Really? He’s been fairly shite the last 5 years at least. Such a fall from grace where he used to be everywhere on tv ads etc, now look at him. 15k a week. Less than some of the PL kids
The unofficial official Celtic thread
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He was decent for City back in the day.
All those adverts etc ruined his game and his career. Went to his head. Joe Hart big balls etc. Then you have the England Iceland game...
He'll always be a legend for me after that job done tweet after Spurs lost 3 0 in Europa last season
.Might be a reasonably decent keeper in there somewhere.
For low wages maybe a risk worth taking for Celtic.
Aye, he's been past it for years. It smacks of Celtic pulling in the big name on a short-term deal to pacify the fans, as they've done in the past with Keane x 2, Ljungberg, Toure and Bellamy. None of which were that successful, but at least Desmond looked like the big man.
Washed up Premier League players aren't just a Celtic thing to be fair, as we've had a few over the years - Barton and Senderos - for example.
It's a disaster of a signing. Washed up on huge wages and a goalkeeper just won't address the glaring problems they have.
Na, it’s a bollocks signing, Hart’s been crap for years.
I rate Ange, was gutted when we replaced him here with Graham Arnold. Don't think he'll succeed at Celtics though, difficult place to manage atm and I don't see him being the type of manager to get pragmatic results. He will need time, which I don't think he'll get too much of.
Celtic are in a huge transition phase and are up against a strong Rangers team just now.
They should never have replaced Rodgers with Lennon and wasted a lot of time trying to recruit Howe.
Replacing Gordon with Barkas was a bad decision, Gordon would have been a much safer pair of hands last season.
They should never have replaced Rodgers with Lennon and wasted a lot of time trying to recruit Howe.
Replacing Gordon with Barkas was a bad decision, Gordon would have been a much safer pair of hands last season.
Joe Hart...
... So some people *still* don't realise that he can't dive to his left?
... So some people *still* don't realise that he can't dive to his left?
I think it’s great, after all of the gloating by Celtic fans for 10 years, that Rangers are currently comfortably the best team in Scotland. That said, aside from the rivalry I’m not sure what there is to motivate either club.
If the SPL was the only offering of football worldwide, I doubt I’d even watch the sport.
If the SPL was the only offering of football worldwide, I doubt I’d even watch the sport.
Good signing for Celtic. Its scottish football after all, ie. very poor in quality.
Id imagine the pain of the last 10 years is enough to motivate Rangers and start collecting as many domestic trophies for a while as well given Celtics double treble or whatever they won in the past decade has boosted their overall trophy numbers. (But thats directly linked to the rivalry in fairness).
Doing decent in Europe would probably be a factor as well Id guess and making sure the club is stable.
Keeping Gerrard will be key I feel and taking advantage of Celtics issues while they can.
Which is weird.
Motherwell v Hibs was on Sky on Sunday afternoon and it was a fantastic watch. 2-3 final score. Quality maybe not at an elite level but it was great entertainment on a Sunday afternoon.
Of course doesn't quite compare with Sky's 'Super Sunday' of Leeds v Burnley followed by Manchester United v Liverpool playing out a tantalising goalless affair.
Joe Hart and James McCarthy official.
Hart's kind of lost his way in recent years but if he gets back to his old form it could be an astute signing.
McCarthy will be an excellent signing provided he can stay fit.
Hart's kind of lost his way in recent years but if he gets back to his old form it could be an astute signing.
McCarthy will be an excellent signing provided he can stay fit.
What is this logic based on though? You know players in Scotland can smash a ball into the top/bottom corner as well as players in England can right? Goalkeeping is probably the one area where the quality of league is least relevant because if a keeper is crap or can't get down to a certain side (Hart famously struggles with shots low and left) then it doesn't really matter who is smashing the ball. He isn't saving it.
Which perfectly sums up why many of us around the world watch our local leagues. No one expects it to be Premier League standard ffs.
And if the snobbery that's directed at even the Bundesliga by people on here serves as a guide, then you can pretty much whittle down "elite level" to two leagues in the world and scrap the other 190. I mean what's the point of it even existing if it's not elite.
