X

Covid, Ukraine, clifford. A grand slam

[Massey]

Is IVM Ivermectin?I can definitely attest to that.

[glenshane]

'tis

[Mac]

@glenshane

https://twitter.com/alexandrosM/status/1996284372249637104?s=20

Covid, Ukraine, clifford. A grand slam

Can you trust a lad who spells know as now?

[glenshane]

I don’t now, know that you mention it

[gaillimhmick]

A wonderdrug. Am I right in saying one of the main ingredients is wormwood?

[glasagusban]

He’s on the Internet so it must be true. The PRINCIPLE trial!!!

[glenshane]

I’m out now but will check the ingredients when I get home

[myboyblue]

For those who have known all along there was a massive cover up of the goings on in the Cork dressing room

https://tfk.thefreekick.com/t/cunt-of-the-year-2025-log-thread-coty/39450/683?u=myboyblue

[Cheasty]

You can doubt me on a lot of things but one thing you can’t doubt me on is I can immediately sniff out when a managerial appointment is going to bomb.

Kenny
Nancy
Amorim

I called all three disasters from the get go.

@Cheasty

Patience didn’t work with Ten Hag. They should sack Amorim now.

@Cheasty

This new fella Amorim clearly thinks Manchester United is some kind of lab. He’s not in a diddy league now with diddy opposition, at a club with an undemanding fanbase who will give endless time to an ideological systems manager.

In the Premier League you get results and you get them now and you drill behind the scenes while muddling through and getting results in actual matches, or you face the consequences. You don’t get time for lab stuff unless you’re Guardiola at a diddy club, and Amorim is not Guardiola.

[Cheasty]

I’m always right.

Welcome back to Anfield Xabi Alonso. Real Madrid was always going to be too small a club to be able for him.

Luckily he escaped that cesspit too quickly for it to damage him.

@Cheasty

I wouldn’t be that sure Xabi Alonso will be at Real Madrid next season.

@Cheasty

Alonso is the first manager to emerge in the game worldwide to have a sort of aura of greatness about him since Klopp emerged 11 or 12 years previously, but it’s a different kind of aura. Yet Real Madrid could ruin him. Liverpool always seemed a far better fit for Alonso.

@Cheasty

When Arnie Slot gets sacked at some point over the next two months and hands over to Martin O’Neill while Jurgen Klopp decides whether he wants to go again or leave it to the soon to be sacked Xabi Alonso, he will leave with my thanks and best wishes.

@Cheasty

Xabi Alonso was always more of a fit for Barcelona than Real Madrid in every sense, and he would no doubt have signed for them had it not been for the simple fact Barcelona already had Xavi, Iniesta and Busquets. He never seemed like a Real Madrid type. Too Basque, too obviously not a cunt, too obviously an intellectual thinker about the game. He has a Barcelona face, not a Real Madrid face, as was the case with Luis Enrique. He’ll manage Barcelona yet. Maybe after he manages Liverpool.

@Cheasty

It isn’t going to work out for Alonso at Madrid either.

@Cheasty

With the possible exception of Xabi Alonso who has chosen his current club unwisely I can see no new Klopps, Guardiolas or Mourinhos or Ancelottis or O’Neills anywhere on the horizon.

[neilld]

Kenny, Nancy, Amorim and Alonso all played 3-at-the-back.

[Locke]

Throw enough shite up on the wall, something will stick….

[Biff_Egan]

@neilld

Kenny, Nancy, Amorim and Alonso all played 3-at-the-back.

Needed to shove the middle centre back into midfield

[neilld]

Definitely wouldn’t have hurt.

[neilld]

Can’t wait for Lawal now in March, I might book the next day off work. @Perez2017 has a big booth booked in Linekers over in Spain

[Chancer]

Footix expert @Little_Lord_Fauntleroy has been on Caoimhin Kelleher‘s (Bloopers) case for a while now. He will surely have a giggle following his misfortune on Saturday V Chelsea.