august 2002

friday 2nd The eve of a new season and bullish noises are emanating from Murray Park, home of the mighty Rangers' training centre and treatment rooms... as well as a gypsy curse. Mad Fernando promises the pointy heads that Rangers are aye ready and raring to go, while big Lorenzo says that if the Gers are going to win the league they can't afford to drop any more than six points.

saturday 3rd Whoops! There's two of them away already as the Huns hold Kilmarnock to a draw at Rugby Park. Early season paranoia is much in evidence as Arvaladze claims the Killie goal should have been disallowed for a foul on the goalie. He forgetfully fails to mention his own offside goal resulting from a corner which should have been a bye kick to the home side.

Celtic run up the league flag then routinely dispose of Dunfermline to start the season with a victory.

monday 5th Just in case the new season was beginning to take on a settled look to it the Sun reports that Johan Mjallby could be on his way to Leeds United.

tuesday 6th James Traynor reports in the Daily Retard that Celtic and Rangers are still being courted by the Nationwide League. "English First Division clubs are planning to dump Football League chief executive David Burns and if successful Celtic and Rangers could be invited into a new set up sooner rather than later."

Celtic appeal against the BBC moving the league game against Partick Thistle to Sunday August 25th on the grounds that it will be one less day to prepare for the Champions League qualifier against FC Basel.

wednesday 7th Bad news for the tabloids as the Celtic board announces some good news on the financial front. Losses have been dramatically reduced while expenditure on players has gone up. Rather than splash this all over the back pages as it would had the news been released by D. Murray, the Retard prefers to allow Bert Konterman use the sports section instead of his nutty website to sound off. "I believe Celtic's involvement in the Champions League will be a good thing for Rangers," says Wurzel. For the record (if you'll pardon the pun), during last season's Champions League group stage campaign Celtic played five league games and collected fifteen points, scoring 12 and conceding 2 in the process. They also passed Go and collected something like £10 million. If this is good for Rangers then I'm a Dutchman... just like Bert in fact. He also says that he would like to finish his career with Rangers, another major bonus for the Ibrox club similar to Celtic's involvement in the Champions League.

This is also the day Rangers launch their controversial new away strip, described in the Retard as their "tangerine" kit. Too late for this year's tangerine walk but no doubt the fashion accessory to be seen in around your local tangerine lodge.

Celtic draw 1:1 against Spurs at White Hart Lane while the Huns draw 1:1 with Leeds at Ibrox. A Ricksen tackle sees Woodgate limping off after 20 minutes while Muscat is booked on his debut.

thursday 8th Daruis Adamczuck's agent reveals that his client has been suffering from depression since he moved to Ibrox. The cause of his malaise is put down to a breakdown in relations with the Wig as well as having to turn out on wet Wednesdays in Motherwell for the Stiffs. However, it should be pointed out that at the time of his signing Darius was allegedly attracting attention from Celtic as well. He's obviously had too much time on his hands to reflect on his decision to sign up for work at the Death Star.

friday 9th One of Rangers' official fanzines, the Glasgow Evening Times, announces on its back page that despite being completely skint and unable to buy any players until a few expensive duds are huckled out the door, "Business is booming at Ibrox". Quite what it would take for the Times to dredge up a "Rangers in crisis" headline remains an unfathomable mystery.

In the same issue (front page no less) Blue-Nose-In-Chief Darrell King informs us that "Football fans in Glasgow could soon have a new radio station to tune to - Radio Ibrox." Said Hun director Martin Bain, "The station would be exclusively about Rangers for Rangers fans." Listeners to Radio Clyde need not adjust their sets to receive this channel.

Still in the same issue of the Times, "Around 50,000 Rangers fans from all around the world are to converge on Glasgow next summer. A massive weekend convention is being planned as the grand finale of a ground-breaking £150,000 project called Rangers World Wide Supporters' Alliance." No date was announced for this awesomely scary idea put forward by Martin Bain (again) but should the Huns wish to save their supporters some cash during these hard times might we suggest moving the venue to Belfast and having the do on July 12th every year might be acceptable to most of the delegates expected at the convention.

