GLASGOW, SCOTLAND - JULY 19: Celtic player Daizen Maeda is challenged by Kieran Trippier of Newcastle during the pre-season friendly match between Celtic and Newcastle United at Celtic Park on July 19, 2025 in Glasgow, Scotland. (Photo by Stu Forster/Getty Images)
There’s a moment at the start of Trainspotting – the novel, not the film – when Mark Renton is reminiscing about his brother, who was killed whilst serving in the army. Renton’s thoughts are muddled.
He doesn’t believe his brother died for any noble reason, and ultimately sees him as having been a bit of a fool. When he’s thinking back on his brother’s life, there’s one incident that stands out, where he felt colossally let down.
He’d been beaten up by another kid and went to his brother for help. Billy showed up to sort it — and got roundly battered himself. Renton didn’t just suffer his own humiliation, but what he called “humiliation by proxy.” I’ve always found that a very funny concept. It’s one of those things that’s stuck with me over the years — but never more clearly than it did yesterday.
Because what we saw yesterday was a textbook case of humiliation by proxy.
There were Newcastle fans crammed into Ibrox bars, confidently telling the home support that we were going to get our arses handed to us. The home crowd, of course, lapped it up. After all, we’re a team that’s supposedly in a tight spot, not doing much in the transfer market, with last season’s signings all flops — hadn’t you heard? Strange, then, that we secured the title with such a big winning margin.
Still, that kind of misplaced arrogance seemed to infect a lot of the Newcastle fans who came up from down south to watch their team. It was mana from heaven for the club across the city, who no doubt assured them we weren’t all that — that five past us was more or less inevitable.
And then the game actually happened.
And suddenly, nobody was talking that way anymore.
Because it didn’t go to plan.
We didn’t just beat them — we beat them comfortably. We put a Premier League side firmly in their place. And funnily enough, we did the same last summer, when arrogant assumptions from City and Chelsea were silenced by a free-flowing, fantastic Celtic side — which then went on to win its opening fixtures at a canter. From that point on, the season never really looked back.
There are two questions I keep coming back to when I think about this.
First, when is the club across the city going to get over its inferiority complex? They’re forever trying to make friends they think can come and batter the big team across the street. They’ve rolled out the red carpet for dozens of these clubs over the years, and it nearly always ends the same way.
What they don’t understand is that only a certain kind of fan — and by extension, a certain kind of club — buys into that delusional garbage.
Only a certain type swallows that nonsense, regurgitates it, and actually believes the fantasy world they’ve created in their heads.
You don’t get fans of top clubs piling into the Borstal Bar. Why would they? We in the Celtic fan community don’t call it that for nothing. I’ve heard Newcastle described as a “sleeping giant.” If they are, they’re still very much in a coma — and a League Cup doesn’t make you a big club. Brendan’s got an FA Cup from his time at Leicester — and he didn’t need an oil sheikh’s money to do it.
And secondly, when are English fans going to stop embarrassing themselves by cosying up for the day with that deranged mob across town? What exactly do Newcastle’s working-class fans have in common with the clown car inhabitants of Ibrox? It doesn’t matter who owns that club. It doesn’t matter how they try to transform that support.
They will always be the brain-dead, knuckle-dragging detritus of crown and flag. What the hell does Newcastle have to do with that?
Look at the Brexit vote. Newcastle itself narrowly voted to remain. But Middlesbrough, North Tyneside, and the surrounding areas voted overwhelmingly to leave. Some of these same people voted Tory last time, and I’m sure Reform is doing just fine in those places now.
It all goes to show that the talk of “community” and being a “one-club city” is great until billionaires start flashing their cash. Suddenly, it doesn’t matter that the club is supposed to belong to the fans. Apparently, an anti-immigrant agenda is perfectly valid — unless the immigrants are oil-rich and throwing £100k-a-week at some overpriced striker.
When you strip it down to its constituent parts like that, maybe it’s not such a surprise that so many of their fans were in the Borstal yesterday, setting off flares on the roof. Which brings me back to Renton and his brother. To the idea that the boys from Ibrox were going to send their big cousin from Geordieland to sort us out — only to suffer that same humiliation by proxy.
And here’s what makes me laugh the most: the thought of some of those lads heading back to the pub after the match — only to be met with sullen looks, muttered grumblings, and the dawning realisation that they’d been played.
Maybe – and this is what I hope for – they were savvy enough to recognise that this was an alliance of convenience and that they didn’t need to maintain the façade. I hope there were even the odd comments about how good we actually were. That we could hold our own in England. That anyone up here who thinks they’re laying a glove on us this season is living in a fantasy land.
