DO you remember Celtic’s 1981-82 season? Matt Corr has been taking us on a journey back to the early eighties this week when we had as exciting team as many of us can remember. Tactically we were maybe a little naive in those days and the likes of Alex Ferguson and even Jim McLean were more than capable of mugging Celtic but what a joy it was to have three strikers like McGarvey, McCluskey and Nicholas, a winger like Davie Provan, and midfielders like Murdo MacLeod, Tommy Burns and Paul McStay. And at the back big Roy Aitken and Danny McGrain contributing to our attack more often than not. It was never dull watching that team!
It was a Celtic team that probably should have won more than it did and perhaps was worthy of European glory – that instead went to Aberdeen and fair play to them. But this was a great Celtic team to watch.
Coming up this afternoon on The Celtic Star is Part 4 of Matt’s excellent account of that season in 1981-82. We have been adding a few videos of that season as we’ve gone along in Parts 1-3 and with Celtic’s current system and tactics under review due to the lack of goals being scored, it is interesting to watch some of these old videos and see how Celtic were banging in the goals back then. The system was a 442 / 433 with Davie Provan as the winger on the right wing changing the 2 to a 3 more often than not.
At the time the talk was always that this was a very good Celtic side but that it needed one or two decent signings – including a central defender of real quality for instance – to turn it into a great team. Celtic being Celtic, those new players never arrived.
Matt started the week on the early part of season 1981/82 taking us up to the away trip to Turin to play Juventus in the second leg of the European Cup tie – this was his first away trip to see Celtic play in Europe and it would be eventful – catch up HERE.
And his story of that season continues as Matt takes us through a terrible loss for Celtic when Johnny Doyle was killed in an accident at his home. This was a real shock and a terrible loss to his family, friends and to all of the Celtic supporters…read HERE.
Then Matt takes us up to Ipswich for a friendly with 10,000 travelling Celtic supporters and a famous old win in the 5 a sides at Wembley – the English were getting sick of Celtic beating them! See HERE.
And he’s not done yet, with Part 4 (of 5) coming up this afternoon on The Celtic Star.
It’s titled Enter the Maestro…and the stretchers – Celtic’s Season 1981/82 (Part 4) and is well worth a read. It will be up shortly with the concluding part (5) being available early next week…
