Sometimes I read Charlie Nicholas with a kind of boiling anger that I know can’t be good for my blood pressure. On other days, like today, I read him with wry amusement because he’s so obviously wired to a different wavelength than the rest of us.
Fresh from talking sense the other week when he offered up a Team Of The Year which drove Sevconia to madness, he is back doing what he does best and it’s a kind of relief. Because if Nicholas starts to talk sense on a regular basis I think we need to check the alignment of the planets and stuff and make sure Earth is spinning on its normal axis.
Rest easy. Today’s update assures us that it is.
Charlie Nicholas is back in his comfort zone, which means we can relax in ours. He is, once more, in his own wee world, offering the manager of Celtic – who has not asked for it and never will – his advice. Bad advice.
Which sort of goes without saying, eah?
He thinks our squad is imbalanced.
Without knowing who Ange might be looking at or where he wants the new signings to play, he has suggestions of his own.
Amazing. Suggested signing targets, which he has shared with us all and wants to share with Ange.
Well, one signing target to be honest. Just one.
Cesc Fabregas, anyone?
34 years old and without a club at the moment.
Nicholas is adamant that we should do this. Although he wonders if we can afford the guy’s wages.
A possible stumbling block that one, right there, and only the first of them.
Has he watched Celtic?
Has he watched the high pressing, fast moving team we want to build?
Does he know what putting a static player in the middle of it all would do?
It would slow us down to a crawl. He talks about an imbalance; there’s your imbalance right there, building every move around a guy who, to be frank, simply won’t move that much.
This is typical of Nicholas, who has always had a fixation on “shiny things” and bling.
It’s led to some of his truly awful career choices.
I was amused to see him blaming Celtic for some of those last week, bleating that he was forced out of the club when he left the first time around, one of the most fascinating re-writes of history since the “rehabilitation” of Nixon.
His going had nothing, then, to do with the lure of English gold and becoming the highest paid player in Britain?
Nicholas doesn’t half talk some mince. It is good to see him back on form.
It means that we’re living in a world we understand again.
One where he plays the village idiot to perfection.
James
Spot on, funny how some of these ex-players of ours and now in the so called Scottish media (if you can call it that) are not really welcome at Celtic park