Celtic and Rangers are playing pandemic poker with star strikers - Hugh Keevins
I was the one who interviewed David Murray for this
newspaper all those years ago and almost dropped the phone when he delivered the immortal line.
“If Celtic put down a fiver I’ll put down a tenner.”
It was characteristic bravado from the Rangers owner, living it large and well aware he was speaking in headlines that would infuriate those who supported his greatest rivals.
But it was a strategy that didn’t turn out all that well in the end, as history has subsequently shown.
Murray lived for the day while Celtic’s guardian at the time, Fergus McCann, planned for tomorrow.
But that was then and this is now, with the fivers and tenners back out again for a game of pandemic poker.
Rangers have invested millions of pounds nobody expected they had on two new players while assuming they will recoup that financial outlay through the sale of Alfredo Morelos.
Rule one of transfer deals – it isn’t over until the buying club’s cheque has cleared at the bank and the player has posed for photographs with his new team’s scarf above his head.
Celtic, meanwhile, are supposed to be poised to receive a £40million bid for Odsonne Edouard.
What would Fergus have done under those same
circumstances?
He would have had Edouard sent up to his office. He would have informed the player of his new postcode so that his family could visit.
And he would have asked Odsonne to close the door behind him on the way out.
Ten In A Row?
Fergus wouldn’t have given it a second thought.
Same as when he told his manager Tommy Burns that he wasn’t bothered about Walter Smith’s Rangers winning nine-in-a-row and equalling Celtic’s cherished record set under Jock Stein.
The wee man paid attention to balance sheets and let the fans get on with supporting the names on the team sheets.
This was the man who Andy Ritchie, then Celtic’s chief scout, remembers querying a lunch receipt for a sandwich bought in Zurich airport.
The delicacy was Chicken Kiev and Fergus told him he should have had chicken on its own without the Russian embellishment because it was four francs cheaper. That’s three quid to you and me.
The years since then have vindicated McCann’s approach, given the different directions in which the clubs have travelled since Murray departed Ibrox.
But Rangers spending money with, as yet, no guarantee of getting it back and Celtic potentially prepared to knock back a transfer fee that would obliterate all others before it in Scottish football is a risky business.
There’s no income from domestic football while stadiums are closed due to Covid-19 and there’s no sign of fans being allowed inside Celtic Park or Ibrox any time soon.
To say nothing of the fear that this season, like the one before it, may not go the distance if there’s a second phase of the coronavirus. But I know why they’re doing it.
Celtic and Rangers are redefining what is meant by winning at all costs.
Meanwhile, Arsenal are making dozens of employees redundant and the president of Barcelona, Josep Maria Bartomeu, has said the pandemic “doesn’t invite large investment”.
Glasgow’s finest are, ironically, united by the one thing which divides them – and that is a rivalry so intense the clubs daren’t fail their fans. Or else.
When Celtic won the original Nine In A Row in the mid-1970s it is a statistical fact their average home attendance had started to fall.
Too much of a good thing had actually created boredom. Now?
There are Celtic fans who will go to meet their maker feeling their lives have been unfulfilled unless they bear witness to 10-in-a-row.
Douglas Park will know there are Rangers fans similarly caught up in this game of emotion versus economics.
You shouldn’t be able to turn down, or spend, funny money when the pandemic threatens to complicate life even further.
But nor can you underestimate the supporters’ hostility if the season goes pear-shaped for either of the teams with most to lose.
Celtic and Rangers are in a trap of history’s making.
If I had that cherry picker from Pittodrie last weekend I would hoist it up outside Celtic Park and take a look inside the chief executive Peter Lawwell’s office to see how he’s dealing with
his personal game of stick or twist.
He has what was referred to during the summer of
acrimonious dealings over the decision to call the
league early, a fiduciary responsibility to his
club’s shareholders.
But these are the shareholders McCann brought on board when he saved the club from foreclosure at the bank and they don’t want to know.
They want 10 In A Row and the team that delivers it becomes the equal of the Lisbon Lions in their eyes.
Rangers have been through administration and liquidation and there are fans who would rather go through all of that again than watch Celtic make history at their expense.
Whenever Fergus was confronted by a Glasgow taxi driver who wanted to give him the benefit of his wisdom he would abruptly end the conversation by saying: “Don’t talk, just drive.”
If Celtic sell Edouard and don’t win the league, or if Rangers don’t sell Morelos and fail to win the title, Lawwell and Park won’t get a taxi driven by a supporter of their club to pick them up.
Cash or credit.
from Poker
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