RETURN TO DIGNITY - Weekly Gaudd Spot
Written by Gaudd
Monday, 03 September 2007
You have to hand it to Gordon Strachan, he may have the team playing with all the panache of a depressed Boris Johnson after 5 bottles of Moet, but he gets the results in Europe and against decent quality opposition as well. Ok we did make it a little hard for ourselves, but if we didn’t then we wouldn’t have had the tension-filled excitement of extra time, last minute snatches of victory from the jaws of defeat, and a thrilling penalty shoot-out - which would be terrible as I don’t have enough grey hairs and my fingernails would have had to be trimmed without the aid of gibbering teeth.
Despite the infliction of this accelerated aging process on the innocent, Wednesday night will go down in Celtic history, and quite rightly, not just for the amazing fact that Celtic won a penalty shoot-out (never mind the added bonus of it being in a European competition), but that team played to its strengths while managing to shuffle the obvious weaknesses underneath the carpet…well in the second half anyway.
During the match itself our midfield performed admirably, and so it should, at the last count Celtic had 867 midfield players on the books and circulating rumours (that I’ve just made up) indicated that Strachan was considering a novel 0-10-0 formation, until someone pointed out that John Barnes had already tried this. Another strength is of course our wonderful Polish keeper, even if he does have a penchant for beating up his own players. What can you say about Boruc? Well hopefully “Artur we have these incriminating photographs so if you even think about a transfer they’re getting published, and the one with the cactus and brasso is definitely a career killer.” Yes we should do everything we can to hold on to our first competent keeper since…um… sure we must have had one at some point…perhaps in the 20s?
The object of Boruc’s famous rage on Wednesday night was the rather hapless figure of Lee Naylor, who up until that point had been having one of his by now standard nightmares. Although Naylor improved in the second half there’s little doubt that had he been a horse he would have been in cat food the following morning. Never have so many crosses been under hit since Celtic started signing players above the age of 6 months, and its rather obvious that any halfway competent opponent earmarks Naylor’s side of the pitch as Easy Street. Odd given some of his previous performances, however we might have to put that aberration down to sun spots or something.
Another underachiever without doubt is Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink, a player with all the energy of an asthmatic sloth suffering from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. I never thought I’d see a player who could make John Hartson look like an amphetamine addicted Irish navvie, but Hesselink is so immobile that he has to be weeded at the end of each game. For a player something like 8ft tall he has a remarkable inability to actually win balls in the air, its desperately frustrating to watch crippled midgets out leap him. Give him his due though, after blowing the extra time penalty kick, the big non-Flying Dutchman stood up to be counted at the penalty shootout - now that took some guts. Even the immortal Henrik Larsson collapsed in a quivering heap after ill-luck from the penalty spot and hid behind the settee whenever the ref pointed to the spot. So well done Jan, you may be slower that a wet Sunday in Crieff, but you certainly can’t be faulted on the courage side.
As for the draw, well, I can only assume that we’ve been given a set list of teams to meet in Europe and we’re not allowed to deviate from it. AC Milan, Benfica and Shakhtar Donetsk again! It keeps going like this and we’ll know who we’re playing as soon as we qualify. No doubt the newspapers will be full of Shakhtar Donetsk splashing out £60bn during the transfer window along with unflattering comparisons to Celtic’s meagre spending. On that subject the Ukranians, who I’m assured have perfectly legitimate business interests, have been busy bees. In preperation for their assault on the CL they stumped up €15m on Mexican striker Nery Castillo, signed 21-year-old Brazilian defender Ilsinho, who had been courted by AC Milan and Chelsea (apparently), for €11m and also welcomed in one-time Seria A top scorer, Cristiano Lucarelli for €9m.
If you’re wondering where they’re getting the money from, it certainly isn’t at the gate. The club is currently located temporarily within the RSK Olimpiyskyi stadium which has a capacity of around 25,000, not even David Murray would have tried to finance such spending on those kind of ticket sales. Shakhtar’s spending is actually bankrolled by Rinat Akhmetov, one of those billionaire oligarch’s that emerged during the plundering of the Russian state industries during the Yeltsin era. With an estimated wealth of $4bn, he even makes Dermod Desmond look like a wandering vagrant with the arse out of his trousers. I wonder if the Shakhtar chairman informs disgruntled Ukranians that they can’t expect poor Rinat to put his own money into the club…probably not.
The draw itself was the welcomed by Gordon Strachan with all the enthusiasm of Brian Quinn at a Charity Auction event. Looking as if his rabbit had died and he couldn’t sell the hutch, Strachan mumbled: “Obviously, it’s a tough group and we probably wouldn’t have wanted to be drawn against the two sides that we faced last year - AC Milan and Benfica. The fact that they are both good teams makes you think that way, but it’s also for the fans. They would probably like to have seen us playing some new teams.” Ever the master of understatement. Still, mustn’t grumble, we are actually in the Champions’ League group stage after all, and if we would have liked to experience different opposition, we’ll take the draw anyway, bank the £10m and cry about it some other time.
Another benefit of qualifying is that it must have sickened the torn-faced Hearts sporting director, Anatoly Korobochka. Korobochka may be Ukranian but he has certainly acclimatised very quickly to the carping Alice in Whinederland regime of Mad Vlad. For those who don’t know, this paragon of sportsmanship voiced the opinion that he hoped Celtic got stuffed on Wednesday night because the fiends gave Hearts such a hiding: “Spartak are, of course, CSKA’s eternal rivals but I wish my friends at the club great success and I will be behind them all the way. Celtic humiliated us. It would be good to see someone avenge that.” Diddums, did the big nasty wasty boys make you cry? You would have thought Korobochka would be better of sorting out the mess his own team are in, rather than standing outside Celtic’s windows pulling faces. Obviously he had high hopes for Wednesday night, and no wonder as Spartak Moscow were certainly no Crvena Zvezda, after all Spartak could actually play football without fear of being prosecuted by trading standards for mislabelling.
On that subject it seems that whatever power Brer Hun has been using to influence their European draws has waned at last. I’ve no idea how Rangers have managed it, possibly Ian Paisley moonlights as high priest of Voodoo or something similar and throws Chicken innards in the air when the draws are made. A typical Rangers qualifying round draw is along the lines of Luca’s Trattoria XI, or Lichtenstein Rovers, while their last foray into the group stages saw them flop into the weakest selection of the lot. No Group of Death for them, nothing more than a Group of Slight Cough at best. So it was with no little satisfaction that Thursday’s draw handed them a splendid shock with Barcelona, Lyon and Stuttgart all ready to take on the plucky bottom potters. Nacho Novo will certainly be disappointed, hoping as he was to take on the might of Real Madrid. Hilariously it was without a trace of irony that PA reported: “The 28-year-old left Spain as a youngster without ever playing in the Primera Liga and had spells with Raith and Dundee before joining Rangers in 2004.” Yes, so perhaps with that dazzling CV in mind a career in La Liga may just be a little bit of an overreach.
Never mind though, Dodgy Dave will be delighted to have drawn Barcelona as he will now have the chance to nip into the Nou Camp museum armed with a handy screwdriver. Murray, it was reported, is rather peeved that the Catalans have a photograph on the wall of Rangers supporters displaying their famous dignity during the Cup Winners Cup riot in 1972 - for some odd reason it resides in their “anti-football” section. A request from Mordor for the photograph’s removal was met with a polite but firm refusal from Joan Laporta, who will no doubt be utterly delighted to welcome back the dignified horde to the Nou Camp. What the locals will think of it all is anyone’s guess but word has reached the E-tims that several outstanding bills for damage and destruction