Group E, Celtic…

I love the Champions League. It’s where we want to be. Zadoc the Priest and all that jazz. All the sweeter since our Glasgow rivals aren’t in it. That gives us a head start of £20 million, maybe more. It’s been an underwhelming start to the season. We haven’t played well. We’ve lost and drawn to the team at the bottom of the division in a home tie. A disastrous couple of results.  For the first time in over ten years, going to Ibrox, I didn’t think we will win. Like many others I talked to, we’d have taken a draw. The worst-case scenario we knew was Rangers make the Champions League and beat us on Sunday. That’s gone. The best-case scenario is we beat Rangers and the pressure flips. Beale is the dunderhead and not Rodgers. We’re half way there. I’m not so pessimistic now.

We’ve brought in a centre-half. That’s massive. Johnston is back at right-back. Yang looks a game changer and we’ve got about a million wingers. I’m not sorry to see Seed Haksbanovic leaving. I also don’t know anything about the midfielder we’re bring on loan from Benfica.  Try before you buy worked out well for two stalwarts, Jota (from Benfica)  and Carter-Vickers (from Tottenham). I thought Hatate was one of the best midfielders in Britain last year. He’ll be missed. I hope we hang on to him. What we do know it Turnbull isn’t up the to the job. We need better and quickly.

Last year, with that Australian bloke as manager, we got Real Madrid. It was fun at Parkhead for a while. A few years back it seemed we got Barcelona every year. Of course, we’d that epic win under Lennon. It was a fluke result, but what a fluke result, a guy I know even had it on his coupon. I loved it, even though we only saw the ball in passing to them. Barcelona under Pep was the best team I’ve ever seen. When we went there to shut up shop and defend, we couldn’t. PSG took seven off us in Paris, but Dembele scored first. We actually played well. But every time PSG got to the edge of the box, they inevitably scored. We inevitably didn’t. It would be no great surprise if we got Pep’s Manchester City they’d take seven off us. Bayern with Harry Kane. Well, they might have taken seven. Harry would fill his boots. Napoli, the Italian Champions, was one of the best teams in the completion last year. Playing Rangers they could rest most of their squad in Napoli and still win easily. They’d be too much for us.

Feyenoord, well, they don’t terrify me so much. I often eat my words. The Dutch like the Spanish, Atletico Madrid, and Italians, Lazio, will utter all the usual plaudits about the stadium and the fans. What a great club Celtic are, while delighted they’ve got a Scottish club that almost guaranteed them six points.  

Rodgers will give us the spiel about having to raise our game. Absolutely. He’ll need to raise his game too. He’s quick to remind us what he’s won. We don’t care. We see drab performances and players that have regressed. Greg Taylor, for example, had a shout for player of the year last year. This season he’s lost almost every one-on-one with whatever winger he’s been up against. That’s continued from pre-season.

Redemption is quite simple. It comes on Sunday. We know even a mediocre Celtic team can beat Rangers. But we can be bullied. Win at Ibrox against the worst team in Champion League history. Don’t disgrace the jersey. Then we can talk about glamour ties, while expecting to get humped, but somehow believing in miracles. A bit like St Johnstone, in fact. But we don’t mention them now. We’ve moved on. The last year of the four-tier Champions League format. Next year, I just want us to be in it again, as Champions, not necessarily of Europe. If I was thinking big, we qualify for something in Europe after Christmas that’s not a duck egg.    

James Crawford (2023) Wild History

I like books like this. Hidden history doesn’t follow the kings and queens route. I’m biased in that way because those are not my people. Have little to do with what I know.

James Crawford suggests we look and see. ‘Just how much of the past still lives with in the present. An invitation to explore the unexplored and make pilgrimage to the lost and overlooked. An invitation to ‘use the country itself, as its own map’

Our mind doesn’t need to put on grim mourning clothes. He advocates simple curiosity. Lyrical and poetic whether describing abandoned machinery like derricks and quarry carts, or the machinery of life, waves, overgrown grass, dandelions and pink thistles.  

