Uilleam

Be careful what you ask for: when the drums stop, the bass solo starts

Ring rusty

Seemed a bizarre switch. Not unusual.

Staggering from a multi car pile up and being offered an aspirin.

Why am I unsurprised?

Apart from the players being too slow, and too soft, there appears to be be no one in the side who can head the ball. These observations are far from new, and I doubt, very much, if anyone would find them contentious. All that all our corners, and all our crosses, do, is give the opposition defence practice, quite a lot of practice, actually. On the other hand, and related directly to our ineptitude in the opposition box, when our lot have to defend a corner, it's heart in mouth time, and Gawd help us if a cross comes from open play. A lot can be laid at the feet (and heads) of the players, but, really, the coaching and tactical planning, and work, must be diabolical.

I have been kind of busy, last night, and today. Is GvB not toast?

I think that we could go close in the Euro Conference League, 23/24.

Yes. The playing staff. I have become increasingly unconvinced that a new coach would get anything approaching a decent tune out of a significant amount of the squad. Contrarily, perhaps, I remain unconvinced that the current coach could get a decent tune out of different players. It's a difficult position for the Board to address, and I don't know how they can be forced to do so. In days of yore, those halcyon days when you rolled up and paid at the gate, the support would just stay away, hitting the Board financially (and, coincidentally, leading to a glut of macaroon bars, cauld pies, and lukewarm Bovril on the sou'side). I fear that matters will trundle on, like the football, until even the dugs on the street know that change is essential, by which time it will be too late, and the season a write off. I suppose that, really, the Club should have a contingency plan and funding in place. But I shouldn't bet on it.

Too soft, too slow, and it seems that not one of them can heider the baw.

Can we snatch a draw, and prolong the Dutch agony?

Look on the bright side: if we lose here, which seems likely, as St J is controlling the game, it leaves us free to concentrate on the Cups.

I was trying to exorcise that spectre. Should have gone to Ghostbusters.

I accept full responsibility. Lessons will be learned.

Oh well, prophecy fulfilled

This is the most one sided game I think I have ever seen. I hope that doesn't mean what it often does.

5 - 1, eh? Apparently the referee was a woman. Until tonight, I didn't know what the Eastern Star was for....

If you want to see -in person- a GP, plead haemorrhoids. There are many things that can be done via phone or zoom, but, trust me, piles ain't one of them.

Que sera sera: Thumbheid's downward trajectory seems inevitable, inescapable. Thus you may return the Magic Lamp to your Maw's press.

Clearly the off-field priority must be the installation of Disco Lights. They have them at Piggery Place, and they have helped their European endeavours no end.

