SANDMAN’S DEFINITIVE RATINGS: CELTIC @ THE HOUSE DOWN GOVAN WAY…
“There is a house down Govan way
They call it the Rising Sun
And it’s been the ruin of many a poor goth
Just ask Ryan Kent, God knows, he’s oneNow Mama tell your children
Not to do what they have done
They cheated, and lied, and then they died
And everyone knows they’re not the same one”– House Of The Rising Sun, The Animals (appropriately)
ROXIE – 4/10 – Oh, dear #1 – We know big Joe gets bored but setting up a Zombie comeback like it was a game of ‘Wembley’ in the park was taking it too far. Made a great save to salvage the situation, and to be fair; he must have thought it was a lunar eclipse when Alfie loomed in front of him with the ball at his feet. But Joe knows the score – momentum was well with us and his lapse set the rot in, turning a potential scudding into a scrap for a point.
GREGGS THE BAKER – N/A – “Shut yer hole, fat boy”. Almost gave him MOTM on that alone. Get well soon, Greggsy.
Had to be done. pic.twitter.com/kLTyVcIs32
— 𝓙𝓸𝓱𝓷𝓷𝔂_𝓢𝓬𝓸𝓽𝓵𝓪𝓷𝓭 (@Johnny_Sctland) January 2, 2023
STAR LORD – 5/10 – Oh, dear #2 – Pen? Ach, you don’t go to ground with the Zombies in ascendancy and a Zombie on the whistle and servile wee Wullie on the VAR. Consistently shaky, and no need for it; he’s played out his skin here before and should have fed off the experience; seemed affected by the collective fade.
GET CARTER – 6.5/10 – Big mhan, BIG block. Denied them a killer third, battled like a beast to haul us back into the game, at one point tackling two of them at once. But he was one of the ‘half hour culprits’ culpable of
lackadaisical meandering edge of our box, gifting ball and chance; thank Ghod he shook it off to help rescue
the day.
WAYNE GRETZKY – 7/10 MOTM – What’s Canadian for ‘Heaven’s sake, what the hell is this lavyhole?” From the frozen wastes on the back of a moose to.. Well, THE wastes, surrounded by moose-ugly Zombies on all sides.Also, totally bewildered as they took his hockey stick and mask off him in the tunnel and denied his request to wear his best blades. Must have thought he’d rocked up in 1980s Camden Palace as a smelly-looking goth kept running at him. But the Mighty Duck coped really well, looked born to play in such torrid atmospheres, remained on it while many of his teammates underperformed. Excellent composure and
can play a bit. He’s a lumberjack, and he’s okay.
CALMAC – 6/10 – Captain, what happened? Bossing the vagabonds, picking off the passes, structuring what appeared to be another mangling of their foetid aspirations… Then he slipped off into the furore, caught up in their desperate resurgence, letting them take hold of a midfield they’d struggled to have recognised from a first half-hour chasing. He knows, though – said as much; will sort it for Saturday, guaranteed.
THE BUILDER – 5/10 – Again, like a seasoned striptease artist, he’s leaving us tantalised as we wait for the return to match-winning form. Looked likely (as did most) for that first 30 minutes to turn the screw and get himself on the scoreboard. However, became another lost victim of the malaise.
HAKUNA HATATE – 6/10 – The mhan most likely, and one who was determined not to let it slip. Busy and troublesome and was finding the right spaces to torment them. May have felt aggrieved to be hooked. Ange?
LORD KATSUMOTO – 6.5/10 – Zoom! There’s yer lunch, Zombies. Daizen on it like a manga Speedy Gonzales and ripping up Tavpen. Unfortunately, as we started to malfunction he was criminally underused and the Zombies he’d held in a terrified rapture got moving again while we continually failed to find him with an out-ball. A wasted opportunity because he could’ve notched a hat-trick.
KILLER MUSHROOM – 6/10 – “Fhs, Ange, whit ye leavin’ Kyogo on fur? Hisnae kicked a ba’!” No he hadn’t – indeed, he’d led the phizz-take with a perfect Alfie impersonation first-half. Then when it got serious, disappeared. But… Well, it’s Kyogo – intrepid paramedic to the fleabitten and who never stops moving, checking, twisting, sniping – BAM! Snapped it into the roof of their filthy fishing net in sweetly opportunistic style. “He’s guid, but he cannae score against the Zomb… YAAAAS!”
JAMESY – 3/10 – Never play The Prestwick Pele directly after New Year’s Day. It’s a well known urban legend; there’s a curse carried with it. “Fancy it, Jamesy?” Naw, shagged-oot.
SUBS –
JURAN JURAN – 3/10 – Oh, dear #3 – He’s gone. Or he should be. Why the right-back subs on for the injured left is today’s mystery. JJ’s head’s away and the rest of him will follow. Wee Diego on the bench must have been shaking his head as he watched a couple of goals gifted and a couple of million bucks fall off the JJ transfer fee. Ange?