Human life leaves a mark. Some cultures walk more lightly on the landscape as John Muir suggested.  Crawford seeks out the places in Scotland where these human maps are fading, but still hold the resonance of stories and history of place.

He chooses 55 places to investigate the and where of what used to be. But admits to whimsical choice. It could easily have been 555. His subdivisions of place into four categories—worked, sacred, contested and sheltered—bleed into one another and can be taken as equally arbitrary based on hearsay.

A rich cultural landscape that takes in most of Scotland. Canna, Eigg, Staff, Jura, Oban, Fort William et al, but equally the lowlands and places like Alexandria, Glasgow and the outskirts of Edinburgh.  

Closest to home and within cycling distance, as James travelled to many of the sites he visited, The Sacred is often easier to mark off as being different. Yet, if we look here, we see Glasgow emptying and the schemes filled up with shoddy buildings that suited an idea that had already past.

St Peter’s Seminary, Cardross.

‘For decades, Gillespie, Kidd & Coia had been the firm of choice for Scotland’s Catholic Church, and in particular the archdiocese of Glasgow. The postwar period had seen radical changes to the social fabric of the city, with mass demolitions of the old, decaying tenements, and the relocation of large sections of the population to new homes or, indeed, entirely new towns. These communities – often built from scratch – needed purpose-built places for religious education and worship. And so, increasingly, modern architecture began to reimagine what spaces for faith and spiritualism could look like. Churches were being built to stark and striking geometric designs – all hard lines and unadorned exteriors, fashioned in greatslabs, or huge boxes. Everything from roofs and walls, even down to crosses and altars, was being cast in bare concrete

Viewed in crude terms, the whole thing had the appearance of a UFO crashlanded from outerspace, or at least from the West Coast of California, which, in the context of a hillside above the little town of Cardross on the Firth of Clyde in the 1960s, amounted to pretty much the same thing. The new seminary was finally opened in November 1966. And, almost instantly, itwas an anachronism. The previous year had seen a fundamental shift in Catholic Church policy – most specifically a desire that priests be trained not in isolated seclusion, but in the heart of the communities that they would come to serve.’

But who did they serve? Read on

Celtic 0—0 St Johnstone.

Celtic fail to beat bottom of the table St Johnstone despite eight minutes of stoppage time. The Perth’s side record reads: played two, lost two. After the defeat away to Kilmarnock last weekend in the Cup, and before the Old Firm derby next Sunday, this is the kind of game you really want for a morale booster and to score a few goals. Alistair Johnston came back into the team. Gustaf Lagerbielke in central defence with Liam Scales. The Northern Irishman has his chance to show what he can do. He didn’t take it. St Johnstone had two late chances to take three points. Scales was involved in both and failed to defend on both counts. Joe Hart helping bail him out and make a disastrous score-line no worse.  

David Turnbull came back into the team. Not that you’d have noticed. He took too long to hit a first-half chance and his shot was blocked.

Yang was the one bright spot. He cut inside and created a number of chances. He also was set up and could and perhaps should have scored.  We seem to be after a million wingers, when it’s obvious we need defenders.

Kyogo whipped a fine shot past the post in ten minutes. Celtic dominated possession and everything was going to plan. Matt O’Reilly was having one of those afternoons where he was strolling it. But the young English/Dane missed two (absolute) sitters from six yards from cut backs, in the first and second half, and had another two decent chances. If representatives from Bologna or any other club are looking at him, they should look away.  

We know for teams like St Johnstone to have a chance of picking up anything their keeper must play a blinder. The Bulgarian, Mitov did that to an extent. Celtic had nineteen corners, he came out and punched a few, caught a few, but we didn’t win any fifty-fifties or trouble him. O’Reilly hit him with two shots from point blank. Either are dreadful misses or good saves. You choose. Lots of cutbacks and balls across the six-yard box. Not takers.  The result is the same.  Maeda cut inside, in the first-half and ballooned the ball into a part of the stadium that doesn’t see daylight. That about sums us up.  

