SENTINELCELTS

Morning,all.

I had intended that today’s article would deal with the possibility of a long-overdue upgrade to facilities in The Main Stand, but there are a number of reasons why I’ve decided against that in the meantime. 

Firstly, let me be clear that I am talking about an upgrade to facilities, and not a major rebuild of that relic of a bygone era. The cost of such an event would be prohibitive, and we no longer live in the days of zero-interest rate charges. The Return On Investment on this would be minimal and long-term before turning a profit, and that’s before we even consider the logistics of moving over 8000 supporters into an already sold-out venue. Or the loss of revenue in so doing of around £10m pa. 

Additionally, the lower height of the existing facility actually affords the playing surface more hours of direct sunlight, something that is already at a premium in Scotland. We could end up with an 80,000 seat facility to watch a mudbath reminiscent of The Baseball Ground in its 1970s heyday, and watching on MOTD is as close as I ever want to get to that. And that’s before we even think about the mess we seem to be making of the much smaller scale redevelopment at Barrowfield. 

No,we are likely to be stuck for some time with the anomaly that our Main Stand is actually our minor stand, holding as it does only around one in eight of the fans in attendance. But there is no reason why the facilities in the old place should be stuck in the 70s when it was last upgraded. Indeed, those facilities would shame even that era, and the addition of running hot and cold water in the toilets shouldn’t even need to be requested. You can bet it will be the subject of questions from the floor at today’s AGM. It always is,but it shouldn’t need to be. 

Not should the question of our Hampden allocations need to be addressed there, but it most certainly does. No club plays more often in the SFA/SPFL showpiece games than Celtic, but no club grants its rank and file fans such a low percentage of their ticket allocation either. Where do the rest of the tickets go? Well, we all know the answer to that one, for the club makes no secret of it. Every such game is soon followed by an advert via club media and mailing lists telling us that for the princely sum of around £350 we can have a guaranteed ticket for the match, no ballots required! That the ticket itself has a face value of around £40 isn’t mentioned, but hey-you get a couple of pints and a pie as well. Honestly, it’s The Sale Of The Century!!!

To more mundane things like the football itself, and these are the things that really matter to us. The monthly interruptions for international football that we see every autumn are over until spring. The September one came when we were on a roll, as did the recent one now completed, but there is little doubt that we needed the break afforded us by their equivalent in October. We now go on a run of playing every weekend and midweek until the beginning of February. There is actually a free midweek scheduled for a week before Christmas, but I suspect we will use that for one of our league fixtures which were cancelled due to League Cup obligations. 

That’s a lot of football. It puts a big strain on finances for those fans in attendance either side of the festive season, and it puts a big strain on our players too. That is why we have invested decent money in the squad, and it is why BR gave a chance to so many of our fringe players over the past two months. That risk may have met with little obvious success, given that the players struggled to adapt, but they have had those starts, they have had that game time (including appearances from the bench.) They will have had some of that match-rustiness worn away, and will hopefully be more capable of taking the step up when required to do so again. 

The next two months will see us conclude our League Cup campaign-hopefully with a victory against TFOD-and begin our defence of The Scottish Cup. We will play our last four matches in the group stages of The Champions League,with hopefully enough of a return that we will later be playing in the knockout stages too. But as always, our top priority is the league title. We haven’t yet managed to burst clear of our nearest rivals, who are tenaciously matching us step for step. I congratulate them for their challenge, for few would have forecast it in July. But while it is time to stop congratulating them and put some distance between the two clubs, we can’t really do much when they continue to beat every other side, just as we do-the bastards! 

Tomorrow sees us commence our attack on four fronts with the most important one. At the always hostile Tynecastle, and at the ungodly hour of 745pm on a Saturday night. I’ll spare you the match preview as my partner in crime will already be preparing that for tomorrow. Suffice to say that Hearts, as ever, will not make it easy for us. Just as Aberdeen have refused to do all season. There are a lot of games between now and the start of February, spread over four different trophies, and we have to treat each one as important as the rest. There are no gimmes to be had, and each game will have to be won on the pitch. 

Bring it on!

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Above article by BMCUWP