SENTINELCELTS

9 years ago if someone even began telling how the final chapter of this saga would play out, lets be honest you would think theres nae chance pal sorry.
The fans not there to watch yet pay full whack no worries,,the fella that started it returns to finish it,, an invincible season,,a deadly virus,,secret trips abroad,,a lurking rival steps up from our shadow,,a sinister plot to thwart the mission,,no wonder you wouldn’t believe the fella back than. That reads like the next James Bond movie for f#@k sake!
Yet all true proving the old adage truth is stranger than fiction to be spot on.

Just look at the makeup of the Joint Response Group for a start. This is an unprecedented situation, mostly medical but very much a social issue also, thus it makes sense the makeup of the our COBRA group should have drawn from those sectors, and at the very least be one hundred percent impartial.
No chance at all. Petrie, Doncaster and Maxwell couldn’t but help placing themselves on the group on no grounds other than the could, there’s no other reason for three football men on what should be a broad spectrum of reputable professionals in their various fields.
They stick in the SFA doctor, a chap they all know so very well, to round off the underwhelming quartet giving some semblance of medical input, but make no mistake and semblance of impartiality and professionalism went out the window when they all signed on the dotted line, and whetted their beaks a little bit more as there’s bound to be a nice fee involved for providing their ‘services’.

And to the charges themselves. I would have no issue charging the players for whatever law they breached, none whatsoever, and they will be club punished so no one is walking away with this Scot free, no one at all. But yet what laws have they breached?
Disciplinary Rules 24 & 71 aren’t new, and were in place then of course, but yet they are soo vague as to make the charges head scratching.
Players will be players, aren’t the brightest generally, and young men do silly things, been that way since young men were first created.
But to attempt to intercede in this manner, into their personal lives effectively, policing them under the guise of Covid-19 is staggeringly authoritarian Big Brother like.
There’s always been an element of clubs watching troubled yet gifted stars, but this takes things to a new level, a level none of us want to see the national sport fall to.
The players arent skint, and could mount their own defence, but their mother clubs should take care of business here I believe.
They, after all, are in charge of relaying information or not, plus will have known exactly how the actions of their employees when off duty would effect, if they didnt theres the start of this farcical charge unraveling.
And they can probably afford much better legal representation than your average footballer.

Of course, one of the main reasons the fans were so wrathful yesterday upon announcement was the clear lack of one club who had seen testing protocol fail, and considering that happened while employees of two different teams were on active duty, many perceive the case to be more severe than the others. But yet surprise surprise their favoured club gets another small helping hand in the quest to derail ten. Celtic won’t be hurt much or at all by any Bolingoli ban and club fine, the Dons will certainly feel the non availability of eight regulars, no doubt about it.
Bookies will close bets on those fixtures more than likely, and that stops what should be the third best team in their tracks, helping give the leaders a straight run with less distraction.
At least that’s what my paranoid brain has come up with, after all surely they aren’t the only SPL players that have breached rules.

So all eyes will turn to our club of choice now for a reaction. I’ve concurred with those who see ourselves as an easy touch for UEFA and their disciplinary panels numerous fines, it’s almost every game we get hit with something or other. But when the SFA cronies throw bent charges at our club, not only do we need to be seen acting, the fans demand it. They are already fraught, to sense that cheating is involved (quiet at the back) in attempting to derail the ten would lead to uproar. Infact I dare say that would be too much for many Tims, feeling cheated out of this title.
And with these charges, those seeds were planted.

The charges have taken the shine of an excellent signing, stole some of his thunder, perhaps that was the intention. Send the Tims into the weekend upset and hope the Ibrox mob pile the pressure on. That can work two ways, we can use that pressure against them. We should continue signing what looks like first team ready quality to assault the division showing we mean business, we should hold onto our star player one more year, we should move on THAT player, we should have our legal team shred this bent Hampden mob with their phoney charges, and we should use this as a motivator to help establish a headwind to charge to the summit where we belong.

The ten was never going to be easy. It must be fought for every inch of the way.
Lets beat these crooked charges off the field, and then beat them all on it.
The real fight for the ten has just started.

The above is by Mahe.
sentinelcelts@gmail.com