SANDMAN’S DEFINITIVE RATINGS: CELTIC v CLEMENTINE’S FLUFFERS

‘Vorfreude’ –
{n.} The joyful, intense anticipation that comes from imagining future pleasures.

ROXIE – 8/10 – Now Big Joe’s more than trouble. You see he stand ’bout six foot four. All those downtown ladies call him “Treetop Lover” All the Zombies just call him “Sir”…And he’s bad, bad Big Joe Hart. The baddest man in the whole damn town. Badder than old King Kong. And meaner than a junkyard dog…And solid as the aged diamond he is, pulling…off a fingertip wonder-save at 1-0 and blocking a sickening score-halfer with his magnificent breasts. Crucial moments in a game that may have defined the season. Goalkeeping magnificence in action.

GREGGS THE BAKER – 6.5/10 – Much more zip about Greggsy, probably due to the regular 3pm start that gave him time for a nap after the morning bake-off. We benefitted with more left-side presence as he was sprightly into challenges and interceptions, nicking things and winning duels; his most comprehensive 90 minutes in a while.

WAYNE GRETZKY – 6.5/10 – Adjusted his game slightly to cope with the extra threat he knew these scurrilous shysters would present. We didn’t get as much surging overlapping play as normal, but added solidity instead.

OF JUSTICE – 7/10 – Much more like the zoned-in ginger Baresi from autumnal heights. He had a genuine threat to deal with and handled the occasion with composed focus; no shoddy passing or dozing off. Today exemplified why he’s held that sweeper-ish role – all about sharpness of mind and positional awareness.

GET CARTER – 7.5/10 – “I’ll mess you up. It’s my job.” And with that promise ringing in his jug ears, Fiveheid Lawrence The Loyalist ended up receding further than his hairline to play defensive midfield. ‘Comprehensive’ applied to other player’s games (re: Greggs) means all-round competency. With CCV, it’s basically comprehensively rag-dolling anyone in his way. Big Mhan wants title. Big Mhan will dine on Zombies to get it.

CALMAC – 7/10 – Yas! The metronome is back, almost. Not 100% but 100% committed to the cause, lighting up the second half with a scintillating recovery run and double Diet–smashing tackles that needs the Chariots Of Fire soundtrack played over it. He’s going to be finely-tuned for the final four and should lift that double as a deserving Captain Fantastic.

THE BUILDER – 8.5/10 MOTM – Swarthy gallus genius; that’s what wins you titles. The bhoy’s back in his killer groove after some turbulent early months of the year. His pressing was quality, surpassed by his passing – a down-the-park- with-yer-mates-hail-mary-special to set up the 2nd. And his clinical penalty swept high into the rigging was the icing on an O’Reilly-constructed indispensable win. And he also left the dining room accessible. (See what I did there, John Cleese afficonados?)

HAKUNA HATATE – 7/10 – Another vital cog revving back up towards his best from an injury-ravaged season. Laid on the opener with a clever delivery right into the heart of darkness. Looked ingenuitive for the rest of his time, perhaps just about 10% away from premuim Reo who’d have snapped up at least one of the openings presented to him.

JAMESY – 7.5/10 – “Go down, Jamesy!” is an exclamation heard often, in certain circumstances…But, “Go down, Jamesy!” was the unanimous cry today after – inversely – it was his turn to ‘take one in the face.’ Fnarr.A mirror incident of Yang’s Meth Star dismissal went unpunished, maybe only because Jamesy is so honest. Or thick-heided. Then we got a Prestwick Pele performance of unusual intensity – very busy as opposed to bursts of activity. It was good old-fashioned wing play that, while not providing a goal, kept Hearts occupied on both flanks and left them very much like a Jamesy conquest – tied up in knots, exhausted, and happy to see the back of him.

