ALAN HANSEN built a post-playing career on saying: "You win nothing with kids". Of course, this rule is not golden, but, by and large it holds good in football. Young players may: "lack fear", they may offer fresh energy, but: "On a wet Wednesday night at Stoke", you want a fair sprinkling of old hands, who have been over the course, in your team.
It is good, therefore, to see, now they are out of Europe, Ronnie Deila fielding team with a fair number of the club's excellent young Scottish talent in the ranks. Perhaps, indeed, I would say probably, given the paucity of the challenge they face in the SPFL, this is surely the best-opportunity Celtic will have for some time, to give the kids their heads.
But, will he? If a seven-point lead can be strung out to a ten-point one, he might well be tempted to leave well alone and allow the kids to flourish, I hope he does.
Leigh Griffiths, of course, is no longer the enfant terrible he was a season or three back, but, I do hope his current "hot" sell continues. We need a Scottish goal scorer who consistently hits the back of the net. Wee Leigh was hard on himself for his failure to score against Ajax on Thursday night, but, at Inverness on Sunday, he potted his 19th goal of the season. I hope he goes on to score more than 30 this season, indeed, I am almost praying he hits 40.
Mind you, this would be more certain if Deila could get the right co-striker to play alongside him. Playing off a big old-fashioned target man, I am sure Griffiths would flourish even better than he currently manages. This tactic might not work in Europe, but, would surely pay dividends in Scotland.
MIND you, THE scoring feat of the last week was surely the Scottish Women's team hammering ten past a hapless Macedonian goalkeeper, at Paisley. What a cracking strart for the controversial new pink kit.
Maybe the main SFA honchos should nip along the sixth floor corridor to see the Women's officials, for a clue as to why, Scottish women's football is thriving and on the rise, while the Men's game is in decline. But, take advice from a wummin - naw, ah dinnae see it.
SO, the off-field soap opera around "Rangers" will go on, all the way to the Supreme Court. Well, it will pay school and tuition fees, sell papers, attract clickbait to newspaper websites and keep us all interested for a wee while yet - while in the real world, we rush to Hell in a hand-cart.
My old mentor Ian "Dan" Archer was right, when he would caution his troops: "Never forget boys - we are the comic strip section of the paper".
Speaking of which, I remember, back in the 1950s, when the DC Thomson comics such as the Adventure, Hotspur, Rover and Wizard all included lengthy written-down stories - no comic strips back then - there was one, in the Rover I think, about some mad foreign scientist who discovered a way of syphoning the X-factor out of great footballers and into normal men. He then took over a struggling lower league team and turned them into world-beaters.
Now, substituting foreign funds, be it petro-dollars, allegedly ill-gotten Russian cash, or fortunes made on the back of Asian sweat shop labour, for the scientific mumbo-jumbo, isn't that what the English Premier League has become?
If you have enough money, why anyone can now become a player in English football ownership.
Me, I still long for the simple memories of Nick Smith and Arnold Tabbs, regularly taking some stuttering Division Three North side to Wembley, in the series: "It's Goals That Count". Or of, my all-time "Bouncing" Bernard Briggs - who never lost a goal, "Limp-Along Leslie - shepherd from Monday to Friday, midfield general on a Saturday and the gypsy centre-forward Ishmael of Darbury Rangers.
One Christmas, among my presents was the Rover Annual, in which the specially-written It's Goals That Count story was entitled: "The Goalie's Name Was Muggins", about a mystery goalkeeper who comes to the aid of whichever struggling lower league side Smith was managing at the time, when all their other goalkeepers are injured.
He proves an inspiration as he back-stops a late promotion push, before, with the title clinched, he is revealed as a star ballet dancer. Yes, his real name was indeed Muggins, and, in a reverse Billy Elliot story line, his big ambition had always been to play in-goals for that club. They don't write them like that any more, and these stories are no-more far-fetched, and a lot easier to read than the latest report from Court Number Three.
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