Apologia pro vita male vixit. An extraordinary article by Mick Grant in today's Times. Trigger warning: readers may tear up, some with sadness; some with laughter. You can condemn Leigh Griffiths but do not revel in his fall from grace Let’s hope striker doesn’t sink into the sort of post-football hardship we’ve seen in others when the game leaves them behind and real life rears up Michael Grant Wednesday November 02 2022, 12.01am, The Times https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/you-can-condemn-leigh-griffiths-but-do-not-revel-in-his-fall-from-grace-2c5hpv7kl Leigh Griffiths could have been running out at the Bernabeu tonight to lead the Celtic attack against Real Madrid. Doesn’t that sound absurd? Griffiths at his peak and Ange Postecoglou’s Celtic seem like analogue and digital, two entities belonging to completely different eras. Of course Postecoglou was Griffiths’s last Celtic manager, the last who gave him a chance at the biggest club of his career and the last who approved a new contract. Yet just 15 months later they inhabit very, very different worlds. There is a single prevailing reaction to anything Griffiths says these days and there was an outpouring of it from those who watched his weekend interview on BBC Scotland. Griffiths did a few joyless keepie-uppies on a small pitch in his back garden, the lost boy no-one wants to play with. He talked about waiting for the phone to ring and a manager, any manager, rescuing him with the offer him a new gig. He talked about his fall from grace and the low point of that highly dubious off-field behaviour which torpedoed him at Celtic. There was some whingeing about not being able to go to the shops without getting abuse because “that’s the stigma you have when you’re playing with one side of the Old Firm”. The headline quote was: “The longer it goes on I think: is football for me anymore?” Putting it that way sounded like he had some element of agency in the matter. Actually Griffiths wants to keep playing at a high level and no club thinks him capable of it. It’s not whether football’s for him any more, as if he has plenty of other things on his plate and could take or leave it. It’s that top clubs don’t think he’s worth bothering with and aren’t giving him the option. And the widespread reaction to whatever Griffiths comes out with now is cold and unsympathetic. Contemptuous, too. How could it be anything else? He has joined a long list of talented Scottish mavericks who blew it. Postecoglou was always going to sign Kyogo Furuhashi and other high-energy runners last season but, had Griffiths lived his life differently, looked after himself properly, no manager would have rushed him out of town. His record would have demanded he be taken seriously. Of course Griffiths shouldn’t be some sort of clapped out old nag. Henrik Larsson played his last game for Celtic at 32 and was still in good enough condition to then appear with distinction for Barcelona and Manchester United. Kris Boyd played until he was 35. Ally McCoist called it a day for Kilmarnock at 38. Lionel Messi is 35. Cristiano Ronaldo’s still preening in front of dressing room mirrors at 37. Zlatan Ibrahimovic is an AC Milan player at 41. Griffiths has only just turned 32 and there he is kicking a ball around in his back garden and looking so forlorn the footage could have been in black and white. The familiar claim made for Griffiths — get him fit and he’ll get you 40 goals a season — is silent now. That ship has sailed and it is a reference to a striker who no longer exists. Griffiths did score 40 in a season in 2015-16 but his body is not up to that any more and he has accumulated more baggage than Heathrow. The jokes used to be about all those children to all those different women — five kids to three mothers and the punchlines had him going around like a bull in breeding season — before the subject matter took a darker turn. That police investigation into improper online messages to an underage girl ended up with Griffiths being cleared of any criminality but the episode closed all sorts of doors on him. He had already been given time off by Celtic to address depression and mental health issues but the investigation made many recoil from him even when he was cleared. So a guy who was never going to win any fitness or conditioning awards drifted away from Celtic through Dundee and Falkirk to Mandurah City in Australia and back again to train at Livingston and mope around in the back garden. Calling Griffiths a waster is the easy bit. Of course he is, given that for all he achieved at club level he had a level of ability which should have empowered him to do much more. Supporters resent the laziness and unprofessionalism they see in wasted talents and Griffiths already had a vast constituency of fans dead set against him after all that tying Celtic scarves to the Ibrox posts and cleaning his nose on a Rangers corner flag. The Celtic support lapped up all of that, loved him waving a Tricolour when he was in with the away fans at Ibrox. But even they turned against him after the police investigation. They booed him in a pre-season friendly against West Ham United last year. Plenty wanted their club to wash its hands of him. As for other rival fans, many think his goalscoring was his only redeeming feature. That isn’t true, he has a bit of charm and wit and can joke at his own expense, but few want anything to do with him. Doubtless he will now dot around a few clubs of decreasing size until it entirely peters out. So let’s hope his future is more fulfilling than it looks now. None of us need to get the violins out for a bloke who became a millionaire from football and who has no-one but himself to blame for how it all turned to ashes. Who would say no to a house and garden big enough for a football pitch? But there’s a difference between condemning Griffith’s behaviour and attitude and actively enjoying his decline and wishing him endless unhappiness. Let’s hope we’re wrong and he doesn’t sink into the sort of post-football hardship we’ve seen in others when the game leaves them behind and real life rears up. It is natural to suspect that Griffiths is another who could really struggle without the structure and security professional football has given him. No-one should wish that on anyone.

If we are not, we are second worst, it seems.

Apparently, we are, indeed, the worst team ever to compete ( using that word very, very loosely) in the CL Group Stages. I expect that this will be confirmed tomorrow, and that, subsequently, we will hear no more about it.

Ignominious: causing or deserving of public humiliation and/or shame. Sums up the CL endeavours neatly and accurately, for me.

Thank fuck that is the ' campaign' over. If you want a word to sum up, I suggest ignominious.