SENTINELCELTS

Right; enough of this negative analytical nonsense. Time for some real optimism, confidence and encouragement. 

Let’s start with the reality as I saw it (seven days aff the drink and most of the nightmares banished forever…well at least until next week anyway. ) 

That was without a shadow of doubt a performance that on Sunday could so easily have won a world title! Admittedly we would have had to be taking part in the “World Championship Crossbar Challenge”. 

I so felt that this was the culmination of my visions as for days longer than a dry week I have been screaming from my seat in pub, at home or in the stadium…. “Shoot!!!…Jist effin Shoot!”; and I witnessed with an occasionally beating heart the call finally penetrating our players’ hearing as they seemed at one with me and my pleas. 

Result? Well so much for my managerial aspirations.  

Deflation, disappointment, shattered illusions and vitriol are the sad volte-face of ego, expectation, ambition and declarations of undying love.  

But those false sides to the coins of life are not for me ….oh no! I am strong enough to shrug and shed the negatives and see through the undergrowth to the bright light of promise. 

But lest you think I am totally impervious to the feelings of my fellow fans and supporters, I have one minor complaint to make that may just chime a little with some. 

Let me just say that here I sit incredulous at the utter incompetence of the universe to match the ambitions of my thinking, the brilliance of my tactical genius and most of all, the wearing of my lucky underpants (well Slabbery Wummin’s actually) and instead substitute through some quirk and quark of quantum’s chaos theory, the magnificence of my green and white clad warriors with the hen toed, splay fitted, knock kneed infiltration of a feckin Homer Simpson-like bunch of comic actors.  

Aye! Nearly £20 I had coming back for a 3-1 win!  

TITS! 

But as I said a minor complaint. 

Anyway, let me repeat ‘Enough of this negative analytical nonsense’!  

So, what do I do now?  

Should I revert to “Pass it! Square it! Gie it back tae the keeper…jist don’t bleedin shoot”? 

Well all things considered, I think I’m gonnae stick with “Shoot!!! Jist effin shoot”; and not just for those outdated and seemingly discarded notions of Celtic’s ethos of attack, scoring just wan more than the opposition, me winning a bet and even in parallel supporting Peter Lawwell’s cunning plan to spill our just bought, bovrils/coffees/curry sauce all over our similarly just ‘bought for the weans’ new Celtic strip, scarf, flag, banner or programme, thus giving us the moral dilemma of having to either immediately replace the sustenance and weans taps (and add a few more wonga to the PLC coffers) or face the tantrums of said weans AND the subsequent dry cleaning cost….and let’s be honest here, Celtic merchandise does not fare well in the dry cleaning stakes, seemingly designed as it is to moult names, badges, numbers as soon as they smell the possibility of being cleaned. 

This to my way of analytical thinking is probably the reason that DM was shifted. His idea of making the merchandise more fan and washing machine proof thus reversing the wily schemes of PL and his crew was considered reckless and costly. 

(As an aside I hear from down Ibrox way that the new sort of pale lilac-ish shirts is, rather than a marketing man’s whizz idea, actually the result of washing last season’s garb(age) at the wrong temperature.  This disappointing outcome, – i.e. these colours DO run- has been compounded by a related shrinkage in the girth of the strips, thus giving the appearance that their players actually do have even bigger arses than they would- and are- (ab)normally.) 

Anyway, back to ‘hitting the bar’ – which for a fair percentage (99.33 recurring) of the match an equivalent percentage of the crowd would have been more than happy to do. (There was also the occasional sordid accusation that it looked as though some of the players had also been engaged in such recreation up till the early hours…as if!) 

No; though all the previous reasons that may seem logical, comprehensible and sufficiently Lawwellesque to merit consideration, I can tell you that the cry “Shoot!!! Jist effin shoot” is nothing less than a lifesaver along the lines of Astra Zenica or Pfizer (while not being quite as imaginative or feckin dangerous as the Trumpian suggestion of ingesting bleach…although that would be a very good tooth whitener that would gain amazing compliments as the mourners circled your open coffin!)  

Yes! A lifesaver indeed! 

I am a witness to the fact that every time we played wally wae the bar, the recovery from apparent torpor and catatonic seizure of all those around me rivalled the raising of Lazarus…and for the big guy in front of me wae the three super meal deals, the raising of the Titanic – thus saving the St Andrews Ambulance a ham-string tearing sprint with a defibrillator to resuscitate us from a comatose twilight existence of ‘who actually gives a feck anymore?”. 

And then, out of our seats, on our feet, heart pumping blood like an oil gusher, arms half raised, our eyes following the trajectory of the ball towards the postage stamps….….. and then the ball bounces aff the woodwork …again and again and a-feckin-gain….and we slump back to our seats …onto our pie and chips or pizza, and then trudge back down the vomitory like we’ve shat our pants and get replacement bovrils, coffees, curry sauces, whatever we sat in, along wae soddin scarves, feckin flags, bleedin banners and toddler’s taps…and the tills register another tenner, ring up another score score or more, and the directors’ box breaks into the Olympic sport of synchronised grinning, bright enough for them to order the dimming of the lights to save a few quid on the leccy bill or divert another couple of coppers to their dwindling bonus accounts. 

FFS!!!! 

I tell you, it’s just as well that I’m on here to talk about the positives. I’ll leave all the suspicions, character barbs, and utter disenchantment with the gravitational collapse of the Celtic Supernova to others with a far better grasp on the machinations of the business, managerial and fitba geniuses who tread the hallowed tiles of paradise…..I hope they …..STOP!…ENOUGH!  

Aye, anyway…. the positives. 

Just as a wee diversion before I reveal the potentially brilliant future that lies ahead, I was disturbed after the game (Hey you …I’m not “Always disturbed” for your information!)….as I was saying… I was disturbed after the game to get a call frae a pal in Cuba.  

He informs me that The Americanos running Guantanimo are playing today’s game continuously to Celtic inclined freedom fighters under their watch, in an attempt to get them to confess to all manner of horrendous crimes. 

Fortunately the UN is looking at it and has deemed that treatment as contrary to human rights and on a parallel with waterboarding. 

Anyway…the positives. 

Just a sec….Damn …the Slabbery Wummin has just said she is going out and needs her knickers.  

Got to go but back later. 

To be continued! 
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Above article from ESTADIO with Part Two on Thursday