Earlier, the Daily Retard's David McCarthy claimed in an "exclusive" that, "Rangers have turned down the chance to sign strikers John Carew and Hakan Sukur." The official party line was that Alex McLeish "is not a huge fan" of either player, while Carew's Scottish agent Tom Callaghan said, "I have spoken to Rangers this week but these discussions must remain confidential." Maybe these discussion went something along the lines of: "Want to buy a player?"
"Sorry, we're broke. Come back at the end of the month and we'll see if we've managed to sell Flo yet."
Just speculating.

saturday 10th The SPL and the BBC agree to switch the Thistle game back to the Saturday, a small victory for common sense.

Following his booking against Leeds, and clearly anticipating that afternoon's events at Ibrox, the Retard devotes more column inches to a plea from Ricksen for refs to go easy on Muscat and not book him because of his reputation. Celtic thrash Aberdeen 4:0 at Pittodrie while the Huns beat Dundee at Ibrox. The Rangers game is delayed for ages when the turnstiles blow a gasket. Subsequent newspaper reports mention the ridiculous notion of Rangers supporters carrying "smart cards", which is like saying the Three Stooges used to be card carrying members of Mensa.

wednesday 14th Nerves are shredded in the Champions League qualifier against Basel when the Swiss roll in an away goal in after 80 seconds. Celtic finally win a pulsating match by 3:1, the winner a contender for goal of the season from Momo Sylla.

Celtic are linked in several newspapers with an interest in Aberdeen's Phil McGuire. Quite why, nobody can explain.

friday 16th Fergus Sweeney presents his Radio 5 Live show from Celtic Park after the stadium was voted the nation's favourite sporting venue. CP polled 60% of the votes cast, easily beating Cardiff's Millennium Stadium and Lord's cricket ground.

Martin O'Neill angrily denies any interest in Aberdeen's Phil McGuire but the Herald reports that the player was already aware of what his salary would be upon signing for the Hoops, allegedly £5,000 a week. The veracity of this figure must surely be called into question, unless it was a typo and Celtic are offering a more realistic figure of £50.00 a week.

In the Daily Retard, FC Basel's star player Murat Yakin talks up his side's chances of overcoming their first leg deficit and at the same time shows a Bazza-like grasp of mathematics: "If we score one against Celtic then we can score two, then three, then four. We always do that."

saturday 17th Celtic beat Dundee United 5:0 at the nation's favourite sporting venue, although the scoreline could easily have ended up like one more in keeping with the ground which was voted second.

sunday 18th In the funniest tabloid story of the season so far, Graham Bryce in the News of the Screws reports that cash-strapped Rangers turned down a £9 million offer from Juventus for Peter Lovencrap.

tuesday 20th Celtic ask the British Embassy in Switzerland for advice on keeping fans travelling to the Champions League qualifier safe after Swiss neo-Nazis go on the rampage following Basel's 2:3 defeat at home to Lucerne.

Paul Shields, signed from Raith Rovers for £100,000 by Kenny Dalglish in March 1999, goes on loan to Queen of the South until January.

Hugh Keevins reports in the Retard that, "Celtic are set to sell Colin Healy in a £1 million deal."

wednesday 21st Neil Lennon, chosen to be captain for the occasion, pulls out of the N.Ireland v Cyprus friendly (note the irony) international after receiving a death threat prior to the match from someone claiming to represent a loyalist terrorist group.

Paul Lambert, Rab Douglas and Stephen Crainey all took part in Scotland's defeat at Hampden against Denmark. Other Celts on international duty included John Hartson for Wales (1:1 v Croatia), Johan Mjallby for Sweden (1:1 v Russia), Stillian Petrov for Bulgaria (2:2 v Germany) and Colin Healy who scored in the Republic of Ireland's 3:0 victory over Finland.