SON OF JACKIE – N/A – Maybe, just maybe, Pistol Pete can sort some contract out that hooks in the big man (Aye, good luck with that…). Because when he came on and rumbled them about the openings bloomed, despite our lack of quality service.
ABADASS – N/A – Barasic’s nightmare was left out his daymare for too long and thrown in too late for Borna to collapse in a foetal ball. A wasted opportunity to terrify the Croat bottler into submission early in front of the gurning orcs. Ange?
MOOEY – 6/10 – Another surprise bench-warmer held in reserve beyond reason. Must be noted he managed to bring some composure to the embattled middle, providing a staging post to get us back on the front foot and tie the game. Ange?
NOTEBOOK – N/A – Well, just as we thought he was being cosseted for mordor, he remains benched. Far too handsome for those environs, anyway, as was evidenced when he was finally introduced and the entire Edmiston enclosure started shrieking and screaming to a thing, chucking their own faeces onto the running track.
ANITA DOBSON – 5.5/10 – Ange? A mystery that almost produced a very pleasant twist but played
out much as we’d expected with the usual suspects guilty. Left-back for left-back is the usual emergency response. Disengaged right-back soon to be divorced from the cause was the teeth-grinding
solution that backfired. Future Argentinian World Cup superstar left-sided wing-back with dynamic ability ends up bemused, kicking his talented heels. Would have loved to see him running at Tavpen, on the back of Daizen’s torment.
However, Ange knows best and salvaged a precious point with his late Mowbray flurry. But the whole shebang reeked of a plan gone awry and a drawing board calling him back. Opportunity to slap insolent wee Jeremy Beadle around the GIANT mole was squandered, pretty needlessly, but just my opinion. The hell do I know…
MIBBERY – 7/10 – Lol, cheatin’ Beaton couldn’t wait to point at the spot and get his tab racked up in the Bellshill Buggeri Bar. Not a peep from VAR Gollum either as the big inbred-country-cousin at the back had a NBA fit and point-guarded a shot; just the two flaming hands, yeah? It did seem like the mendacious runts had been taken as much by surprise as we were by the Celtic collapse and Zombie reprise and had forgotten the Celtic mantra.
But when you consider what’s gone against us in the area and that laughable denial today compounding the Zombie catalogue of ‘remarkable leniency’ then it’s a small miracle we got out of there with that title-winning draw.
OVERALL – 6/10 – Well, Happy mince New Year to you. Nearly. And Happy hellyeez New Year to the Zombies. A game that started like we were in for a sunny lunchtime of lurid skelping to shame anything Private Video put out in their classy porn-prime, disintegrated into some sleazy backstreet snuff movie as we got infected by the Kent teen-goth introversion and began to self-harm. It became almost bewildering as the bhoys blew up and suffered blowout after blowout. Surely they had more about them, even in this atmosphere of frothing subhuman fascists?
Well, yes, they had. In true Angeball style, we didn’t stop. In fact our gleeful final act saved the day like Nick Cage in 8mm, raiding the Govan porn-dungeon to rescue the point before the murderous perverts got away with it. A wholesome end to a very sleazy afternoon amid the worst dregs of civilised society gathered in one place since Adolf staged a New Year shindig in Nuremberg. We knew glorious records can’t endure forever, we hoped that this run wouldn’t meet its end in the worst possible place at the worst possible time.
The fact the Bhoys recognised their own failings and had enough about them to salvage it, speaks volumes. Championship volumes.
To sum up; phew, well done… eventually.
Happy New Year, punks.
Dedicated to…
Pele
– the World Cup and football wizardry was encompassed in the single word ‘Pele’ when I was a kid. A word that was a name that was a bewitching entity from another colour-washed exotic dimension. He reached us via background white noise punctuated by exclamations of marvel and graced by other-worldly scenes of pure footballing joy. Football could be like this?
He leaves us with moments in time that are pictograms in themselves, which spell a phrase he contrived in a physical language beyond the abilities of most, but perfectly understood by us all through wondrous exponents like Edson Arantes do Nascimento: ‘The Beautiful Game”.
RIP Beautiful Man.
Go Away Now
Sandman
Mate this was embarrassing 2 yrs ago speak English or gtf -cant believe sandman definitive ratings still going
Away ye go. Best ratings in Sandland or any land. Sandman for Sky Sports summariser!
Don’t worry, mate. My raitngs have never been popular with cunts.
The highlight of the after-match imho .. but, then I’m actually a Celtic fan & no one of Them pretendin tae be one.
Go away now!
Get back in yer box!
Still going strong and widely read by Celtic supporters.