That would be a fitting end to the whole sorry affair — and, at the very least, an honest one. Another humiliation by proxy for the home crowd to handle.
Hatred of us is the only glue keeping them together. Once that goes they would realise how bang average they are as a football team and even the Marx Brothers would run them better financially.
Agree with what you are saying but the other mob didn’t need another team to come and give us a licking, we have not beat them in last few games. That’s why I was so pissed about it at the time
Good article James, and I did have a chuckle at the analogy !
As I’ve previously mentioned on several occasions, I have no real interest in the Ibrokes club or who their fans may try and cosy up to.
It is common practice to revel in your “biggest” rivals’ misfortune, and that is why we’ve had so many laughs at their expense for many years.
Their jealousy and envy of our club’s success is always apparent and the more toxic/obtuse amongst their ranks, always refer back to the Celtic Boys club cases, as if that is their trump card!!!
The only danger to our continued success and growth here at home and in Europe, is if those within our club entertain a myopic approach!
Let the haters hate, let the deluded keep on taking their capsules and let their envy of us continue !
Our club is strong and should never lose that strength! HH
Ha Ha – I loved the anology of The Borstal Bar Gerry…
Even calling it The Bristol Bar is very apt given the big saggy tits (Bristol’s) of the fat Sevco Bitchetts hanging on the bar shelf and as for the male clientele that frequent it – Well they are just utter tits full stop !
Lol
Travelling to Celtic Park by train yesterday, I was astonished at the number of “Newcastle fans” who got on at Hamilton, Blantyre, Newton and Cambuslang. A good number of these had local, not Geordie, accents and I suspect they were supporters of a different, thirteen-year-old club. Did these people get tickets direct from Celtic? If so, how did Celtic let that happen? However, the genuine Novocastrians were no less to blame for the vile chants we heard. Before yesterday, I despised NUFC’s owners: I now know that their supporters are equally as vile.
Below is copied from the NUFC blog:
I was embarrassed by some of the behaviour of our fans on Saturday. I’ve reported the individuals to the club, and hopefully, they will receive long (hopefully lifelong) banning orders as it’s just not on. We have many different nationalities and religions in our squad, yet you think it’s okay to direct that sort of language at the Celtic players? Morons, the whole contemptible lot of you, and if you had a brain cell amongst you, you should feel shame, and it’s not banter in the slightest.
Also, give the IRA chants a rest lads – it’s perfectly okay for others to have different religious beliefs than you.
Yesterday for the first time since The Scottish Cup Final I dipped ma wick into Wallow Wallow for a look…
Of course they had a thread on Celtic v Newcastle United and of course before the match it was “the Geordieland are in Oswalds and they ‘pure love ra rainjurz’ (sic)” and they and ‘we’ reckon they’ll hammer ‘ra green and grey’ by five or six…
Aye well – As The old song goes… “You don’t always get what you want” !
But more disturbingly… They hoped, they preyed, that Newcastle United fans would set upon Celtic supporters anywhere in Glasgow after the game, as the night went on they heard no reports of what they spunked themselves up for, no trouble, no strife, just naturally disappointed Geordies heading home from seeing their best team in 70 years being battered on the field of play by The Champions of what they’ll see as a backwater league…
Still it went on – ‘Fuck it, not heard anything yet about a papish bastard getting his face smashed in by The Geordies yet’
The actual fact that they spent a Saturday evening praying for their warped dreams and ideology to come true really and truly shows them up for The Sevco Scum that they truly are…
Sorry ‘peepil’ but not even close far less any cigar – But there again, why would paupers and beggars be dabbling in the cigar league !
The huns are irrelevant.
Yes. The manks are small potatoes AND monkey bastards.
They won’t be irrelevant if we don’t learn how to beat them sooner rather than later Johnny…
They have utterly schooled us in 2025 for sure…
That simply HAS to change or we are in serious trouble if they learn how to beat the rest !
This. Used to love your blog but you have become totally arrogant. Sad to see.
Unlike the Geordie hordes, I can remember a Fair Cities semi final between them and the huns 56 years ago. That went spectacularly wrong for the huns. So they did what they do, they wrecked Newcastle. The Geordies want to remember their history. My parents took me to Whitley Bay in 1969, we visited Newcastle for the day, and having just beaten Ujpest Dosza, had won the Fairs Cities Cup. Dad and me went to St James Park. My first of many trips since. At the gate, a man asked my Dad if we were Glaswegians. Yes, said my Dad. Which team, Celtic, said my Dad, why? Because of you were huns we wouldn’t let you in. Older Georgie’s to this day will have nothing to do with huns. Add Newcastle to London, Wolverhampton, Barcelona, Birmingham, Chesterfield, and Dublin. Scotland’s shame.