KILLER MUSHROOM – 8/10 – And Lo, the sand(man)skrit tablet scriptures read: “The title’s in his boots. Feed him and win it all.” As written. And the prodigal son finally relented to the wisdom of the a(n)ges and played and serviced the tiny, deadly, skelper. As Colossians 1:12-13 said, ‘Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of the League of Champions.’

TAKINTE – 6/10 – The only Hooped shirt that appeared hesitant in the face of secondary ugliness. Not that he had a bad game; he was just – “Over-deliberate in his use of the ball and, bizarrely for a damned German, reluctant to shoot on sight.” – General Sir Anthony Cecil Hogmany Melchett

SUBS –

DUNCAN IDAHO – N/A – Kept up the general vibe when he appeared – hustling and chasing down everything and anything.

TONIO IWATAO – 6/10 – Something strangely comforting about having both Calmac and Tomoki in midfield together; a placebo of extra security.

SAINT BERNARDO – N/A – “Jee-sus, Matt O’Reilly’s flaming everywhere today! Like there are two of him out there…” Alright, I hadn’t realised he’d been subbed on.

LORD KATSUMOTO – N/A – Yas! Prior to his appearance in the new series of ‘The Boys’ on Amazon (or ‘The Bhoys’…) our indestructible perpetual-motion-engine Japanese superhero makes a heralded appearance, mainly for the brief few minutes footage of him hunting down their fullback like a demented wolverine savaging a spring lamb, that was immediately fired over to Tavpen to ruin his Saturday night pre-match pumping of Lundstrum. And he cried. Immediately.

BRIAN DE – N/A – ‘What kind of pass is that? suicidal.’ ‘What kind of pass is that? Marvellous.’ The Palma Paradox, in two moments of involvement.

THE SHNAKE – 8/10 – The apostate claws his way back up out of the leper pit, eyes upon the apostle status once more. And there’s not a slip or mis-step or lost grip that will forgive at this stage. Every one MUST be a winner, and today was perhaps the biggest relief of all. His season’s nemisis, Nasalsmith, rolls into town with the happy simps from Edinburgh’s dark side, looking for another silken Celtic scalp to parade back down Gorgie Gargoyle Gorge to the Half-Zombie troglydite hordes. Not today, Festival Queen. Buck got his Rodgering spot-on, and is but four wins from redemption in the Timite hallowed vaults.

MIBBERY – 5/10 – Snickery-snickery – the sound Clancy Drew makes as he attempts to stumble and stagger and glitch the Celtic difference engine. But even with the intermittent, retrograde finickity fouls and contradictory awards designed to infuriate, this Celtic championship software’s running too smoothly on high-clocked processors to freeze at the behest of rogue anomalies in the matrix.

ON CELTIC SHORTS…Mind Games Masterclass – Brendan Rodgers is pure Box Office

OVERALL – 8.5/10 – Best performance of the season. Relatively speaking. The list of ‘Flaming Things That We Know Will Go Badly Wrong Today’ was already written in your head after the excruciating failures on multiple occasions to kill off teams and concede countless points. But not today. Even at 2-0 with ten to go the Bhoys were relentless. Like my heartbeat. Yet, on reflection – why so serious?

Every component played its part and the title-winning machine fired up into kill-frenzy mode after a stuttering opening few minutes. I guess it was the two previous anguishing and demoralising losses to this cohort of Zombie-enablers that seemed ominous – happy like their gimp-suited support to be enthusiastically slapped by the Bears time and time again (check the stats, apologists) yet who seem overcome by a seedy, unhealthy excitement when there’s a hooped bandwagon to upset.

But not today. On this day of days. May the 4th mess you up. The Bhoys are dead-set on course, hopefully dead-set in belief. Just win, win, win, and the glory days are here again. And now we wait. For the capitulation at Mordor. For the schadenfreude Saturday looming. For the sweet taste of torment.

And the smell of charred Zombie carcass. Smells like… Victory?

Tick-Tock.

Go Away Now

Sandman

ON CELTIC SHORTS…Brendan not watching Rangers as Celtic boss lets scoreboard talk