You’ve got to love our media, haven’t you? They are absolutely determined to try to turn Jota’s injury into some Armageddon-style event. Is it a blow that he’s going to miss the last four league games of the season?
Yeah. And if there was anything still at stake in the league, it would be a major blow. Is it disappointing that he’s going to miss the Scottish Cup Final? Absolutely. Of course it is. That is a major blow — except for the fact that Forrest is fit again and raring to go, and Adam Idah is in such good form.
But the media can’t help itself, dreaming up the worst-case scenarios, which is why you’re reading stuff this morning about how our Champions League qualifier is under threat and people at Celtic are supposedly terrified that he won’t be around for the start of next season.
Honest to God, these people want to get a grip.
This season isn’t even finished yet. Even if it turns out this is an injury that puts him out for a couple of months, the next campaign is four months away. This would have to be some injury to keep him out that long.
This is a squad with real resilience and, more importantly, it’s a squad. It’s not just a small group of players who are critical to the functioning of the machine. The machine is built out of quality parts — and quality spare parts are there for any scenario where we have to take one out and put another one in. That’s what squad building looks like. That’s why you build a squad of 20-odd players.
By the time the summer comes around, I fully expect that Celtic will be putting into motion a big transfer plan. Now, whether that plan involves signing a striker or, as Rodgers has suggested, going out and signing a wide man, it’s not going to matter — because right there is your guy to replace Jota in the short term, and a guy who will enhance the squad overall in the long term.
If we sign the wide player, he gets his chance to show us what he can do without having Jota hovering over him. If we sign the striker, then we move Maeda out wide left for a little while, as we’ve done so many times. Either way, problem solved — short-term problem, anyway. And the squad will have its enhancement ready for when Jota comes back. There really is nothing to panic about here, either way.
Didn’t we hear that Schmeichel would be out for the season? He’s on the way back and will probably be fit enough to play during the next couple of games; he’s very much in contention to play at Hampden.
So I’m taking all of this hysterical stuff with a pinch of salt. It is typical of a media that, right now, is just looking for any kind of negative it can throw, any kind of cloud it can cast over us. It is what it does.
How fortunate they are that something like this has happened, to give them a chance to make their negative narrative. Across the city, things aren’t going quite so well. Maybe you’ve heard about it? There are one or two unanswered questions at their club, and one or two doubts — not only about the future of the players, but about the future of the manager and a bunch of other things besides.
Marry that to the fact that we’ve just completed our fourth title in a row and are on the way to another treble, and you can understand why there are people in the media looking for anything they can use to suggest we might be in a bit of bother. It’s not true. We are well-resourced, and going into next season we should be even more well-resourced. If our club has any brains at all, there will be planning and hard work well underway, as I said in the article earlier today.
When the player has his proper scans and there’s proper analysis done, we’ll know what the extent of the injury is, and we’ll deal with it, whatever that may be. As long as it’s not a career-ender, there’s no real harm being done here. Our boy will be back soon enough. Soon enough that this injury won’t matter at all.
Obviously, we wouldn’t want to see him miss the last games of this campaign. Obviously, we’d want him fit for the cup final. It’s one of those things. These injuries happen from time to time. It’s all about how well your squad can cope with them. And we know that ours can.
That’s why I’m sure that although people at the club are watching this situation and are a little disappointed, nobody is bracing for a disaster.
Honestly – The Scummy Scottish Football Media are truly the scum of the earth…
So is any Celtic supporter ? That would buy their fuckin rags –
Sometimes unpalatable truths are better than comforting lies…
Any true Celtic supporters can find their evil lies about our beloved club on here for FREE !
What if no Celtic fan including you James bothered, read or listened to any outside media?
Would it make any difference to us and we could just discuss our thoughts about Celtic.
it makes a lot of difference when we call them out for their lies although with the likes of inaction radar as long as he is getting paid he has no shame but their day is coming just be patient.
We were better off without Jota than with Jota. I’m a Jota fan BTW but stats back up my words
So if we’re without him to start with, then we’ll be better off.
Yeah DR, go fuck your mother’s cunt
Their club of choice can’t beat us over a season to a an entertaining style of football or to a title, a double or a treble. Only thing left for them is to try to beat us up with a season’s worth of verbal and grammatical diaahroea trying to throw disparaging lies on our successes and their desperate bottom dredging of choice words like tedious.
How they’d love to be called that if they could just win something.
Having failed with that and accepting the normality of failure they’re having to look ahead and describe the injury to Jota, and they hope next season as throwing us into chaos, something they’re well familiar with.
My only fear about next weekend is Ferguson trying to inflict his version of football onto them by trying to inflict further injuries on our Bhoys to aid Aberdeen to do what they themselves can’t do.
We are the Champions HH
james dont know if you have read this on celtic news rumours page click on to the celtic way and the celts are here site both are saying we are now level on 55 with the other mob who on earth gave the go ahead for this ?. i have tried to e mail them with not much success telling them to hang their heads in shame . i hope they read your blogs.
Scousebhoy, they are always going to repeat the double history lie and there’s not a lot we can do about it. However, even with that scenario, they are not equal because they actually shared one of their early titles with Dumbarton and I reckon that should only count as a half. 🙂
aye thats the gutless media but this is two so called celtic sites ? i hope they read this blog.
Yes, I agree, they should not be giving it any credence.
Plenty more tae come as well, between now and the cup final. Can also expect the usual efforts tae unstable our best players and manager. With the usual ‘according to’ this one, or that one, transfer interests. Especially Maeda. Any angle they can sniff out. They masquerade as ‘impartial’ journos. They’re a predictable joke.
Obviously I hope Jota isn’t too seriously injured because we are still an improving team and Jota is one of the guys guys who would benefit most from a good preseason. Having said that, I was surprised that Idah didn’t start on Saturday and have zero concerns about him playing the remaining games, I’m sure he’ll score plenty. As always, we need to strengthen the starting 11 but it’s getting harder I think, unless we sell, it’ll have to be a very good player to walk straight into the starting 11. Whose position do you target? Scales again? We probably have too many CB’s on the books. There’s areas of the squad we can improve on, this fabled ball-winning midfielder? A LW to challenge Jota and maybe an upgrade on Ralston. It’s pretty strong and if we can keep the team together then there’s no reason next season won’t be even better. If BR starts a rebuild this summer then maybe he’ll sign a new deal but I think next season will be his last and the new guy will have a massive rebuild to do. I’m not worried, it’s exciting.