St Johnstone had no shots on goal in the first half and two decent chance from breakaway late in the game. Celtic were flat, all over the pitch. This is not a team you’d fear. Managers need luck. Any luck we’ve had seems to have deserted us. I’m not confident going to Ibrox (are you?) and in recent years that’s been the exception to the rule. Of course, we can turn it around. In a two-horse race, we only need to stay ahead of the other mob. But this has got that feeling of the disastrous season after, ironically, Rodgers left. I always love the Champions League. We take some hammerings, but that’s the nature of the beast. This current team, I couldn’t see getting a point. Here’s hoping, I’m proved wrong. We’ve all the money in the world, but nothing much to show for it on the pitch. Poor. Poor. Poor.

Joan Didion (2017) South And West From a Notebook.

I’ve read bits of Joan Didion’s writing and decided to read more. South And West translates into two sections on ‘Notes on the South’ and ‘California Notes’.

She explains: ‘John and I were living in Franklin Avenue in Los Angeles. I had wanted to revisit the South, so we flew there for a month in 1970. The idea was to start in New Orleans and from there we had no plan…I seem to remember John drove.’

Her autobiographical impressions resurfaced in Where I Was From. What she already knew. White child, like her, were the most privileged children in America, better still if you were a boy, but everything was melting away. Holding the line was based on lies about their collective past, good old-fashioned Southern decorum and Christian values.

‘On the Road from Meridan to Tuscaloosa, Alabama

Signs: Welcome to Alabama! Take a Fun Break!  782 000 Alabama Baptists Welcome You!

Dixie Gas stations, all over, with Confederate flags and grillwork.

In Dempolis around lunchtime the temperature was around 96 degrees and all movement seemed liquid. An Alabama state trooper drove slowly around town. I put a penny in the weighing machine on the main street. My weight was ninety-six and my fortune was “You are inclined to let your heart rule your head.”

In the drugstore a young girl was talking to a woman at the counter. “I’m gonna run off and get married,” the girl said. “Who to?” the woman asked. “The girl crumpled her straw paper. “I’m gonna get married,” she said stubbornly, “I don’t care who.”

Didion was an anomaly because she kept her hair straight. Only girls under twelve kept their hair straight like that in the South. She asked the girl doing her hair if she was still at school. She snorted, she was almost twenty. She’d been married for three years and lived in a trailed with her husband and three kids. It was too hot at night and too hot during the day. They hoped for better.

‘Downriver and Home

The names of plantations going south on 61: Baconia, Lydia and Evanna. On the billboards: PESTICIDE DYANAP. A plantation sound of Onward: Reality Plantation.’

Agent Orange is alive and well and has come home. ‘Silent Spring’ did not reach the South.

‘We stopped at Walker Percy’s in Covington, Louisiana. We sat out the back by the bayou and drink gin and tonics…Walker never paid us any mind: “The South,” he said, “owes a debt to the North…tore the Union apart once…and now only the South can save the North.”

Didion’s road trip offers a snapshot of where America was more than fifty years’ ago. Good-old-boys hanging onto power and keeping their boot firmly down on ‘Riggers’ (source of content, the moron’s moron, and former President Trump). A system of privilege based on large chunks of government cash and subsidies keeping the system afloat. But a flaunting of the myth of frontier autonomy and going it alone mixed in with a hatred of government rules and taxation of any kind.  

Didion called these places the ‘psychic centre’.  A kind of American Stonehenge. The future… a ‘secret source’ of either benevolent or malevolent energy.’ With the election of Trump in 2016, it turned wholly malevolent. Perhaps the great tidal wave of history is turning? I’m not so sure.