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It's been what, 5 years since Hart was at a decent level? And is Mccarthy not majorly injury prone?
Strikes me of a couple of good signings if it was 2014.
McCarthy hasn't been injured for a while and featured regularly for Palace.
35 games in 19-20 and 17 last season (don't think that was down to injury though, he just wasn't first choice). Definitely had an injury prone career but seems to be beyond him (for now).
Hart's issue is confidence. If he can get that back he'll be fine. He's 5 years younger than McGregor for example so it's not like he's just past it or anything. I think the way Pep handled things when he arrived shot his confidence and he's never been the same since. He certainly wouldn't have been my choice of keeper due to the past few years but he should at least be reliable enough unlike the current clowns we have.
Yeah spot on.
I actually often find the 'lower leagues' are way more entertaining to watch. At the very top level teams often just cancel each other out and you're left feeling underwhelmed.
Looks like both teams are useless
Mcarthy is a great signing for Celtic, Hart lets face it cant be as bad as Barkas!
Usual from the Celtic board, hope for the best in the CL qualifiers then once papped out go out and buy some players. They never learn.
Usual from the Celtic board, hope for the best in the CL qualifiers then once papped out go out and buy some players. They never learn.
The thing that kills scottish football, for me, is playing each other 4 times. I can't be doing with that.
The Celtic fans are planning a protest outside the main entrance on Sunday at 1pm before the Dundee game, against the board who ‘who don’t care, treat us with distain and don’t spend money’
Go bck this time last year, that big bad board that ‘doesn’t do anything for us and treats us like mugs
Kept our best players (Edouard and Ajer)
Signed a £5m Greek international goalie
Shane Duffy ( who everybody was ecstatic with)
A left back from AC Milan
Re signed Mo elynoussi
A striker from West Ham £5m
Right back - isreal internationalist
David turnbull 3m
Plus the 15 or so million this year
Didn’t work but a don’t see how anybody can say the board hasn’t backed us, quite the opposite, I would say Peter Lawwell was the best chief executive and Celtic is the best run club in Britain, one of the very few clubs to come out of covid in profit
Think how many players did Brendan sign? How many were good? biggest majority were signed bay Ronny, Yes Brendan made them better players 100% he did but he signed a lot of rubbish, lucky get 5 good players, great manager though. Wish we still had him.
Go bck this time last year, that big bad board that ‘doesn’t do anything for us and treats us like mugs
Kept our best players (Edouard and Ajer)
Signed a £5m Greek international goalie
Shane Duffy ( who everybody was ecstatic with)
A left back from AC Milan
Re signed Mo elynoussi
A striker from West Ham £5m
Right back - isreal internationalist
David turnbull 3m
Plus the 15 or so million this year
Didn’t work but a don’t see how anybody can say the board hasn’t backed us, quite the opposite, I would say Peter Lawwell was the best chief executive and Celtic is the best run club in Britain, one of the very few clubs to come out of covid in profit
Think how many players did Brendan sign? How many were good? biggest majority were signed bay Ronny, Yes Brendan made them better players 100% he did but he signed a lot of rubbish, lucky get 5 good players, great manager though. Wish we still had him.
Problem is you probably get 1 million for winning league but if you sell a player for over that and dont win it you could be more in profit than team that does,
Heard that about many players, Duffy was to stroll Scotland and went back looking like a pub player.
The game up here is alot faster than many people think and the intensity of the OF is greater than it is in most countries in the World.
People outside of Scotland dont realise how massive the Old Firm are. Give them the resources the PL teams get and watch them dwarf all but maybe 2/3.
Haha!
Peter Lawwell is the best chief executive in Britain? He was an absolute disaster for Celtic. The man that lost John McGinn and Ivan Toney because he wanted to haggle over peanuts. The man who brazenly admitted that Neil Lennon was always the ideal man to replace Brendan Rodgers and said something like 'there were loads of unopened CVs in the drawer but Neil was always the man'. Brilliant comments and a sure fire way to drum up interest from those same managers in a few years time when you need to sack Lennon because he's an unprofessional booze bag that literally wasn't even trusted to hire his own staff because they were his drinking partners instead of actual coaches. He was a brilliant businessman, no denying that.
