SANDMAN'S DEFINITIVE RATINGS: CELTIC v IKEA Europa League (you know - the one nobody wants to be in...) Play-Off 1st Leg

Sandman

Well-known member
SANDMAN'S DEFINITIVE RATINGS: CELTIC v IKEA Europa League (you know - the one nobody
wants to be in...) Play-Off 1st Leg



"MFI will never die, ya Swedish multi-national conglomerate bastards!"

A corporate Celtic fan.





GORDON - 7/10

Confident Cat - barking out the orders, SHARP as a claw to stop a shock opener when big Jozo
took a fit and forced The Cat into a great unorthodox bit of 'keeping. Big guy's always had 99%
safe gloves. Saved ALL our faces at Snake Mountain last December before being unceremoniously
sacrificed by The Snake. Worthy of his recall.


JULLIEN CLARY - 6.5/10

Hmm, 7 million worth of anxiety at times. I'm not sure whether it's him or me who's most unsure
about some of those moments in the match which require committment. Hesitant in Europe gets
you plundered. Thankfully, he got a grip of his trembling baws and settleed into a decent game.
Next week in Stockholm will be an acid test for the big mincer.
Is the jury still out? Right now the jury's watching porn in a hotel room while defence lawyers have
him trying on different sizes of leather gloves...


JOZO - 7/10

Longest barnet he's had in years got in his eyes early on as he committed defensive sacrilege -
NEVER try and take a high ball out the sky facing your own goal with the forward on yer heels.
FFS, Sunday league 101 - better out the park than in the net. Jozo discovered he doesn't have
Lionel Messi's touch after all and relied on The Cat to bail him out.
After that, particularly second-half he showed why he's our best natural defender - some
tremendous interceptions, blocks and clearances, demonstrating impeccable timing.


AJER - 6.5/10

Another early-bird giving us the worms with soem dodgy moments, but yet again the young
Techno-Viking rose to the occassion. Despite playing out of position he channelled formwer
Swedish right-back legend Lustig to combat his mortal enemies - those unfamiliar with Viking
lore may not know that Ajer's ancestors - Ragnar Lothbrok in particular - were double-crossed
by the Swede warlord Jarl Borg - who's brother was great at tennis before he retired to make
pants.
Kris's great, great, great x 10 uncle Rollo actually fought FOR Borg against great, great, great
uncle x 10 Rangar - his own brother! So young Kris had ancestral scores to settle beyond winning
a football game. You think you've got family problems...
Anyway, he did so with the committment and quality we've come to expect from a name not
even in the frame this time last year - think on that one; you never know when a gem's going
to appear in the Hoops. All Hail big Ironside the Viking.


BOLIWOOD - 6/10

Woo-hoo, the Firestatrter set the greeters ablaze with some ropey swashbuckling adventures
up and down the Celtic left. Furious agitation at his every erratic pass or hapless touch, yet no
adulation or comprehension of his positive attributes...
Let's analyze... No, let's not. Let's fucking lay it out, Sandman-esque, with sweary bits, etc - the
bhoy didn't make a costly mistake in his own half. The bhoy didn't make any more mistakes
than more expensive sorts around him. The bhoy supported very well and was instrumental
in the finest move of the game first-half when Mikey J almost notched the first.
The Boli-bhoy also made a GOAL-saving challenge which will have gone unnoticed by many -
65th minute, ball in the air in Celtic box, IKEA player pounding in to get the jump and bang
in a header. Boliwood makes a jump towards the guy he's never going to win, only going to
take a bad knock, yet gets there, affects the momentum shoulder-to-shoulder, and results in
the header looping UP and stopped by The Cat on the line instead of a downward bullet
zipping in.
Go watch. Challenges like that take BALLS. You're not going to win. Percentage is you'll get
a sore one. He'll do for me.

BROON - 7/10

Rage dial set to 'Not Fucking Around Mode'. Captain Calamity returned from penance to
start erasing his multi-million dollar mindfuck of last Tuesday. And mostly he got back in
the groove, back in the type of consistently effective Broon role we are used to. As if it all
never happened; and when you see him like this, and contrast it with that horror blip, we
still frown and ask, what the f...


CALMAC - 6/10

Can somebody reset the metronome, it's off-time. Wee mhan's influence has faded at
vital periods; he's still popping up and taking over in bursts but we know there's much
more in his boots. Tonight, right after the opener, was when HE should have played dictator
and taken over the running of the game. But he remained bit-part.
Last week's insane team selection and hostilities behind the scenes (rumours, I know) seem
to be affecting his game. He's 60% as effective as we know he can be. And he can be
devastating. Let's hope.


CORPUS CHRISTIE - 8/10

Rampaging saviour, guileful messiah, this Son Of Man led their defensive line sa torrid evening.
His penetrating movement (steady girls...) can be unplayable. Very unlucky not to score, set up
some peaches, one denied by the linesgenderneautralbeing.
When he gets the feel for a game and matches perfectly the pace and flow, he is liquidity in
motion. Another star not even occupying the breath of the support last year, yet here we are
with a match-winner of real quality, like Stuart Armstrong levelled up, shaved his heid and got
even posher.


