And so ends the season when some of the stupidest sports writers in all of football believed that the uppity Australian would be sent on his way and a Dutch manager who had reached a European final stood on the precipice of total domination. He didn’t last the season, and if the Aussie does depart it will because this season was such a triumph that an alleged super club was so impressed by him that they made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.
The season ends with a treble for Celtic. Another one, yes. It reminds me of my old man seeing Barcelona come out in the Champions League draw a few years back and sighing; another trip to the Nou Camp. Most football fans live their lives without ever being in the ground. I know people who were sick of the sight of the place. Will we get sick of trebles?
Not in this lifetime folks, and for those who take it for granted I say “don’t” because the struggle to get here was long and hard and during the 90’s especially it was an endurance exercise. I went seven seasons without seeing a trophy growing up, until Pierre Van Hooijdonk scored at Hampden in an otherwise forgettable final against Airdrie, and you could argue that the worst was still in front of us. I look back on the Aadvocaat treble as my darkest time as a Celtic fan because having climbed out of their shadow I didn’t know if we were entering another long spell of dominance.
It was built on sand, we know that now. EBT’s were in use and eventually they toppled that club like the proverbial house of cards, and what climbed out of the grave was a pale imitation of Rangers at best. Remember this and remember it well; we didn’t dominate in the years that their pitiful NewCo was clawing its way through the divisions. Oh we won things, but we saved the total ownage until they were right beside us in the top flight.
For one season only they basked in the sunny uplands, but on either side of their one moment of triumph is a a trophy haul which is without precedent in the history of the game here. We have secured our eight treble overall; at the start of 2000’s we were on two; these are our years, this is the scale of the victory which, in some ways, was inevitable hen the stadium was finished.
It’s all in front of us now; next season we may well overtake The Lie by torching the last thing they have left, their “status” – wholly appropriated from the dead, like Norman’s mother lording over the Bates Motel. Are we in the middle of Celtic’s greatest spell, or is this just the end of the beginning? Let me tell you; the media would love us to think it’s the beginning of the end.
But they thought that at the start of this campaign, and here we are. The manager might stay and he might go, but Celtic’s strength doesn’t lie in one man and it never has. Seven of our trebles were secured without his help; for the four we won on the bounce very few Celtic fans had even heard of the guy. When I write, with utter confidence, that we’ll be the team to beat next season its as true as it was when this one started and almost all of them wrote us off.
These people never get embarrassed being wrong, and one of the great things about days like today, as I sit here in a rocking Celtic pub putting the finishing touches to these initial thoughts, is that I know they’re gearing up to be wrong all over again.
I’ll write properly on this tomorrow folks, but for now I want to get drunk and celebrate the treble. I’ll catch you all in the morning, on the other side of the hangover.
I live in England and have occasionally been asked if, as a Celtic fan, it doesn’t get boring winning everything. My reply is that eventually it might, but while the usual suspects across the way are still banging on about WATP, up to their knees, 55 and all the rest, I will take the utmost pleasure getting it right up them!
CHEERS JAMES AND THANK YOU FOR ALL THE HARD WORK YOU PUT IN, APPRECIATED
HAIL! HAIL!
HAVE WAN FIR ME, SLAINTE
Hail! Hail! That’s why we are Celtic onwards and upgrading we never stop!.
Except for Lennon, God forbid, it doesn’t matter who the manager is next season.
We have an insurmountable inbuilt advantage which will carry on for the foreseeable future.
THEY are fucked in perpetuity.
So let it be said, so let it be written.
So the treble is now secured, a very difficult feat, but then again one that a Mr. N Lennon achieved. Yet every month of Ange’s reign has shown how much of a gap there is with his management capabilities compared to his predecessors.
I don’t have any insight on whether he will remain as Celtic manager for next season, but I hope he does. I don’t believe leaving after 2 years will reflect well on him, despite his outstanding record in Scotland. The test of European competition will highlight how much he has improved this club, and will put him on the radar of major clubs, if successful, which I believe he can be.
In my opinion, Spurs will be a wrong move for him at this stage, and another year at Celtic could cement his football reputation. He could then leave Celtic for an even bigger club, with everyone’s best wishes. If money motivates him more than football achievement then he’ll accept any offer from the London based club at this time, He may be successful, I’ll thank him for his 2 years at Celtic, however who knows how his future will play out.
We don’t know what conversations are happening behind the scenes with regard to budgets, contracts etc. and unfortunately with Desmond and Lawwell on the scene their track record does not bode well for an unwelcome embracing of mediocracy.
Having a hangover is not quite so bad, if the reason for it is the pure pleasure hat Celtic has given us this season and I look forward to many more hangovers in the future. It is now all over bar the shouting and we are all entitled to roar with pleasure and indeed also to gloat unreservedly until our heat’s content. To the victors go the spoils and I am now becoming a jelly and ice cream junkie, washed down by gallons of Guinness in my case. I hope the players and management team can now relax and wallow in their success for a wee while until the whole process restarts in the coming weeks, for they fully deserve that warm, satisfied, winning feeling.
My gratitude goes to everyone of them who continually make it possible and I thank them all from the bottom of my heart.
More of the same now please, from the team who make the extraordinary look ordinary, and remember that we never stop.
COYBIG
Spurs never stop sacking