THINGS ARE DEFINITELY HAPPENING. Yesterday seemed like the first day of a new era for Scottish football and all the Premiership clubs, after the news of the various agreements reached by the SPFL and Sky Sports broke, all started to get pro-active and pitch the plans to their supporters. It feels a bit like a General Election has been called and the various parties are all selling their manifestos to their core voters.

Aberdeen were first out of the traps, Peter Lawwell followed with a cautious, holding statement promising more details shortly and the Rangers today confirmed that they are planning to sell part of their car-park to fund some development work on a disused building to create conference and concert area and some retail space.

The Betfred Cup will be happening but unlike in previous seasons when the early rounds are played in the summer, this year the start date is going to be in October.

Fans could be back in a partial basis from November at the earliest but a gradual introduction of ‘bums on seats’ is targeted for the end of the year with a full return of crowds scheduled for January.

Previously we heard that the SPFL and Sky Sports were looking at holding back the Glasgow Derbies until fans can return so that would mean perhaps the first one back could be in January and of course it will be at Celtic Park.

Celtic and indeed all the clubs have to clarify the season ticket pitch in this most remarkable of all seasons. Basically your season ticket is going to be part-virtual, part gold-dust access to Paradise as Celtic chase 10IAR. And you’ll want to maintain your place on the HCTS because the Scottish Cup 2020 and 2021 semis finals and finals plus the Betfred Cup final are likely have fans there so Celtic are chasing Treble numbers 4 and 5 next season as well as Ten-in-a-Row.

Dear knows where we are with European football, the Rangers are still to play their away game in the Europa League against Bayer Leverkusen after losing the home tie 3-1 on 12 March. That competition as well as the Champions League have still to be played to a conclusion and the qualifiers for the new season have to be sorted.

But for now it’s domestic football and Celtic need to clarify as much of what is going to happen soon as possible, judging from the reaction to yesterday’s news on social media.

Leigh Griffiths was put up in front of the media last night and we reported on his appearance on Superscoreboard shortly after it happened. The striker had more to say though and there’s plenty in his press call, as reported by David Friel at Scottish Sun, to consider.

First the Celtic goalscorer outlined his thoughts on playing BCD football with no supporters present.

“It will be strange going to some stadiums, like Ibrox or Tannadice or wherever, and I won’t be getting any stick,” Griffiths joked, trying to see the funny side of the situation. “It’ll feel weird and I’ll be feeling quite good! If you see practice matches at training, it’s usually 11 vs 11 with coaches at the side of the pitch. So it’s not going to be totally unusual.

“Of course it will be different without fans. But for us it is just going to be about going out and playing the games. I think everyone is just looking forward to getting matches back on to the TV,” Griffiths said.

“Whether it is behind closed doors or with fans there, the English Premier League are trying to get it done. I have been watching the Bundesliga, too. There have been some good games.”

Make no mistake, while the players will get on with playing the games, as we’ve seen in Germany and are about to see in England, any Celtic team thrives on the backing they receive from the Celtic support who are ALWAYS there to cheer on the team. So it is going to be strange, very strange for players and supporters alike.

“The quicker the fans get back to enjoy their football, the better. The game is all about the fans and, regardless of whether it is a home game or an away game, you want people there.

“When we have away games, there are often more Celtic fans there than there are for the home team. We want them back, but we also need to comply with the Government,” Griffiths noted.

“We know our fans will be behind us, even if they are not inside the stadium and are watching on the TV. We’ll find our ways to deal with whatever happens,” he said.

There’s certainly a sense of excitement at getting back to training next week. Guys like Callum McGregor, James Forrest and others who have been playing year round football for the last three of four years will hopefully see a benefit in the enforced lay-off. Always look on the bright-side folks.

“We’ll go back next week into training and we’ll have a meeting about how big next season is. We know it is going to be tough and teams will want to stop us, especially Rangers. But it is just about what we do and we’ll concentrate on our own game. We’ll look forward to it. Hopefully at the end of the season we will be history-makers again,” Griffiths stated.

History makers. Season tickets at Paradise for this new season would have been gold-dust without the pandemic as Celtic aim for 10-in-a-row. But leagues aren’t won in the first half of the season (keep that one quiet, we don’t want Steven Gerrard finding out) and come January IF there are any unsold season tickets there will be a stampede to get them but they won’t come with a chance to get tickets for the busy cup schedule of games at Hampden!

One teammate that Griffiths was asked about yesterday was his striking partner Odsonne Edouard, who inevitably has been attracting attention around Europe. Griffiths wants him to stay for at least one more season. It appears that Odsonne is in no rush to leave Celtic at the moment so the prospect of Griffiths and Edouard up front is mouth watering to say the least.

“I want him to be here, 100 per cent. I see rumours all of the time that he is being linked with massive clubs. But don’t forget we are a massive club as well, so we want him to stay.

“If he stays one more season and plays as well as he has done over the last 18 months, he’d be a big, big asset to us reaching the Ten-in-a-Row.”

This year started with Neil Lennon reverting to Martin O’Neill’s favoured 3-5-2 formation after Steven Gerrard ‘won the league’ on 29 December. Celtic starting scoring for fun and soon were 13 points clear of the Ibrox side with a superior goal difference of 25 and had the remaining 8 games have been played that was only likely to increase.

Griffiths is hopeful that Lenny will stick with this winning formula – remember he scored a hat-trick in Celtic last game against St Mirren at the beginning of March. “It’s up to the manager to decide what games we would play and what formations he will use.

“But I think he knows that there is an understanding there and it’s not as if it is something that is going to be chucked together. We know how we are going to play together.

“It’s an interesting one and I’m sure the fans are desperate to watch it in the stands or watch on the TV when we come back to see how we can continue the partnership. Odsonne likes to come short and I like to go long, so we complement each other. It was a bit stop-start for me in the first half of last season, but after January we were on fire.

“It would have been interesting to see how the gaffer would have gone at Ibrox in the game that was due before the shutdown. If he’d have played one up or two up? We’ll never know, but we will see when the games come around again what the gaffer is thinking.”

Not sure why Griff doesn’t just ask his manager if he’d have gone with both players at Ibrox. Probably because he knows, like we do that he would have, and you know what, we were done out of another Beautiful Sunday! Oh well. there’s always next year. Here we go, Ten-in-a-Row!

Here We Go – Quadruple and Quintuple Trebles, 10IAR, Virtual Season Tickets for BCD football then fans back end of the year | The Celtic Star https://t.co/HbScf8YpOi

— The Celtic Star Editor – INVINCIBLE (@CelticStarMag) June 3, 2020