Bringing Back Forster Is LIke Burning £20 Notes In Front Of A Homeless Person

IS IT ME, or does anyone else think the efforts of the mainstream media to talk-up an attempted Celtic loan deal to bring Fraser Forster back to the club is one of the clearest demonstrations yet that big-time football has lost its collective marbles?

Celtic bringing back Fraser Forster - why?

We hear Scott Bain, the club's first-choice 'keeper has a dislocated thumb, which will keep him out of action for at least one, perhaps two weeks. Within that time scale, Celtic are due to play:

• Dunfermline Athletic in the League Cup, this afternoon.
  
  
• AIK Stockholm in the Europa League on Thursday
  
  
• Hearts in the League on Sunday week
  
  
• The return game with AIK on 29 August
  
  

The prognosis is that Bain will be fit to return to action by the time Celtic go to Ibrox to face Rangers on Sunday, 1 September.

With Bain injured, the gloves are due to pass to their Number Two goalkeeper, a certain Craig Gordon. Aged 36, with over 500 first team games at his various clubs, plus 54 Scotland caps, Gordon is no callow youth.

Their third choice goalkeeper, as listed in their First team squad, is Northern Irishman Conor Hazard. Now, it is true that Hazard has yet to make his first team debut for the Hoops; but, he is already a full Northern Ireland internationalist, who has made over 20 first team appearances in the Scottish Championship for Falkirk and Partick Thistle on loan deals.

Their Reserve squad goalkeeper is teenager Ryan Mullen, who is already a Scotland age group internationalist. They also have Scotland Under-21 goalkeeper Ross Doohan, currently on-loan to Ayr United, who could presumably be called back in an emergency, such as the first-choice goalkeeper being injured.

Hazard, Mullin and Doohan are all on minimum four-year deals with Celtic.

So, why all the kerfuffle about bringing back to the club, a 31-year-old, who has played precisely 90 minutes of first-team football since December, 2017?

The only reason I can see for Celtic possibly bringing in Forster is for them to be able to say to the rest of Scottish football: “We are so rich we can bring in, as a temporary signing, a 31-year-old former England internationalist, who is third-choice at his current club, and on massive wages.

“It also shows, we can keep three good young goalkeeprs tied to us on long-term contracts, with no possibility of getting a game for us, even in an emergency. That's how much bigger we are than all the other Scottish clubs.”

It is sheer, unmitigated lunacy.

AT TIMES, such as when watching BT Sports' coverage of last night's Motherwell v Hearts League Cup clash, I wonder where football is going. In particular, I fear for the game's future in view of the legal diktats being handed-down from on-high.

Yes folks, I am back on this new interpretation of what is and what is not a penalty. Last night we saw, not for the first time this year, a spot kick awarded, which, by all the precedents of football going back over 100 years, was never a penalty (except, of course under SFA dispensations 16/90 and 18/88). These two dispensations mean – if there is a dodgy hand ball by a visiting defender at Ibrox or Celtic Park – it is a penalty. If, on the other hand, the dodgy hand ball refers to a Rangers or Celtic defender – it isn't a penalty.

The new wording on penalties apparently refers to the defender changing his silhouette. By having an arm out. FFS, I don't think I have ever seen a defender standing with his arms by his side – other than when in a defensive wall. Just to maintain his balance when moving, the player has to have his arms out to some extent. It is the “natural” silhouette which the law-makers are demanding which seems unnatural to me.

What has happened to one of football's great laws: Law v (I) – which states: “The referee is the sole judge of fact.”

Today, increasingly, the referee is not the sole judge of fact, but has to officiate to a set of protocols, written down by a committee of IFAB high heid yins. IFAB, in case you don't know, is the -INTERNATIONAL FOOTBALL ASSOCIATIONS BOARD, FIFA's ultimate law-making body, and the SFA has a permanent seat on IFAB.

This means one of the super-brains along Hampden's sixth floor corridor of power has a direct say on the laws of the game.

This perhaps explains why the new penalty law is such an ass – it was in-part thought up by someone who, by their direction of Scottish fitba these past few years has clearly demonstrated an inability to run a bath.

Ignore masonic conspiracies - what would Big Tiny have made

of having committee-men decide what was or wasn't a penalty?

I wonder what those wonderful Scottish referees of the past – Craigmyle, Mowat, Wharton, Valentine or McCluskey would have made of this dog's dinner of the new penalty law. I don't think they would have had much time for a ruling which takes away the discretion, to judge each incident on merit, which was for so long an integral part of the Beautiful Game.

I wonder too, what will happen when, as it surely will, VAR is introduced into Scottish fitba. On that day, the ba' will be oan the slates, and no mistake.

I DESPAIR at the lack of erudition and classical learning among today's leading lights in the SWFA (the Scottish Football Writers Association).

The likes of my wonderful late mentor – that Old Rugbeian, Ian “Dan” Archer, having endured an education of fagging, flogging and Latin declination would have considered the storm in a latte glass of big Shelley Kerr telling it like it was to her team after Scotland's sorry exit from the Women's World Cup in the summer as clear proof: In vino veritas.”

Dan Archer would have had a take on the Women's team bust-up

So, Shelley and her coaches maybe overdid it a wee bit on the Prosecco, and, the next day, the big blonde from Broxburn, telt a few home truths to her squad, and, we understood, tears and recriminations were shared.

That was quite civilised, I know of instances of all-out dressing room wars at various male clubs. Indeed, I know of at least one instance where a big, somewhat quiet centre half, was elevated to the club captaincy, by the manager he had decked during one post-match debrief.

The boss said: “After he decked me, I realised, here was the guy with the passion for the club I needed. Before he hit me, I had my doubts about his bottle, after that – he never looked back.”

Of course, badly needing a big-enough squirrel to deflect attention away from Celtic's midweek melt-down against FC Cluj, the red top rotweillers seized on the Kerr incident with relish. But, they over-egged it, your average football fan read the story, shrugged and said: “So what?”

Just another day on Planet Fitba.