SANDMAN’S DEFINITIVE RATINGS: CELTIC @ MAMMA MIA
“No puedo anotar contra el Celtic. Entonces, para aliviar la presión, tengo relaciones sexuales con perros callejeros. Todos necesitan un pasatiempo, ¿verdad?*
Alfredo Morelos
“Celtic are bad. Celtic fans are bad. Celtic say lots of bad words. Racialisisism and Sectanarianisism. My Mum is good. Aberdeen are bad. I am family man.”
*Alicante Celts are available for translating services on social media if required.
THE WALL – 8/10
Sheer monolithic presence – really great save with that big flicked forearm at 1-0; cannot underestimate the importance of such a stop in the grand scheme of the match; smart for everything else thrown at him, too.
JULLIEN CLARY – 6/10
Ya big fop – almost selling the jerseys then recovering with important plays to defy their adventurism. Like VVD before him, you see the class slip into ennui, slip towards calamity. Stay sharp, mon ami.
JOZO – 6.5/10
Trusted by Lennony for a tough away trip, and ultimatley, rigthly so. He is our finest natural defender – when fully fit – and you DO know that whatever his form may be, Jozo plays to Gulag rules- NO fleckaboutery. So he did his job tonight ably; filling in well for the haphazard French and Norwegian stalwarts as they tended to spazz-out.
GREGGS THE BAKER – 7/10
What can we say? Industrious, with the toughest task of all Celts tonight – keeping their EPL loan winger quiet; he had a battle on his hands first half but do not underestimate his quality as he eventually dominated a player raised in the elite English academies. That’s what getting up at 4am every morning to get the rolls just right does for ye, ya soft Southern bassas…
AJER – 5.5/10
Sleeping on the longboats never did the Vikings any good, and the big fella looked weary all game. The rhythms of the North Sea didn’t seem to shake from Sunday’s blips and he was unusually in error many a time tonight. His luck that we were never pinned back enough for it to count against us. Blame Loki.
BROON – 7.5/10
Ach, he’s getting monotonous. Superbly monotonous; always the man there to quell the drama as they break, always the guy there to facilitate your conversations about who just blew out a promising attack – and the mhan clearing up the mess of others as conversations flow around misbegotten attempts at guile and craft; always Broon to reset the Celtic machine and press retry. Captain, Leader, Winner.
CALMAC – 8.5/10 MOTM
Pipping French Eddy with his sheer match-winning magnificence. Where were we going in that tete-a-tete before Calmac gathered in his own half and ran the length to brilliantly tee up Griff? After eight minutes, where were we headed before he gathered and played in Eddy for the opener? His guile and decision-making leveraged the difference and his refreshed eye for goal killed them dead. Magnificent footballing performance.
HOWEVER – that ridiculous first touch cost him a point in ratings –
flicking it up like some showboating drag queen before belting it into the net on the volley just inside the 18-yard line was pure ostentatious flamboyance, when smacking it fist time from 20 yards and thus cementing the 18/1 Skybet special ‘Calmac to score from OUTSIDE the box’ bet – upon which some skint observers had placed 20 flecking bucks – was the OBVIOUS play. Flecking showboater…
SAM JACKSON – 7.5/10
DO NOT underestimate the power of the Muthuflecka, Muthufleckas – CLEAR early on that his stability was going to be key as Calmac roved, Broon covered and they pressed and harried and broke at every opportunity, as they promised to do. Muthuflecka was on it, quiet style, tidy, not wasting bullets on Flock of Seagulls flyboys but sitting deeper than usual and playing tidy as he could.
Ball bounced like a MUTHUFLECKA right as he went to put the killer cap in their asses, but deserved his accolade upon relief, though Lennony might be best advised NOT to put a headlock on a DAYM departing Muthuflecka, if he knows what’s good for his white Irish ass.
FORREST – 6/10
Flashing in Motherwell is never a good idea, not since they introduced the ‘show-it-eat-it’ punishment maxim, very popular with the town’s young ‘ladies’. As is applause. Sorry, the clap…So Jamesy played it cool; too cool, mostly and we never got to see the devastating turn of form that wins games. We never needed it,
though he again came into the match more as they tired of containing him and space let him produce. Keep the burners lit, Prestwick demi-Ghod.
GRIFF – 7.5/10
7.5 = 75%, and I called that previously – he’s three-quarters the Griff we knew and three-quarters there at any particular time… A hat-trick was teasing him like a burd in a Leith club, a sky-ed sitter, a heider against the bar… Yet he still notched one vital beauty off Calmac, stroking it in like… Well, Irvine Welsh can finish that one.