Celtic deny any interest in Patrick Berger. Laughably, Hugh 'Bonkers' Keevins writes in the Retard, "English-based papers have once again wrongly credited Martin O'Neill with having an interest in a player at another club who has a year left on his contract and is therefore not at liberty to have signing talks with any other team". Bonkers himself, as we all know, would never indulge in such idle ill-informed kite flying in order to sell a few more papers.

thursday 22nd Neil Lennon quits international football in the wake of Wednesday's events in order to protect his family from any more grief.

friday 23rd Martin O'Neill reveals that Colin Healy has turned down the offer of a new two year contract at Parkhead in favour of trying to find first team football elsewhere.

saturday 24th Celtic finally break down a the determined resistance of the Maryhill Magyars and win 1:0 thanks to a Henrik Larsson goal. Despite playing in Galatasaray colours the Thistle fan resist the temptation to unfurl large banners bearing the message 'welcome to Firhell'.

Belgian trialist Kevin Francks will not be offered a contract at Celtic and must now return to the more mundane surroundings of the Bernabeu.

According to the Daily Retard, FC Basel have been "thrown into crisis" with the announcement of their Chairman that he is leaving to join Kaiserslautern in the Bundesliga. Revelling in the name Rene Jaggi, he truly sounds like a chairman worthy of the nickname 'Bunnet'.

monday 26th Roddy Thompson (who he? ed) reports on soccernet that Georgi Nemsadze of Dundee will be a Celtic player by the end of the week.

tuesday 27th Ex-Charlton player Matty Holmes announces his intention to sue Rangers' summer signing Kevin Muscat for £1 million as a result of a tackle by the Australian in 1998 while he was playing for Wolves which left his opponent with such a serious leg break that he was forced to quit the game a year later. (for a brief run down on some of Muscat's other victims see ntv 101 (page 27).

wednesday 28th Celtic's brief dalliance with the dizzy heights of Champions League football comes to an end in, of all places, Basel. The two goal lead carried over from the first leg was surrendered after twenty minutes in a manner worthy of any of the other mob's European flopfests and thereafter it was all huff and puff but no away goal. Our passage is now booked into the consolation cup along with TFOD. This result casts a huge shadow over the coming season. Financially it's a disaster. If the suits were banking on qualification before releasing funds for new players then their strategy has been shown up as disastrously flawed. As far as the future of OFM is concerned then this must also give him plenty food for thought. At the very least we'll be in for another round of tiresome speculation in the papers about where he's off to at the end of his contract. An absolute nightmare of a result.

thursday 29th The morning after the Basel game. After the briefest of glimpses at the Teletext to make sure it really happened a blanket ban on all media sources was placed on NTV Mansions.

friday 30th pay per view channel Setanta, which covered the game in Switzerland for Celtic, have apparently been inundated by complaints from irate customers. Some were unhappy that they never received a signal, while others were complaining because they did receive a perfect signal and had to sit through the whole ghastly debacle. Our complaint was that the best Setanta could dredge up for a commentator was old Weetabix Heid McPherson. As if it wasn't bad enough.

As a postscript to the Basel game, bookies were so impressed by the performance of the Swiss champions that they have installed them at 400-1 to win the trophy. First reaction is that these are not overly generous odds.

In the draw for the Consolation Cup Celtic find themselves matched against the mighty FK Suduva from Lithuania to the almost audible accompaniment of a collective groan from the club's accountants.

saturday 31st The chip wrappers lead with the story that Martin O'Neill has had to pull out of a deal for Brazilian World Cup midfielder Kleberson. A potential loan deal to be followed by a purchase in January 2003 was scuppered when the Celtic board couldn't guarantee that they would be able to pay his club Paranaense the transfer fee, reported to be £4.5 million. If only they hadn't wasted as much on their last Brazilian import eh?

The Birmingham Evening Mail's reporter Bill Howell claims that Aston Villa made a last-minute attempt to sign Neil Lennon on the eve of the transfer deadline.

back to top