Kilmarnock 1—0 Celtic

The holders of The Viaplay (League) Cup are out after an insipid performance. Marley Watkins’ second-half strike booked Kilmarnock’s place in the quarter-finals. With Carter-Vickers and Hatate injured, Brendan Rodgers went for a Nordic reshuffle. Gustav Lagerbiekle comes in to play beside Nawrocki on Kilmarnock’s plastic pitch. We’ve only seen cameos of Holm, but here he starts with Turnbull dropping out.

We know how Derek McInnes sets up his team. Eleven men behind the ball and hope for a breakaway or free kick into the box to win it. No surprises as we looked to book a place in the quarter-finals that’s exactly how it played out. Perhaps if Taylor, who was off the pitch injured, we might have defended better, but when you rely on what-ifs there’s something seriously wrong.

We know we’re playing on plastic. We knew how Kilmarnock would play. I wasn’t sure how Celtic would play (with Ange it was a given).  Kyogo was unlucky with an early chance. Matt O’Riley had the chance of the first-half, but his shot from inside the box was powderpuff. But quite simply, we didn’t create enough.

Our poor marking at free kicks and corners continued. Ndaba at the start of the first and second half was left unmarked and should have scored with headers. The Kilmarnock goal scorer also claimed for an early penalty after going down outside the box, claiming Gustav Lagerbielke had fouled him. Lagerbielke didn’t start well. He gave away a corner in thirty second with a failed passback to Joe Hart. His passing was erratic, he got bullied and needs to toughen up. But it’s a bit too early to say how good or poor his partnership wth Nawrocki might be. Carter-Vickers will play with one of them. The other will drop to the bench. For me that looks like Lagerbielke, but the American might be doubtful for Ibrox.    

Joe Hart started the second half with a good save from a Kyle Magennis’ shot at his near post. Then he did that walkabout thing, we’ve become familiar with, and set up a Kilmarnock attack with a poor pass. But he didn’t have lots to do and did have a reasonable game.

Our problem—apart from the pitch—was we lost most fifty-fifty duels or even sixty-forty. Sam Armstrong, for example, found too much space on the edge of the box to whip the ball into the danger area for the Kilmarnock goal. Too many backward passes. Our wingers were woeful. But the midfield didn’t show for the ball. Matt O’Riley and MacGregor were missing. Holm made a few shoddy passes but at least seemed to show for the ball.

We played better and with more zip after we lost the goal (as you’d expect).  Sead Haksabanovic came on and he went down in the last minutes for a penalty that wasn’t given. On tricky pitches like this the Montenegrin with his close control offers something different. But one of the ironies here is if he hadn’t played for the penalty, he’d have probably got it. He was caught by the defender.

The South Korean, Yang, had probably Celtic’s best chance. Eight yards out his effort was deflected over the bar. He looks to be going in the right direction and takes men on, but he really should have scored.

Weak in defence, disjointed and outmuscled in midfield, poor in attack. Even Kyogo couldn’t dig us out of a Rugby Park hole. There’s nothing good you can say about this Celtic team or performance today. The worry is it has been coming. Thank God we have no Champion League qualifiers or we’d be out. By this metric, Johnston, Carter-Vickers and Hatate have nothing to fear about losing their place in the team. Usually, we give a new manager a bit of leeway as we did Ange. Rodger had already used up all his goodwill before he got here. This was a regression to the mean, when Scottish teams had nothing much to fear from a Celtic team. Let’s hope we can turn it around next week, especially when we’re due at Ibrox in two weeks. I wasn’t overly confident going to Pittodrie. We got a result. I wasn’t confident coming to Rugby Park, we got a doing. I’m not overly confident going to Ibrox, which is unusual for me. It’s the start of the season. Lots to play for. But we’re on the outside looking in when the draw was made. Things can only get better? Discuss.     

Eastend Butcher

Life Lessons Number 5.

Aberdeen 1—3 Celtic.

