Iceland, Ignorance And Allan

Today’s Champions League draw sends us to Iceland.

The country, not the low cost supermarket.

The country won’t be happy with our impending visit. We’re the team their club champions most certainly did not want in the draw, although it’ll be a good occasion and a friendly atmosphere.

The supermarket, on the other hand, gets visits from Celtic fans all the time. It’s where some of us buy our jelly and ice cream.

Ronny Deila’s team will play the first match at home, on 14/15 July and the second leg will take place a week later.

We’ll be hoping to hit the ground running.

Just hearing the date of the game makes you realise just how short the close season actually is.

I, for one, am pretty pleased about that as I hate there being no football, but it’s equally clear that the club has a lot of work to do to make sure we’re ready for the later, tougher, qualifying rounds. Last season we lost two of them, of course.

We can only hope that things are better this time.

We lost Denayer but we brought in a replacement, but no-one imagines that we can afford to rest on our laurels there when we still only have one other major central defender – Virgil Van Dijk – who might not be hanging around.

That creates a little uncertainty, and going into major games I’d rather we didn’t have that.

Yet it’s better than a lot of uncertainty going into a hugely important season.

Over at Ibrox, just when you think you’ve seen it all … you haven’t seen a thing.

Danny Wilson was on his way there last week, with the “lure of Rangers” too much for him to resist.

Now that’s up in the air because they can’t agree terms.

Mark Warburton was talking about getting big money to build a team based on young, skilful players.

Now he’s scrambling about trying to sign John Eustace, who’s 35, on a free.

Warburton dropped an absolute bombshell the other day, but it’s not being reported as one in the media.

He told the hacks that he had not actually met, or even spoken to, Dave King.

The press are suggesting there’s nothing particularly wrong with that, that it’s normal for a club’s chairman to delegate the most important decision the club will have to make, the one that will decide their immediate future.

That stretches credulity to the snapping point.

There’s one reason and only one that explains why King didn’t meet Warburton.

He didn’t want to.

He didn’t want to have to sit across the table from a guy who’s going to want money and freedom to do what he wants with it, and make promises to him.

King knows how little latitude he has to make such promises, and so he’s positioned himself where he doesn’t have to make any.

This is also so he can plead ignorance – wilful ignorance – to the manager later on.

Finally, it’s a way of keeping him out of the firing line if this appointment goes wrong.

It’s sly. It’s sneaky.

It’s typical of Dodgy Dave King.

The media making excuses for this is pathetic, because it’s so obviously about covering King’s backside that I would be frankly astonished if there wasn’t a person in a newsroom anywhere in the country who wasn’t full aware of that.

They are cowards, pure and simple.

Which brings me back to Scott Allan, a subject we’ve covered here previously but which has reared its head again today.

Allan is reputedly a target for our club, but there’s also firm interest from Sevco too of course, and this is what makes myself and others suspicious.

Of all the areas of the team, the midfield at Celtic is the one with the least room in it for a new player.

Between Johansen, Brown, Biton, Henderson and Armstrong where is this guy going to get a game?

The middle of the park is one of the strongest areas of our side, and it needs this player like Scott Allan like John Brown needs a confirmed place at Oxford or Cambridge.

As I said previously, this story bears all the hallmarks of media spin designed to make it look as if Sevco have secured some kind of “victory” at our expense.

Allan is a decent footballer, and he will have options outside of Scotland.

He is certainly far too good a player to be plying his trade at Ibrox.

But the notion that Celtic are interested in him … doubtful at best.

This is going to be an interesting final fortnight of the close season.

I do not expect Scott Allan to be in Edinburgh at the end of it.

But I don’t expect him to be in Glasgow either.

I’ll be very surprised if this one comes off.

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