Watching Celtic stumble to another defeat in Europe this week wasn’t as traumatic as one would expect. Roma was quite obviously the better side but we do tend to help such teams by some chronic defending. Fans around me in the north stand were of the opinion that the team is in transition and Europe is something of a bridge too far this season. One even suggested that, painful as it was, the failure to beat Kairat Almaty in the Champions League play off might have been a blessing in disguise as it probably saved us from watching the team take some even more comprehensive beatings. Although we would have faced the likes of Real Madrid, Inter Milan, Arsenal and Sporting CP, I tend to think you take your chances and the money going in the UCL and give it your best shot. Some of the fans around me were more concerned with domestic matters this season and continuing an almost unparallelled period of domestic domination. One remarked, ‘with our injury list and the way we’ve been playing, it’s some going to be just 3 points behind Hearts.’ Personally, I still think Hearts will be coming down with the Christmas decorations and will finish third this season but I’ve been wrong before. Having said that, they’ll never have a better opportunity of catching both the big Glasgow clubs in such mediocre form and ending a 40 year wait for someone out-with the Glasgow duopoly winning the title. I simply can’t see Celtic being so disjointed for the rest of the season and remain confident the Hoops will be there when the finishing line approaches in May. Wilfried Nancy has had something of a baptism of fire in the Celtic hot seat. We praised Martin O’Neill for coming through a very demanding week of St Mirren (away) Feyenoord (away) and Hibs (Away) and winning all three games. Nancy had Hearts and Roma at Celtic Park for starters and chose to tinker with the team’s shape for those important games. Hearts fans were obviously delighted to win the match but in retrospect only poor finishing from Maeda and Engels stopped Celtic from taking something from the game. Talk by some media pundits of Hearts ‘schooling’ Celtic was simply nonsense. They have clearly improved under McInnes and are a dangerous side, but they rode their luck against a Celtic side playing well below par. Nancy now faces that rugged and physical St Mirren side in the League Cup Final on Sunday. The Saints will only be encouraged by Celtic’s form but the bigger pitch at Hampden will make it more difficult for them to deny Celtic space. They will have had 8 days to prepare for the cup final, having not kicked a ball since they beat Dundee United 2-0 a week ago. They will be fresh and have had ample time to practice their game plan so Celtic are going to have to earn it the hard way on Sunday. The last three games between the clubs have been very close so Celtic will need to step up and play. There’s a lot riding on the result of Sunday’s league cup final. Wilfried Nancy needs to convince the fans he is the right man to develop Celtic. The Celtic hierarchy need a positive result to lighten the mood around them and the club. The team needs the confidence boost being winners will give them and reignite their season. There is no room for hiding or empty shirts on cup final day. The Celtic fans will play their part at Hampden as they always do. Most of us wish the support was united and in harmony with the club but as you all know there are factions who seem distracted by the ongoing dispute with the board. I’m not sure to what extent the wider support is behind them on this. We all realise the board made a complete hash of the summer transfer window and have allowed players in key positions to leave without adequate replacements being brought in. They failed to communicate adequately with the fans just what was going on and when the deal for the long sought after striker, Kasper Dolberg, collapsed and he joined Ajax, it led to a desperate scramble to bring in players in the dying days of the transfer window. It was obvious the squad started the season weaker, especially in forward areas, and when the injuries piled up, form tailed off. The 56,188 fans who paid to watch Celtic take on Roma this week are no fools. They can see that the side who took Bayern Munich all the way in the Champions League last season has been stripped of players who contributed over 50 goals that season (Kuhn, Idah & Kyogo) and that they weren’t replaced with like for like quality. We know the Scottish league isn’t an easy place to entice good players to come too, but the club has the finances to attract certain targets and let them know that in time they’d let them go should a bigger league come calling. Fans were right to express disquiet at the decline in the standard of the team and the lack of communication from the board to explain just what was going on. The march of supporters from St Mary’s church to the stadium for the Hearts game attracted a decent crowd and there were banners displayed at the stadium protesting the board’s failings. Any parallels drawn between the situation now and what occurred in the early 1990s are facile and wide of the mark. Celtic was facing insolvency in 1993-94, the stadium was crumbling and the team ill equipped to take on free spending Rangers. Today the side is dominant, finances strong and only the perceived poor performance in identifying and signing good players to strengthen the side is holding Celtic back on the field. Off the field, the ongoing dispute with sections of the support rumbles on. The Celtic Collective, an umbrella title used to represent a considerable number of fans has raised concerns about board incompetence, the banning of the Green Brigade, dropping standards on the field, a poor match day experience, ticketing prices, the ageing stadium and poor communication with fans. There may be some truth in all of this, but there are those who point to 42 trophies won in 25 years, a healthy financial position and a board duty bound to respond to local authority safety guidelines on behaviour in football grounds. My take on this is that the fans are nowhere near as united behind the ‘rebels’ as they were in the 1990s when the old board almost led Celtic into administration. There are many who see faults on both sides and wish they’d sort things out and we can get back to being a united support, focusing on backing our team for 90 minutes and not being distracted by off field issues. As Henry Ford said ‘Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.’ We all want the same thing so sit down and sort it out and let’s get back to helping our club be all it can be. Disunited we can do so little; united we can do so much.
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