Old Firm - Dead Or Alive? It's Still The Only Show In Town For The Scottish Media

SINCE yesterday was Monday, it was Kenny Dalglish and Graeme Souness. Who will it be today?

Ally McCoist has re-surfaced, now the RTA have won the Championship, so he must be due a gig, perhaps alongside Neil Lennon. Stuart McCall hasn't had his face in the papers for a day or two, and Murdo MacLeod has been a bit quiet of late.

Better get a couple of the foreign mercenaries in to tell us this is the Greatest Club Game in the Whole Wide World. Yes folks, in spite of various sects of the Celtic Family insisting: "They're a new club - Rangers died in 2012", the Scottish media has gone into full Old Firm mode this week.

And there was me thinking, each cup competition had TWO semi-finals. Maybe I was wrong.

THE Hampden pitch is being torn-up and re-laid, again, ready for the weekend games. A dodgy, potentially-dangerous and short-sighted move, if you ask me. I stand by what I posted recently - the quick answer to the problem is to get Queen's Park to play their home games on Lesser Hampden - that will do as much as any radical surgery to sort-out the international pitch.

I see, with familiar sleight-of-hand the "blazers" on the sixth floor have found a potential scape-goat. It seems it was all the fault of referee George Salmond, who allowed a Queen's Park v Berwick Rangers game to go ahead on Boxing Day. That's what did for the pitch.

 Referee George Salmond - blamed for pitch fiasco

Alex Salmond - who usually gets the blame when things go wrong in Scotland

Severe restraint by the High Heid Yins there, blaming George Salmond - maybe they hadn't the cojones to blame Alex Salmond, or the SNP. After all, if you're following the 2016 Holyrood election campaign, you must know by now, everything that has gone wrong in Scotland, ever, is the fault of the SNP.

The thing which strikes me as funny is, George Salmond, as a former Scotland cricket captain probably has a better knowledge of reading the state of pitches than most - after all, it was one of the skills he had to have in his cricketing career.



I HAVE this mate, Jock, who, if he could have avoided fast women and slow horses, would by now be awaiting his name coming up in the Panama Papers scandal. Instead, Jock has made greater contribution than most to the Retired Bookmakers Benevolent Society. He, for instance, every year got a Thank You Christmas card from the late Freddie Williams.

Any way, back in 1988, Jock was actually ahead of the game one week and, on leaving work on Friday, he popped into the local branch of William Hill's, to collect the £250 in winnings he had lying. On his way to the pay-out window however, he noticed the odds Hill's were offering on the England v Republic of Ireland match, which was going to be played in the European Championships the next day.

There is no way the Republic can win, was Jock's reasoning, so, he put the whole £250 on England - and that is why, next afternoon, when everyone in the local Orange Club was going ape-shit to celebrate wee Ray Houghton's winning goal - Jock was the man sitting with his head in his hands, crying.

Ray Houghton - moved Jock to tears

Ray Houghton is still a couple of bad words to Jock. Which is why, Alex Ferguson showed real class, in congratulating Danny Willets on winning the Masters on Sunday - considering Fergie had lost £8000, which he had on Jordan Spieth to win. 



I NOTE from the English papers this morning, redundancies are about to be announced at Aston Villa, who are apparently doomed to be relegated from the English Premiership this season.

As ever, the axe will fall on the "little people", the back-room staff, many of whom are Villa through and through. The under-performing players who are cast adrift will, by and large, get a chance to under-perform elsewhere - a fate which has already befallen some of the under-performing managers, such as Paul Lambert.

Jasper Carrot - will get comedy mileage out of Villa's relegation

True Villa men such as Brian Little will try to pick up the pieces in the Championship - while Birmingham City fan Jasper Carrot will and West Brom fanatic Frank Skinner will be able to trot out that old chestnut: "Football in Birmingham, you never know, it might catch-on".

But, such is the unreal world of the Premiership. Mind you, if Villa can function in the Championship minus the 50 personnel we hear might lose their jobs - does it not hold good, they are probably over-staffed in the Premiership? Further proof, should it be needed, of how English football at the top end has totally lost the plot.



TONIGHT is a Champions League Night, with Manchester City v PSG the stand-out fixture. Don't know about you, but, with  Vincent Kompany out of the City team, I reckon big Zlatan Ibrahimovic just might again work his magic for PSG.