Griff’s almost back. He’s linking and dinking and winking. He’ll be – surely – fully tuned-in for the big glory finish to the NINE, and we’ll be celebrating with him like he was our missing Manson-family reject, lost to tumultuous LSD-propagated landscapes of the psyche since ’67, yet somehow regurgitated into a coruscating present, a baffled and variegated, doltish, time-travelling soccer savant …
FRENCH EDDY – 8.5/10
C’est facile à faire quand on est French Eddy. He floats at you like a spectral Larsson, invoking heroic superstars of times past, but reminding you he’s right here right now, taking on the fittest and fastest defenders in SPL history, weaving and burning them like Franz Klammer in a Lambo.
He passes the ball into the net under pressure – like a jazz-funk Jimmy Greaves.
He lashes those free-kicks over the wall and in like a circus ringmaster whipping a teetering dwarf off a sequinned-showgirl’s overstuffed titties.
He’s 9 million bucks worth of 50 million bucks and we are NOW finally servicing him with a strike partner, and we are NOW seeing the apocalyptic and mythological devastation he can wreak upon mere mortal defences.
Him and Dembele together; Jesus would have needed a hankie. But him and Griff/Klimala? – Ibrox eyes will bleed.
SUBS –
KLIMALA KLIMAX (© Anonymous historian perv) – N/A
Soon…Soon, we will see the evolution of 70s erotica… Sunday?
ROGIC – N/A
Filling in, cobber, like there was any need for anything more than flip-flops and a barbie with the GB by the time he wandered onto the park.
CORPUS CHRISTIE – 6/10
Looked lively and harried them for the length of his cameo; demeanour of a man determined to re-establish his indispensability ( I thank you, unnecessarily-long-word fans. Oops, there I go again…).
LENNONY – 8/10
Tricky. A hard-wrought win at Hamilton, then it’s over to the neighbouring Shadowlands to face the Murderwell crew (And the monicker is no lightweight sobriquet – homicide is a respected hobby in those parts…).
So Lennony sets up 3-5-2 and hopes for the best… No, he sets up 3-5-2 and KNOWS we’re the best; ultimate faith in his players and system since the reset in January and, Jings, we’re reaping the rewards of some swashbuckling away wins on the trot.
This is how we wrestle the NINE back into the arms of the righteous; playing the Celtic way and asking any would-be conqueror to step-up and match the Bhoys levels of sheer commitment and wizardry. Lennony’s the magician behind this enterprising rampage towards glory and don’t you forget it – if Snakey’s team had tasked three hazardous away games on the trot and recorded a 3-0, 4-1, and 4-0 there’d be Brendanistas flopping all over the interweb in their most glamorous frocks.
Lennony’s gotten us into pole position for football history with a growl, a smirk and pragmatism sprinkled with a touch of fabulousness. And don’t you forget that if the end plays out as beautifully as it’s been set up.
13 to go. Unlucky for some. Not for Lennony.
OVERALL – 8.5/10
So you go to Fir Tree Park AFTER Christmas and expect to come away with… What?
Sorry, it’s NOT a garden centre and there’s no trees capable of growing on their tottie-howkin’ pitch. But let’s be fair instead of searching for cheap gags – although that’s why I’m here, right? – the surface DID look better than Celtic Park and they DID open up on us and exert pressure and force the Bhoys to get on it from the start.
But the Bhoys DID apply themselves, and class told and we achieved a very, very good result at a very, very tricky venue; downfall of past Hoops, a rueful hope of Bears everywhere.
We’ve seen this movie before – after the Black Xmas 2 debacle I hoped Groundhog Day was upon us again; well Punxsutawney Phil did not see his shadow on Sunday so it’s an early spring – how right the little rodent was, unlike the little Blue rodent currently soiling the airwaves with his Escobar-ish rags to ragabonds story.
We’re in the rebooted movie we wondered about – whether it takes us all the way to a satisfying conclusion this time or is derailed by an ideology counter-productive to creativity, logic and natural justice; like how Disney flecked Star Wars…
Not this Celtic. This Celtic is an Oscar winner without needing the hype. We might have to wait a few months more, but the awards are heading our way.
Soon.
Sandman. Off the set.
ALSO ON THE CELTIC STAR…
‘Maybe Celtic’s Best performances of the season so far,’ David Potter…see HERE.
Ask the question Celtic, New contract Eddy? – Niall J on Motherwell 0 Celtic 4…see HERE.
Celtic Were First To Challenge Racism In Days Of Empire…see HERE.
COMING UP NEXT – SANDMAN’S DEFINITIVE PLAYER RATINGS…
