Soccer Football - Scottish Premiership - Celtic v Heart of Midlothian - Celtic Park, Glasgow, Scotland, Britain - May 7, 2022 Celtic's Carl Starfelt in action with Hearts' Josh Ginnelly Action Images via Reuters/Carl Recine
You have to get our media credit. When they get it wrong they do it better than virtually anybody. How many of them have spent the past few months telling us that Carl Starfelt just wasn’t up to much, that he was too dangerous to have on the pitch? It seems that the professional scouts of Celta Vigo disagree, as do those from clubs across Europe.
Because Carl Starfelt was a wanted man.
But how can that be so? How can he possibly have been a wanted man when he was a “bombscare player” as Hugh Keevins called him? How can Starfelt possible be considered good enough for one of the top leagues in Europe when we were told that he might be a player who cost us the league title right here in Scotland?
The media in this country never holds itself to account.
Very few of its writers are prepared to admit it when they get something wrong. They flap and obfuscate, or they simply ignore their mistakes and hope that the rest of us will forget they ever made them. Except that some of them aren’t mistakes, of course, but a very deliberate strategy to undermine Celtic.
They have, for example, a habit of insisting that Ibrox flops just ned time to settle in whilst demanding that Celtic players do so immediately. They have wrecked the Celtic careers of at least two players in recent years; Bolingoli and Barkas.
I know some of our fans were unconvinced by these guys, but what they were subjected to by our media was absolutely appalling, and having done it two seasons in a row they were determined to do it for a third.
Starfelt was the one member of the Ange Postecoglou side which they thought they could easily undermine, and they believed that turning on him would get the fans to do the same. And some of them did. But the bloggers as a whole, we can take a good deal of credit, I think, from not falling into that trap and for defending big Carl and having his back.
He rewarded us by forming an excellent partnership with Cameron Carter Vickers, and I am sad to see him go. Still, some in the media only want to highlight his mistakes; I’ve seen defenders in top flight leagues, including the one south of the border, who were much more prone to serious errors than he was. One of them, Harry Maguire, is a regular for England.
Big Carl is considered, by professionals, to be good enough to play in La Liga.
This must stump those who didn’t see a player there, but all it does is reveals their ignorance. I am pleased for him, but not for us as we now have to replace the big man.
But he leaves Celtic with the good wishes of every fan, and if he’s laughing like Hell over some of his early coverage at the hands of our hacks, well I don’t blame him for that one bit.
This is the problem some of our fans pay & believe the Scottish press, all of which don’t have a clue what’s happening at Celtic Park, from new players coming in , to those that may be leaving,
I don’t believe the Scottish Press MEM, and I never will, but I do believe my own eyes which have been telling me from day one that he is not good enough for Celtic. I hope we recovered our outlay on him for that would certainly be a result.
Celta Vigo might rate him just as Ajax rated big Shirley.
Good luck to him just the same.
“Solidity, reliability & strength to reinforce Celta’s defence” as Vigo’s website proudly proclaims. Anyone in the SMSM looking for an expensively-sourced centre back who is a “bomb-scare” should look at Ben Davies rather than Starfelt. He wasn’t absolute top-drawer but neither is he Loovens, Compper, Duffy or some of the other ‘sub-optimal’ signings we’ve made in central defence over the years. Spain will be the making of him and he won’t have to head the ball 200 times per match like he does in Scotland, which I’m sure will be a relief to him because it’s not the strongest part of his game. Good luck Carl – tell Jacynta we’re all missing her!
What was the fee we got for him.
There was a lot of hysteria over Starfelt. He had weaknesses, errors in distribution and not great in the air. But he was playing on the wrong side and had Greg Taylor on the other side of him. Carl Starfelt is quick and that is unusual in a player in that price bracket.
James
You are right and good luck to Carl.
Some idiot the evening times having a go to calculating the time and the number of miles Carl will take to fly to Jacynta…etc etc ……
HH
It’s a one hour flight so it would take him longer to get across London.
Still think to many within our own support was a bigger factor than the eejits within the Scottish media James.
Carl struggled to be fully accepted within our own support which is baffling when you take into account how much he contributed to our success.
Taylor as a player will totally miss Carl, yet will Taylor face the same amount of criterism?
Done a marvellous job for ourselves, yet to many still like a scapegoat within our support?
Going forward now, I hope we can get a replacement with the same strong defensive attributes that Carl provided, especially aireal, yet an improvement upon the use of ball would be welcome also.
Leaves with full backing from myself anyway and thankful for what he provided to our success, and will the partnership record he had with CCV ever be bettered?
Doubtful, yet I wonder who will become our scapegoat this season?
Usually our support starts it and the media are only to happy to oblige
Hugh Sleekit is a demented bamstick who knows nothing about football and never has.
He would never have got the gig in any other country.
Carl Starfelt will be difficult to replace and I wonder about the wisdom of selling him.
Good luck Carl. I don’t know if you watched that other team last night? I did for research and they were not that good to say the least. Tick Tock is managing to put his foot in and hands up in midair down to a fine art, one diver of to Turkey and a new one pop’s up lol . What Neil McCann said at half time left me flabbergasted. When the striker was waiting to score their penalty against his beloved team. Butland and him touched heads, that little horrible **** said it Butland would have went down the referee would have had a decision to make, WOW, he was asking him to do a Kyle laugh at me . Their cheerleaders show no shame.
1) Extracted from above:
“The media in this country never holds itself to account.
Very few of its writers are prepared to admit it when they get something wrong.”
2) Extracted from The Daily Star today, [don’t judge – for research purposes only!]
This was at the footer of a footy-related article:
“This article was crafted with the help of AI tools, which speed up Dailystar.co.uk’s editorial research. A content editor reviewed this content before it was published.
You can report any errors to readercomplaints@reachplc.com”
With The DR circulation plummeting towards the 50K mark,
[along with all the other declining print media titles],
will AI now be replacing our pitiful SMSM copy/pasters, posing as writers…?
And just need to train monkeys to review the AI-retrieved content – before posting?
🙂