'Tis The Season To Be Jolly - Aye Right

THESE are hard times for Scottish football; indeed, it is maybe just as well we have the annual season of excess to divert our attention from the state of the national game.

In Europe, we are, again, on the outside, looking longingly in; ditto, on the world stage, as we contemplate the coming summer's events in Brazil - with our national side in its now-familiar role: looking-on.

Still, the Tartan Army's ability to always look on the bright side of life will spark into life come February, and the draw for the 2016 Eruos - even though, that inate optimism might not survive the reality of the group draw, should we, as is our want, end up in a Group of Death.

Celtic's gubbing in the Camp Nuo in midweek was almost a milestone - we cannot go on like this; doing nothing is not an option. However, what will Celtic and the SFA do? In all probability - nothing.

For Celtic, I feel their problems are all in their collective heads. The squad are convinced they are far better than any domestic opposition they face, but, somehow, seem to freeze when asked to notch-up their game a couple of levels. Too-often this season, failing to do this.

Perhaps Neil Lennon should invest in a good sports psychologist to try to get more from his troops. I don't, by the way, buy into this: "Celtic need to find a scorer" guff. I reckon their problem is as much one of not creating chances in Europe, than in not having a man to take them.

They should, perhaps, work harder in training and in games - or is that the simplistic answer? Gary Player always insisted: "The harder I work - the luckier I get." There is sense in that Saffer saying.

How about telling the squad - no win bonuses in domestic games, until you've scored at least three goals, that way, they get used to scoring.

The Magical (rather than Malky Munro's Maryhill) Magyrs of Puskas & Co used to warm-up for putting six or seven goals on diddy sides like England by beating the Budapest Taxi Drivers XI, or the Hungarian Post Office Select by a barrow-load. Celtic are, in the Premiership, regularly playing sides of that standard - Hibs, Kilmarnock, St Mirren et al - so, wee Neil should be maybe encouraging goal-scoring.

If nothing else: if they score four, you score five, makes for great entertainment.

IN A previous post, I called for some media scrutiny of the Easdales, and lo, it came to pass, that one of them (I cannot tell them apart), broke cover to have what amounted to a pre-match tennis knock-up with the BBC's Al Lamont (one of the many young guns in present-day Scottish media circles to have been promoted way past his talents).

Easdale took a lot of words, to say very little. As my dear old bigoted proddie faither might have said: "No Rangers class son, definitely no Rangers class".

SFA apparatchick Jim Fleeting - the man who committed the biggest boob in Scottish football in the past 40-years, when he sired a child who would grow up to be the greatest Scottish international goal-scorer ever, but made her a lassie rather than a boy - always maintained: "You can play football in rain and snow, but, you cannot play football in high wind".

That eternal truism was demonstated again yesterday.

We need indoor stadia in Scotland - now.

MY teen-aged grand-daughter is an athlete - a 400 metres runner. Right now she is out of action with glandular fever - "the kissing disease" as it is known; well, she claims kissing has nothing to do with it!!

However, her timing is terrible, as she isn't training just now and will not be able to resume until February at the earliest. This will leave her with little time to be in-shape for the Scottish Schools Athletics Championships in June, which, this year, will be held at Hampden Park as a warm-up for the Commonwealth Games.

A chance to perform at Hampden and she gets injured - it's infuriating, but, the same thing happened to me 50 years ago.