Brendan Rodgers goes with the same team that defeated Ross County. He said before the game Celtic were ‘a work in progress. A lot of the principles will be the same’. For the first time in years, I was wary of going to Pittodrie. Three goals, two scored before half-time, one from Liel Abada, another from Kyogo, the third, our settler coming from Matt O’Riley. The young Englishman, who plays for Denmark under-21s, needs to add goals to his game. He’s been doing that. He’d a good shout today for being man of the match. The principle that matters most is winning. That’s two wins in two for Rodgers.  

It was end to end stuff. When that happens we expect Celtic to win, because we’ve better players. Duk and Mivoski conjured up a free kick on the edge of the Celtic box in the first minute. Leighton Clarkson fired it past the post. A let off for Celtic.

Celtic’s first goal was flagged for offside. Daizen Maeda’s cross shot might have been sneaking in, but Abada popped at the back post to make sure. Replays showed the shot wouldn’t have been going in and Abada wasn’t offside. VAR helps put us one up.

From the kick-off Maeda should have made it two from a cutback. His shot saved by Kelle Roos.

I’m prone to say most goals against Celtic are down to dodgy defending rather than the brilliance of the other team. Aberdeen’s equaliser comes into the former category. A ball over the top. Carter Vickers was the wrong side of Luís Lope. He allowed the Aberdeen forward to get to the bye-line and cut back for an unmarked Milovski. Maik Nawrocki nowhere man.

Former Drumchapel Amateur, Nicky Devlin, trumped that. He played a headed back pass to his keeper with Kyogo lurking. Kyogo scored with his usual efficiency. He proved unlucky with another effort and missed a good chance.  He never stops. Abada also hit the keeper when he really should have scored after being played in by Maeda.

Aberdeen won a succession of corners and free kicks. We’re a smallish team. That’s been a problem for us. Greg Taylor was brilliant last year. He got smashed with a ball in the face here. He’s had a dreadful preseason getting beaten too easily down his side, and that’s extended into the start of this season. No alarm for now, if Bernabei could defend, maybe he would be starting. Taylor needs to get back to where he was.  

 Two-goal Turnbull started, got booked and hooked at half-time. Reo Hatate came on, and for twenty minutes we looked much better with his presence He helped set up the Maeda miss—from which he should have scored—with an exquisite pass switching play to Abada. The Japanese substitute was himself substituted. But he’s a level above what we’ve got. Holm came on for Hatate and helped set up the third goal. There’s much to admire in Holm, he’s been talking the talk, we want him to do his talking on the park.

Yang looks good when he came on and Forrest looks rejuvenated. The former’s fast feet set up O’Riley for the killer third goal. We were dreadful in the opening spell against Ross County and could easily have lost a few goals. Hart was in the spotlight again, but he was good today. He even came out and caught a ball, clattered into substitute Stephen Welsh, who replace Carter Vickers as half-time. Perhaps he was telling him reinforcements are arriving this week and to pack his bag. Perhaps what was most noticeable was Hart kicked the ball long. It didn’t always work, or it worked better when Yang came on and he’d something to hit. But with Aberdeen’s forwards and midfielders pressing up and onto the Celtic back four it was a little reminder they too have big gaps in behind their defence. When we go to Ibrox this was be especially important. We’ve got the speed to hurt any team. We need to defend better. Ralston is no longer the worry, it’s shifted to the right-hand side. But for now, Greg Taylor has enough credit in his performances to cut him some slack. Our next game is on Kilmarnock’s plastic pitch. A surface he knows well. Hopefully, he gets his feet and season sorted. We’ve injury concerns. But new signings are coming. We’re growing into the season. At Celtic, of course, we’re always one game away from disaster. Quite simply, the better team won today, with a little help from Devlin. We’re already in the Promised Land of Champions League. We can wait and see until next weekend.

Tom Wright & Bradley Hope (2019) Billion Dollar Whale.

