SENTINELCELTS

So now we welcome Big Ange to The Celtic Family.

Many of the ‘Foot Soldiers’ on here wish him well and that would absolutely be my view. An extremely interesting life and clearly overcame many early barriers to success. Those life experiences will stand him in good stead now. He will certainly need to draw on them.

Celtic managers must, almost, always overcome adversity to achieve results. From the very Pits of Lanarkshire to the backstreets of Athens… the requirement for intrinsic  inner qualities like self-belief, tenacity and drive are helpful. Hopefully, family will have instilled a sense of fairness, ideas of right and wrong, but most of all humility. 

Good Celtic folk should have humility.

The Family is large and can trace back many generations, origins are important but it matters not that your origins are rooted in Athens, Siberia, Netherlands, Slovakia, Cape Verde ( naturally), Baltic, Balkans, Mozambique or The Gazza Strip ( no, the other one ..) if you come here from Tibet wreathed in red & orange robes, you are welcomed to Paradise, you call it something else… you might have six heavens, or even seven. No matter how you describe your origins, or how you believe, you will be Welcomed. It’s basic stuff. Join the Family.

In The Family we have members who have a particular focus on style of play, trophies, charities, friendships.. opinions can, and do, differ, and sometimes that means we have folk falling out… estrangement can happen and sadly, some are never reconciled. In my experience this is often caused by misunderstanding and lack of communication and therefore, more painful and heartbreaking.

Recently I told one of our hosts that our personal alignment was sitting at 60%, what I meant was ‘I agree with you significantly more then I disagree’, but the gap is significant. I was politely reminded by another poster that “people are entitled to opinions”. As in, ‘you are close to the edge on this, so calm doon’. There was no ongoing acrimony, and that is a reassuring feeling. Vent, by all means, but keep it civil. Especially when engaging with Family.

“Every man kills the thing he loves…” 

from memory WB Yeats was musing about his unrequited love… Scholars will correct my failing memory. When I think on that fragment, I look to my biological family and my wife and reflect hard on those words.. Now considering what he meant was that we sometimes say hurtful things, and moreso to the people we should love the most. We lash out, men are the biggest culprits… in my experience…

One of the many wonderful achievements of our blog hosts, and the backers and tech support guys.. is how courtesies are maintained and observed. There are exceptions, we only see ( and feel) a fragment of this and I don’t envy the efforts the guys have to make to keep it tidy. Their tolerance is to be admired.

Unfortunately, there are members of The Family who are mainly interested in power and money. Further Within our Celtic Family there are folk who are only interested in making money. My late father told me to maintain a healthy scepticism for people who want to make money out of a football club, regular employees excepted or in Sopranos style …” they get a ‘pass’…”

Particular attention should be made to folk who use Celtic for personal gain. 

Why are We a PLC ?!

We have the bulk shareholders who basically run the club like a fiefdom, they think and act like feudal Lords, they don’t even see us as customers. To them we are indentured slaves or more accurately, serfs. Absolutely no Rights but tied to them. 

Where else can they go…chin, chin and cheers!

They are not Family, they are the modern day Robber Barons and they do very,very well out of Celtic’s foot soldiers. They don’t charge peppercorn rents either. Our German cousins laugh at the prices we pay … what is “whit?!” in German?

There are of course parasites that attach to Robber Barons. Think Squire Danaher’s lickspittle foreman.. ” now, now Squire Danaher has the floor..” 

In The Family we have a group who don’t behave like the normal Family members. They have ideas above their station and somehow have it in their heads that they are placed on this earth to ‘lead’ wee  lesser mortals. 

Let’s call them Big Al’s Gang. 

Big Al’s gang operate thus.

 On a day to day basis they move amongst us and we will all know one or more personally. They play the game well. They foster familial confidence and dareisay ‘Trust’ ….

They play at being Celtic fans. They come from families who can afford finer things like a paid education and they expect benefits in life to accrue. To continue to accrue…

They are unlike Family we all know and admire who have worked hard to achieve what they have. There is a completely different mindset.

It’s how they were educated.

Sadly, they utilise their life privileges for their own advantage. They were reared to think and behave this way. When you and I were crammed into groups of 33 they were straining to reach high C at Vespers or Evensong or whatever they call it. To be fair, many didn’t buy into the ‘superior’ dogma. Not all of them believed they were placed on this earth to lead the poorer papes in the clan. However, enough of them did, and they wormed their way onto the Celtic Board. Then they have placed their classmates (sic) in various influential slots in the wider Celtic Family. 

Now, we are all facing yet another generation of suffering smug superiority. 

The message to the Celtic Family is to keep your eyes and ears open.. watch the Family Silver  etc.

Big Ange will probably not be aware of any of this, to be fair. No one he has met will have marked his card…yet!