Also, it helps to come out of things like COVID when you sell Kieran Tierney for 25 million and replace him with a guy from Kilmarnock for buttons who is so clearly out of his depth at Celtic.
That same board also called the fans "entitled yobs" last year for demanding Lennon be sacked when the league was still salvageable. Lennon oversaw a disaster in the previous seasons qualifying campaign when he lost to Cluj. The tactical genius kept our new 7 million CB on the bench, benched our new LB and played our best midfielder at LB for some random reason. A year later, we're in the same position, this time against Ferencvaros, what does he do? He starts with no strikers and instead plays another midfielder up front. We lose again. Of course. There's 60 million down the drain right away and it can be traced back to Peter's brilliant decision to replace Brendan Rodgers with an absolute clown like Lennon. But wait. There's more. Even after all of that, Lennon then oversaw a disastrous run, literally one of the all time worst in the history of the club, where we had no shots on target at home to rangers, lost 4-1 to Sparta Prague, Lennon then said that result would never happen again on his watch, and then we lost 4-1 to them again anyway a few weeks later. Lennon was then the man that oversaw our brilliant 3 or 4 year unbeaten cup run come to an end because he got outsmarted at home to bottom of the league Ross County in the League Cup. But the fans protesting against all of this were "entitled yobs" (a direct quote). Lennon was kept in post for another couple of months and more embarrassments despite all this.
Elhamed (the Israel internationalist) was rubbish and came from the same agent that we seem to use all the time (nothing fishy there, no sir).
A left back from AC Milan? Laxalt? A complete diddy. One of the worst full backs I've ever seen play for Celtic. Beaten only by Jonjoe Kenny who is undoubtedly the worst player I have ever seen at this club in my lifetime.
They kept Edouard and Ajer because no one wanted them. We still can't shift Edouard to this day.
Remember we rejected 14 million from Porto for Ntcham 2 years ago? We just released him from his contract a year early. Brilliant from the board again. The complete lack of forward thinking is comical.
We use Parks of Hamilton as our official coach. Owned by Douglas Park. Chairman of Rangers. That's how brilliant this board is. They directly line the pockets of the Rangers chairman.
The fans were let inside Celtic Park a few months back to put up flags and banners. This was in the midst of the latest clusterfeck in the middle east where loads of Palestinians had died. The fans put up Palestinian flags and a tribute to a Palestinian friend and Celtic supporter who had died weeks earlier and who had been invited over to Celtic Park many times by the Green Brigade and had even met Scott Brown. The board tore them down and got stuck in to the fans for it...
How about this season. We need a new manager in to rebuild the club after last seasons shambles. What do they do? They piss about letting a little chump like Eddie Howe lead them on for months and then they panic and go out and get a guy whose only ever managed in the Greek 3rd division, Australia and Japan. A complete lack of ambition and imagination. But then once they hire him what do they do? They fail to back him in the transfer market. For the umpteenth time they watched a decimated squad go into the CL qualifiers unprepared and only reacted with signings after we'd been predictably put out. We literally fielded a back line of Bain (terrible GK), Ralston (a hilariously out of his depth Scottish Championship level player), Stephen Welsh (a youth player thrown in because he was all we had), Dane Murray (an even younger youth player with zero experience) and Greg Taylor (the aforementioned Tierney replacement). None of them are good enough. Three of them are youth products who are only involved out of necessity due to the snails pace approach and lack of forward thinking within the Celtic boardroom.
Dermot Desmond literally said last season's Celtic side would beat the 2003 side that reached the UEFA Cup final and had guys like Larsson, Sutton, Hartson, Petrov et al. It's genuinely hard to explain how out of touch these losers are.
One of my personal favourites was them putting season tickets on sale this season before they'd even hired any manager. What club does that?