Few economics books top the New York Times Bestseller list. Billion Dollar Whale fits into another category of True Crime. Twenty-seven-year-old Jho Low stole around seven billion dollars—give or take tens of million—with the aid of a Malaysian investment fund. Nobody was really accounting. Low had supermodels on tap and celebrity parties included the A-list of Leonardo DiCaprio, Jamie Foxx, Britney Speirs and Miranda Kerr. Robert Di Nero put in an appearance in a party in the South of France. His son sold Low some high-end real estate in New York. Low created a Hollywood production company, acted as producer and helped finance the Wolf of Wall Street. Ironically, the film made around $400 million at a cost of $100 million costs. Jordan Belfort spotted the scam, he’d perfected. Low was a serial loser, but acted like a serial winner.

Wright & Hope inform the reader ‘a whale’ in casinos in a big spender, by which they mean a big loser, who gets the treatment of freebies like accommodation, drink and entertainment. Low left the staff a tip of a million dollars, after he’d lost another few million on the tables.

John Kenneth Galbraith famously intoned: ‘I have nothing to say about the definition of money’.

A bystander watching Low losing big noted that was the price of my college tuition. That was the price of a house.

Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme was a straightforward embezzlement of around $18 billion. Take from the rich and giving the rich double-digit return on their investment. Taking the money from the bottom of the pot and paying the top of the pot.

Sir Fred Goodwin took a small Scottish bank, the Royal Bank of Scotland, and used the potential earnings from companies acquired to leverage capital acquisitions that in terms of assets created one of the biggest companies in the world. April 2008, RBS lost £24 billion and was bailed out by the British government. But what Goodwin did was not deemed criminal. He kept his full pension (but lost his knighthood).

Shadow banks follow the same principles of banks. Their objective is also super profit. But they also seek to keep confidential who, what and where. Tax havens are a given. Lho faced two problems the creation of money and the movement of money. His Ponzi scheme relied on gaining leverage and control of other people’s money.

His cultivation of friendship with Malaysian Prime Minister, Najib Razak and his wife Rozmah Mansour through bribes (around $70 million worth of jewellery) and deference was a cog in acquisition. Lho’s scam involved creating a self-fulfilling prophecy that Saudi Royalty was willing to invest in the Malaysian economy. The Saudi Wealth Fund is one of the biggest in the world with triple A-status. A guarantor recognised by all major rating agencies of having the means to pay its debt. Prince Turki was not connected to the Saudi Wealth Fund, but he acted the part that he held the key to Middle East investment.

Prime Minister Najib was quick to announce the creation of a Malaysian wealth fund called 1Malaysia Development Berherd  (1MDB). The initial tranche of $1.4 billion in Islamic bonds. Goldman Sachs made a $600 million killing in helping set up the scheme, which was regarded as super profit (similar schemes could be set up for around $1 million) by other envious bankers.

The movement of money was a carousel. Jho Low had already arranged much of the infrastructure, buying services he needed. Taking control of the new money, he diverted around $175 to his personal account. He began to spend like a billionaire, buying yachts and property and bamboozling Hollywood and American’s elites with tales of inherited wealth. He was the next big thing. Rich because he was rich. Paradix fiscaux, beyond the reach of mere mortals.        

Low’s shadow banking was zombie banking, unless he could show auditors an on-paper balance they would sign off. But his only real investment was two drilling derricks leased to the Venezuelan government. Even inflating their value—in the same way the moron’s moron, rapist and former President Trump, inflated his property portfolio—couldn’t fill the metaphorical black hole. Low’s trump card was the Malaysian Prime Minister was re-elected. More money, tranche two, was coming his way. Liquidity was no longer such a pressing issue. Partying continued.

Kleptocracy, Transparency International listed these countries in 2004, more would be added.

Indonesia, Suharto (amount stolen) around $15 – $35 billion.

Philippines, Marcos $5 – $10 billion.

[Lho and Malaysia would come in here with about $7 billion.]

Nigeria, Abacha $2 – $5 billion.