MIKEY J - 6.5/10

Hit or miss, much like the 80s bands he emulates. Very interesting how Mikey incorporates
the melodramatic romaticism of the New Romantic movement into his 21st centrury play. i.e he
falls over a lot, very dramatically with such emotion I can hear Kate Bush's 'Withering Heights'
backing him.
Still, he is becoming more and more quietly effective, refusing to be silenced and more irritatingly
annoying to defenders with his persistent output, very much like the discography of A Flock Of
Seagulls. And justification for Mikey's inclusion came as he won the free-kick for Eddy. Nice one, kid.


FORREST - 7.5/10

Smash! Flash! Dash! Looking in the mood from the start, every involvement of Jamesy's seemed
to come with big cartoon exclamations overhead. And the graphic (Graphic-ally, ladies..) novella
of his evening against the Swedish - his favourite warm-up-porn-purveyors - reached delayed
climax (ooh-er) with that first goal. Tantilisingly fingered by the keeper as it teased its way over
the line, the ejaculation of joy had Jamesy thwacking his way towards the corner thigh-to-thigh
and some enthusiastic fans lucky not to lose and eye. Or gain a facial...



FRENCH EDDY - 8.5/10 MOTM

Such footwork. Mercury in motion. The 9 million squids worth of Gallc guile rose to the
occassion and exhausted their backline. He hit the free-kick like he'd been taking pitching
lessons from Tiger Woods on playing links courses, flat-ironing it at a low trajectory. Eddy
is our greatest asset and could be one of our greatest strikers. Question is, even as he tormented
his markers and thrilled the crowd, he's still asked to play the lone striker relying on midfield
runners to support - are we utilising this asset fully? (You get warm cockles from me couching
it in such corporate terminology, Peter?). Do we still really need a big stiker playing in tandem -
think Sutton/Larsson - to fully free up Eddy's destructive tendancies? answers on a postcard
to Pistol Pete, Paradise.




SUBS:


SAM JACKSON - 7/10

Muthufuckin' fuck, fuck-ety muthufuckin' fuck, said the editorial team at Celtic Star as
Sam Jackson appeared with fifteen minutes to muthufuckin go. And yet.. muthufucka
applied himself like a righteously true Muthufucka and got a good muthufuckin
grip of the midfield. Involved himself like a muthufucka in some pressurising and generally
performed like a muthufucka in search of some muthufuckin enrichment of the muthufuckin
soul. Muthufucka showed again what a quality muthufucka can do with his muthufuckin mind
on the muthufuckin proceedings, and some muthufuckin focus on his godDAMN muthufuckin
job! This Muthufucka ain't finished in the Hoops yet, long as we see out the muthufuckin transfer
window, timely as. . . A muthufucka.



MORGAN FREEMAN JR. - N/A

Wherefor art thou, Sincy? Manager's weakness or manager's pet? 33k a week kept off the
bench by a kid running out his chances.
Hmm...


BAYO - - N/A

Son of a gun, almost notched one, with a Van Basten.



LENNONY - 7/10

Well, one week on, he resets. Clary and Boliwood start. So what the fuck went down last Tuesday?
Solid shape, no nonsense tactics, produced a fine performance overall against a stuffy team set
up to hold and counter. If only...
Still, you live and learn. Questions remain hanging in the air like the smell around Morelos, regards
player harmony and common sense managerial choices - Sincy or Morgan Freeman J? Former
Player of The Year and top scorer or former Rodgers' Sunderland loanee?
Don't get caught in your own personal psychodramas, Lennony; Manage the bigger picture,
manage Celtic.


OVERALL - 7.5/10

So there we were, up against a flat-packed back four with nobody able to decipher the
complicated instructions on how to disassemble them... But, up steps our quantum quality
department and the players we hope will make the difference in games like this do just
that.
We asserted our will on the game in sporadic periods - after our first goal they grew into
it more as, inexplicably, our midfield eased off just as we should have bene turning the screw
and getting that first drawer copmplete. But as we know, they don't provide screwdrivers so
we had to rely on our own technical levels to build a solid lead. And while 2-0 is compact
and offers little space to maximise, it is - like IKEA - perfectly efficient and cost-effective.
Boom-fucking-boom.



Go away now.

Sandman.
 
That was the team we SHOULD have had out last week. There was no reason not to play that line up. We battered AIK, who are a much better team than Cluj. I'm still scratching head as to why we didn't play this side. Most of our good play came down the left, Bolingoli was involved all night and put in some good balls, the chance he set up for MJ was sublime and should have been buried. Why are we out of the CL? Why didnt we put this side out last week, I can't fathom it.
Still, well done, now lets finish the job next week.
 
As for their 'Ultra's' these before and after clips say it all. Ultra quiet more like.

I think the before, during the match and after scenes can be somewhat explained by economics.
Average price of a pint in Stockholm is around a fiver so a lot of these guys would have found their pre-match drinks budget got them round 50% more beer than they bargained for.
Reality and sobriety were starting to set in as they trudged away afterwards.
No excuse for their behaviour inside CP.
 
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