There's a reason you're so clearly in the minority within the support on this one.
Last week Celtic were down and out, not good enough, no chance of winning league etc. Fast forward, 2 losses on the spin for Rangers, player discontent with Morales, Kent looking a shadow of himself, tough game coming up v Malmo, and a couple of shrew signings by Celtic. Bit of pressure on Gerrard now. Still think they are favourites, but plenty of twists and turns in this one.
It's easy to say & impossible to prove but both Celtic & Rangers are poorly run clubs who would struggle in any competitive league. It's a big fish in a little pond syndrome !!
Totally disagree.
Both clubs with 150m a year (instead of the 2/3m they get now) would within 5 years be at the upper end of the table.
Back in the 90s Rangers were arguably the biggest club in the Uk.
What 90s? 1890s?
Honestly don't think Rangers were the biggest club in Scotland (let alone the UK) in the 1990s despite winning nearly every league.
Rangers went into administration & liquidated in 2012 & the Celtic board are infamous for all of their screw ups. Many clubs have thought they would prosper in the Premier League & many have failed. It's not about just cashing the cheques !!
Not sure how old you are, perhaps you are 1 of the fans that think football started with Sky in 93? Rangers were only 2nd to Man Utd in the early 90's for merchandise sales. They were 1 of the founding members of the Champions League. The Champions League logo is a ball with 8 stars, the 8 teams that were in the inaugural Champions League. Rangers is represented by 1 of those stars.
They beat the English League Champions Leeds Home & Away to reach that first ever Champions League, a cheating Marseille stopped them reaching the final. Think they had the 2nd biggest capacity in the UK at the time. They had a team with several England internationals in it including the goalkeeper & captain of England.
Then Sky happened & changed the landscape of the game forever, pumping billions into the English game & leaving most leagues behind.
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Has Joe Hart started a game for Celtic? If so hows he been doing?
Lefty Jacob specifically mentioned the 90s so we're talking about the 90s. Were talking about the Premier League beginning in 1992. Were talking about the birth of the modern Champions League.
United won the two European titles including the big one in the 90s. Chelsea won 1 and Arsenal to won 1.
As I said Rangers were destroying the league in the 90s but I'm not sure Celtic were smaller.. Henrik Larsson. International I feel like Celtic were much bigger. All that and people were already talking already about how the Scottish League was weaker than the English league.
So there is no way that Rangers were the biggest or second biggest team in the UK in the 90s. I don't know anyone that supported them back then other than one mate who was an Arsenal fan first.
But I don't even think they were all the biggest Scottish club. Lots of mates followed Celtic.
Does the 90's not include, 90, 91, 92, 93 etc?
Thinking Celtic were bigger in the 90's is laughable. They had average crowds of around 22k for half of the 90's, & were minutes from going under in 94, Fergus McCann rescuing them with minutes to spare. They won 1 league the full decade, & that was the league to stop 10 in a row.
Celtic had Larsson, he was absolutely brilliant, but Rangers had Gazza & Laudrup who were massive, not to mention guys like McCoist who won 2 European Golden boots in the early 90's.
Rangers were actually in a position to actually make an offer to try & buy R9 Ronaldo when he was leaving Barcelona. Imagine that nowadays.
Their new Japanese striker looks good.
Yeah fair enough, you make a good point about Gazza, Laudrup and McCoist. And R9. But it should be noted that upon their rebuild Celtic's average attendance jumped to 50-60k.
Regardless, Rangers were probably the biggest team in Scotland in the 90s. There is no way in hell they were bigger than Arsenal or United though. This is arguably peak United and peak Arsenal.
His movement inside the box is very clever.
Still early days, but I hope he keeps on going like that.
Certainly not bigger than Utd. Can almost split the 90's into 2 parts, the mid to late 90's you can really start to see the benefits of the Sky money spreading through English football, & then a gap starts to open then, which has just become wider & wider.
North of the border always have a inflated opinion of the worth of Rangers and Celtic. South of the border, we couldn't care less.