Yugoslavia, Milosevic $1 billion.

Haiti, Duvalier $300 – $800 million.

Peru, Fujumori $600 million.

Ukraine, Lazarenko $114-200 million.

Nicaragua, Aleman $100 million.

Philippines, Estrada $78-80 million.

Theft by the richest and more powerful. China. Russia. South Africa. Brazil. America. Britain. Most modern nations have developed models that take from the poorest and give to the richest. Jho Low’s excess made me squirm, but he didn’t see his riches as being excessive. His wealth, his fortune, was a trick of money. Trickle-down economics suggests we all benefit from such spending power. All we need in neo-liberal-economic dogma is more de-regulation. Buyers beware. I’m sure the moron’s moron, is the very man for the job. Lho, of course, tried to buy his way out of the scandal. For now, like Russian oligarchs, who were once the lifeblood of the London property market, his money is hidden in the dark web. Read on.  

Celtic 4—2 Ross County

No great surprise, Celtic win comfortably at home on the opening day of the league season and score four goals. A David Turnbull double, Kyogo and Matt O’Reilly. Maik Nawrocki starts for Celtic. Iwata is no longer required to play the right-back role and Tony Ralston comes in. But Celtic were poor throughout. We started the game as we did in the Forrest Testimonial against Real Sociedad when we could, and perhaps should, have been three down in the first five minutes.

I don’t often use the phrase, Ross County dominated, when reporting on a match against Celtic. And that doesn’t bode well for the season ahead, or even the tie against Aberdeen at Pittodrie next Saturday.

Celtic were described as ‘sloppy’ by Sky commentator Chris Sutton in the opening fifteen minutes (and generally). Simon Murray spurned a chance, blocked by Carter-Vickers and got the better of Ralston. He could have has a penalty. County have had five touches in the box to Celtic’s none.

Joe Hart was a standout for all the wrong reasons. Too many passes were funnelled back to him. Too often he made a hash of it. A deflected ball bounced into the box past Carter-Vickers and at Hart. He tried to chest it down, but Murray read his intent. He should have scored. Hart got a block in. Was it a penalty? No surprise Kris Boyd, studio commentator thought so.

Celtic’s penalty for the first goal, against the run of play, was more straightforward.  Simms barged down Greg Taylor in the box. David Turnbull scored from the spot. He got a second after O’Riley took out the defence and stood a ball up at the back post. The former Motherwell player hitting the ball into the ground, but bouncing high into the net. Kyogo had played him before that. A one-on-one with the keeper, Jack Baldwin, and he really should have scored, but didn’t. He did, however, win man of the match. Will he get a run of first-team starts?

I sided with Sutton in that Kyogo looked the best man on the park. He got his usual goal. A sweeping move involving Abada, who picked him out and also took out the defence. The keeper got to the ball but was unable to keep it out. Celtic three up at half-time, yet it was a poor performance.

Abada, Maeda and Kyogo, almost pick themselves, but with Forrest and Yang on the bench and coming on in the second-half we looked better midweek. The latter might well prove to be a bumper. Sead Haksabonovic doesn’t make up the numbers on the bench. He didn’t make the twenty-two that played in Forrest’s testimonial. He might well be on his way out. Reo Hatate on the bench too! His shocker of a pass gave the ball away in the Testimonial match and he’s not had a great pre-season. I rate Hatate as one of the top midfielders in Britain. I also like he’s been shown he needs to work harder. A Celtic jersey doesn’t shrink to fit. Holm also looks a quality signing.

Our second-half showing wasn’t much better. Jack Baldwin saved from Kyogo, when the Japanese international should have scored. We started by losing a goal. It came from a corner, which as we know is how we lost most of our goals in the last two seasons. Jordan White outjumped  Nawrocki at the back post. His looping header found its way in at the other post. Sutton was critical of Joe Hart (so am I), but our new signing got beaten in the air, simple. He was replaced later in the game by Carl Startfelt. There’s talk of the Swede leaving. I’m not too unhappy about that although acknowledging he’s a good track record for Celtic.

