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BHOYS WILL BE GHIRLS
April 20th 2008 Gordon Strachan was recently quoted as saying Paul Hartley is a real man and I took that as a dig at Derek Riordan but after watching yesterday's 1-0 win over Aberdeen I'm not so sure now. Georgios Samaras could have had a hat-trick but two of his three goals were disallowed and most of his general play was quite good but when it comes to tackling or being tackled then according to the bloke who was sitting behind me he is a "muckle fanny". I can't really disagree with that as Samaras was very easily dispossessed and he wasn't too great at winning the ball either. I found myself comparing him to Hartson and Sutton and was thinking there is no way either of those two would have been shoved off the ball as easily as that. Sammy wasn't alone however as Massimo Donati was pretty girly in the tackle as well, in fact it would be easier to point out those who weren't afraid to get stuck in - Robson, McGeady, McManus and Balde as well as substitute Caddis. I don't know whatever happened to the Celtic that used to come flying out the blocks and have their opponents pinned back for the first ten minutes of every game but it always seems to be the visitors who have us pinned back these days. Aberdeen who had no intention of attacking had the first chance of the game, the ball hit one post then rolled along the line before hitting the other post. There were six minutes on the clock before Celtic got anywhere near the visitors' penalty area. When Celtic did score it came at a time when I had the feeling that a goal was imminent because of the pressure the Dons were under. The Celts were unable to keep that pressure up for any length of time after the goal and it was a case of defending desperately at times and running down the clock. There were three goals disallowed in the match, two for Samaras, the second of which was a fantastic long distance lob and a late one for Aberdeen which neither I nor anyone else apart from the referee spotted as a handball. There are those who don't rate Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink but he is a big miss when he's not playing because neither Samaras nor McDonald were able to hold the ball up, in fact every time the ball comes to McDonald it bounces off him as if he's made of rubber. At the end of the day it's another three valuable points and that's all that matters now. *Good luck to local boy and big Celtic fan Liam Craig who will be turning out for St Johnstone today at Hampden in the Scottish Cup semi-final.
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