Just when you think it couldn’t get any worse; our club is teaming up with the one from Ibrox in an effort to bribe cash-strapped clubs with a modest sum of money so we can get colt teams into the lower leagues from next season.
Well, the saying in politics is that you never let a crisis go to waste.
This Ibrox-led scheme clearly shows that neither Glasgow club has any intention of letting this one pass without trying to find something in it for themselves. And this is what they’ve come up with.
Where even to start with how stupid this idea is?
Back in 2018, this blog slammed a similar proposal, put forward by both clubs, as something reeking of Old Firm Inc.
In June last year, this blog slammed the same proposal and the assertion, promoted by the likes of Barry Ferguson, that it would improve our youth players; I don’t believe that it would.
It would, in fact, slow their development which should be based around skills and technique, and throw them into a battle zone.
This is like a hydra; this idea simply refuses to die.
Every time you chop off its head another one grows in its place.
The fascination with it just won’t quit, and this latest incarnation is even more ridiculous because at a time when football in Scotland is creaking under the weight of too many clubs fighting for too few resources, the Ibrox proposal is to expand the lower leagues and introduce not only the two colt teams but four from the Highland leagues as well, giving us a bottom tier of 16.
Figure that one out if you can.
Whilst many of us still harbour doubts that all of our current senior clubs are going to make it out of this crisis in one piece, Stewart Robertson of Ibrox wants to raise four more to the professional game.
Do you ever get the impression that these Peepul aren’t playing with a full deck?
That their refusal to embrace reality is all-encompassing?
Clubs have to vote for this madness of course, and Ibrox believes that with a modest bribe that would total about £1 million split between their club and ours, they can swing opinion behind this madness.
The SFA and SPFL are said to be “sceptical” that it can win the needed support.
Haha that’s one way to put it.
The boardrooms at Celtic Park and Ibrox believe that because it’s been promoted as a form of league reconstruction – which clubs oppose – that the best way to do it is to start at the bottom … so our youth players wouldn’t just be playing blood and thunder football but our opponents wouldn’t even be professional players but shop workers, car mechanics, factory staff, police officers, teachers … in other words, people who play football as a second job, not their first one.
And this is supposed to make them better footballers; muddy Highland pitches and games against part-time players. It’s another example of Celtic looking at things in entirely the wrong way.
I don’t know if the motive here is financial; I don’t know if someone at Parkhead thinks this could be a money spinner for us, but I know it will not help our young players develop the skills needed to become first team capable, so it’s a proposal with no merit whatsoever.
Obviously the fact we’ve teamed up with the board at Ibrox for this isn’t any better.
I don’t know what they think they are going to gain from this either, although long punts up the park and physical battles for the ball are certainly more suited to their style of play.
Added to that that the youth academy at Ibrox hasn’t produced a first team player for them in eons and maybe this represents a kind of last throw of the dice for their club on that front.
But it’s just like us at the moment, at a time when the club already seems painfully and shockingly out of touch with our views that they’ve once again come away looking like Old Firm Inc. to push a dodgy proposal like this, which is doomed to failure anyway as even in the current form it will never muster enough votes for approval and especially not right now …
I mean even the timing of trying something like this at the moment makes you wonder what planet folk are on.
Our club does not have a strategic plan for the future.
It has agreed to back this idea, with money as well, without thinking properly about the possible pitfalls of it.
No technical director at any decent sized club would ever contemplate throwing its youth players into a meat-grinder in this way. I can’t even overstate how absolutely ridiculous it is.
It’s another proof that big, big changes are needed at Celtic Park.
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