MJC

Agreed. Football and politics should never mix.

I don’t think Burrows is taking the position he is to do Celtic’s bidding, certainly not intentionally anyway. I can absolutely get that he’d want us to have the opportunity to get supporters into games and by delaying matches that might make that happen, as unlikely as it is to actually happen. However you are absolutely correct in saying that this decision has been heavily influenced by Celtic and them looking out for their own selfish needs.

I can’t help but feeling that this has only happened because Celtic wanted it to happen. Had they not been so vocal in pushing for this then it would have been thrown out straight away. But that’s Scottish football these days, what Celtic want, Celtic get. As I said yesterday, I don’t see what this will achieve. The virus won’t have gone away by mid January and if anything case numbers will be a lot higher by then they are just now due to Christmas/New Year household mixing, so I would have thought it would have been better to just play the scheduled games bcd, as shite as that is. As it is we are looking at a major backlog in fixtures when we do eventually resume - which I am 100% certain will be without full crowds.

Getting very political this, I hate when that happens.

The problem is that it’s still a relatively new virus and therefore still not a full understanding of it and how it mutates. That’s why the concern over this latest faster spreading variant because the experts themselves don’t know what it’s going to do and how severe it could potentially be. There will unfortunately be more new variants in all likelihood but hopefully over time they get much, much weaker and then we can start to “live with it” but that could be a few years away yet.

Yes hopefully but it would be pointless and perhaps also irresponsible to just allow crowds back come mid/late January as that would almost certainly risk another spike in cases. If they did then they would be back to square one within a matter of weeks and that would render the current restrictions meaningless. It’s tough and it’s a shit situation, but I honestly think that until the Covid virus starts to substantially weaken then we’ll be in this cycle for the foreseeable future.

I see AB is in favour of bringing the winter break forward, a position being taken by several other clubs it seems. I’ve got to say while I see where they are coming from, the virus isn’t going to have gone away after three weeks and there is no chance of it going back to anything like full crowds by then. Generally since the beginning of the pandemic they set measures out with three week review times but they are not simply going to remove them after that time, if anything they will strengthen the measures at that point if not before. So bringing forward the winter break in the hope that by the time we resume crowds will be back is nothing but fantasy.

I suppose 500 is better than none at atall but nonetheless this is gutting news for the club and the support.

There’s absolutely no chance of stadiums being reopened by February, none whatsoever. Jason Leitch was saying only yesterday that they weren’t expecting this to peak until late January/early February so if that was the case then there is no way they would risk it spiking again by allowing large crowds to gather as soon as that.

Morton have just appointed Dougie Imrie as their new manager.

Certainly would appear so sadly, the First Minister will update parliament later but that appears to be hinting at games going bcd once again before the New Year. Sadly if this is the case then I don’t think we’ll be back inside Fir Park this season.

Disappointing but not surprising to hear that. I expect he’ll be off in the summer at the latest as he will be looking for one last ‘big move’ given he is approaching 30.

It’s pointless listening to a word any of them say, they are brought up to thrive on being the victim, the underdog etc. Celtic TV is representative of their entire support, especially that po-faced sanctimonious wank that used to play for us. You could pick any one of they bitter, pished stained old bastards that frequent the Railway Tavern and they wouldn’t sound any more ludicrous and unreasonable than Boyd does.

To be fair I think there was a degree of belief in the second part of the first period but when we concede at the time we did and in the manner we did then that shattered us and there was no way back for us after that. It was literally the worst possible time for us to fall behind.

Does that mean that I’ve been promoted from ‘trolling c u…’ you know the rest?

Yes I can’t argue with that, or most of it at least, except I feel pretty frustrated that we didn’t take advantage during our better spell in the first half and offered little to nothing in the second. As much as I hate the term ‘there for the taking’ in regards to games against either of the Old Firm, facing a Celtic side minus their two best players, just off the back of a European match on Thursday night and clearly not at their strongest today, then it’s annoying that we barely laid a glove on them especially in the second half.

1-0, 5-0, same result. No points I’m afraid. We played okay in the first half against a well under par Celtic side but if you want to take anything from games like this then you need to make it count and we weren’t able to do so. I felt we were unlucky with some of our efforts in the first 45 and but for the bar and a great save would have been ahead. The goal we conceded was poor from our part. Slattery was naive in the extreme to give that away in that area and we left no one marking Rogic as we clearly expected Turnbull to either curl it in or shoot for goal. The second half was a bit of a non event and we never looked like doing anything whilst Celtic were mostly on autopilot. So not a hammering but still a loss nonetheless.

What was Slattery doing there? That was absolutely suicidal giving away a free kick in that area at that time. After a decent first half showing - our best in a while against them - all of that has been undone and it’s a case of how many now.

Absolute nonsensical decision to book KvV for that. Yet again it’s a case of goalkeepers getting protection and the benefit of the doubt.

Yes I totally agree with that but it’s something that is becoming more and more common in football these days. The worst one in recent years has to be Leicester sacking Ranieri just nine months after winning the English Premier League. Absolutely mental.

Jack Ross sacked.

Tommy Coyne was and still is the best forward player I’ve seen at Fir Park. A real class player who did so much more than simply score goals. For pure entertainment value McFadden in his first spell has to be up there. Even in that dismal 02/03 season whenever he got the ball you just felt that excitement around the place that he could produce something special and he very often did.

Yes but the problem is that that mindset seeps from the stands into the club itself and thus many players and managers buy into it too. It is no coincidence, in my opinion, that our record against the Old Firm has gone downhill in the last two decades at the same time as the “punching above our weight” nonsense started coming out, in both forums like these and from figures closely linked to and who are now heavily involved with the running of the club. If you’ve got managers/players coming into the club then some of them are naturally going to pick up on such a mindset and I believe that’s why the likes of McGhee and McCall to name but two, saw us as this little tinpot outfit and had no problem with publicly disrespecting us, in McGhee’s case, and our capacity to bottle it in every ‘big’ game we played under McCall despite having a very good squad at the time. I don’t for one minute expect us to compete with either of them over the course of a season, but at the same time it is hugely frustrating seeing us frequently lose heavily to both of them, which is becoming more and more a regular occurrence.

Sadly this. As a club we are scared of them both and this is something that has increased over the past twenty years and intensified since around 2010/2011. Far too often there seems to be this feeling around the club that we should just write these games off and if we escape with anything less than a three goal loss then it’s seen as some kind of moral victory. I honestly don’t believe we will see us beat either of them again for a long, long time, if ever.

25 years ago today since the famous ‘Jamie Dolan’ game v Celtic when we beat them 2-1 with Dolan in goal for most of the second half.