A poor game threatened to peter out before O’Riley added a fourth. His shot struck from inside the box with his left foot. Fine finish. We know the young Dane needs to add goals to his game. We weren’t lucky today. But neither were we good. Disjointed passing that tended to go backwards. Ross County’s pressing catching us high in and around our penalty area. Better teams will punish us. We can always do better. In this case the margin is so much wider than usual. Malky McKay’s team could have took something from Parkhead today. They finished near the bottom of the Scottish league. Better teams than them will. We need to get up to pace fast enough to deal with Pittodrie. In recent years it hasn’t bothered me us going to Aberdeen. But after today I’m feeling apprehensive. A deflected shot by James Brown which came off Carl Starfelt and wrong-footed Joe Hart (again) just about sum it up.  

James Patterson and Matt Eversmann with Chris Mooney (2023) American Cops.

We all know who James Patterson is. A reminder is on the flyleaf on the inside back cover. He’s ‘one of the best-known and biggest selling writers of all time. His books have sold in excess of 400 million copies.’ You’re probably wondering what that’s got to do with American cops. Do a little detective work. You might not know (like me) who Matt Eversmann and Chris Mooney are, but it doesn’t really matter, their association with James Patterson ensures their book is successful. James Patterson doesn’t even have to write books now. He can just wave his golden pen over it like Merlin over King Arthur, but he might call it editing.

Would you take the James Patterson deal? Your name in subscript? Paid far less even though you do all the work? Most of us writers would. I’ve been asking around trying to find out how to sell books. I’ve got various answers. None of them that promising. Patterson offers job security.

A bit like an American Cop’s job.  Three sections:  Protect Part 1, Serve Part 2, and Defend Part 3. I can’t really tell any difference between the sections. If I opened the account of a police office in Part 1 and read a different account in Part 3, they blur. I’d add in a good way. These are a variety of cops of different colour, gender, status, many of them seemingly suffering from PTSD, doing their best and trying to get through the day. They remind us that very few of them are corrupt. Almost all joined the police for high-sounding reasons, which despite the drag of reality, they found to be true. (A self-selecting bias at work here.)

Jake, for example. He works in a sheriff’s office in the South.  

‘It’s day one of SWAT training, which is, without doubt, the single hardest challenge I’ve ever faced.

Then there’s Mitchell Wido, a veteran of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (AFT).

His first story is about a stake-out with a special agent working undercover to buy drugs. It got messy and the special agent was lucky to be still alive. You hear lots about luck in this book, the bullet that had your name on it.

But Wido was called upon to help out after the Columbine shootings that some right-wing-Trumpian-media outlets called a hoax.

‘I stare down a long row of black zipped bags each holding someone’s kid. Out of respect for the families, we placed the bodies of the shooters, Klebold and Harris, on the other side of the staging area, away from where we gathered their victims.’

Respect is another big word in this book. The cops want acknowledged as doing a difficult job. Not demonised and spat upon.

‘The chaplain says a prayer over each of the victims. Someone asks if he’s going to do the same for the shooters.

“No,’ the chaplain says. “God can say prayers for these two if He wants. I’m not going to do it.’

Ambulances are brought in to take the body bags away. But again, the bodies of Klebold and Harris are left to last, and not allowed to travel with the other bodies.

Wido gets on with the job at hand. He turns up for work. He gets on with it. Only when watching a movie about Columbine…does Wido understand he’s been carrying this thing called PTSD and acknowledges he needs to get help.

One veteran says he knew one cop killed by the bad guys, but four others that killed themselves.

James Patterson has commissioned other writers to write a book about what it’s like to be an American Cop. On the cover, the authors remind the reader: ‘What they see in a day, we’ll never see in a lifetime.’ ‘True stories from the frontline.’ Indeed and quite interesting. Read on.