Megan Nolan (2023) Ordinary Human Failings.

Write what you know. Megan Nolan writes about Waterford, where she was brought up. And London where she moved to. But it’s London 1990. Nolan would be a toddler. A child has been reported missing and later found dead.

‘Down below in Skyler Square the trouble was passing quickly from door to door, mothers telling mothers, not speaking aloud but somehow saying : baby gone, bad man, wild animal.’

James Bulger 1993 is the classic case. But google it and like one of the protagonists, Carmel’s teenage pregnancy there’s more than imagined. Three cases spring to mind in Clydebank alone. It was a plot device used by Alan Parks, for example, To Die in June.

Who gets to tell the story? Mad, bad or sad?

Carmel’s story is of denial. She’s not pregnant. She can’t be. If she stops eating she can’t have a child. If she keeps drinking she can’t have a child. If she has hot baths and a coathanger she’s mad enough.

Lucy is an extremely beautiful child like her mum, Carmel. Her mum, Carmel, is still in denial, but her grandmum, Rose mothers her.

Her grandad, John Green, has little to do with her or any of his other kids, including his son from his first marriage, Ritchie.  

Richie is five years older than Carmel. He hasn’t been always an alcoholic. There was a time in Waterford when he was going to make something of himself. Ordinary human failings. That time passed.

An ordinary Irish family, living in London in a council house flat (which is becoming extraordinary).

‘Report by Tom Hargreaves, Thursday 17^th May 1990.

TERROR IN NUNHEAD AS BODY OF MISSING INFANT DISCOVERED NEXT TO BINS.’

Mia Enright, aged three, was last seen playing with Lucy Green, aged ten. Enright apparently had bruising to her neck.

Hargreaves is a cub reporter with one of the big papers. It’s difficult to look beyond Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World and Sun. A toxic combination of get your tits our for the boys and England Until I Die!

To take another example: Nina (Nightcrawler)

‘The best and clearest way I can explain it to you, Lou, to capture what we are, is to think of a screaming woman running down the street with her throat cut.’

But you want to fuck her into next week, anyway.

The perfect Murdoch headline reads something like Tony Blair is shagging Maddona, but she denies their love child Britney Speirs the singing lessons she so craves.

Young Tom Hargreaves has got to inveigle his way into the Green family. Storyline shopping lists include: welfare recipients (scroungers) on drugs and drink (feckless poor and milking the system) but also kinda sexy, better still if they’re having incestuous sex with each other. Then the moral outrage and monster card can be played.

Hargreaves’ paymasters have put up the Green family in hotel and are paying them for exclusive rights to their story. There’s no such thing as  Ordinary Human Failings in Murdoch’s land. There’s only blood sport which would have  plucked nipple from boneless gums and dashed the brains out for any sort of scoop. Tom worries he’ll not be heartless enough. Nolan’s job is to show how the heartless bastards like Murdoch’s reporters prosper, while trying to maintain her character’s dignity and self-worth. Good against evil isn’t just the untimely death of a child, but what happens next. How and who gets to define it? Read on.  

Utama (2022) Film4, written and directed by Alejandro Loayza Grisi

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/utama/on-demand/75755-001

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utama

Virgino (José Calcina) gets up early to tend his llamas in Altiplano, the arid high plateau of the Andes with its mixture of cold and heat. His wife Sisa (Luisa Quispe) takes two metal buckets and walks into town for water.  But the annual monsoon didn’t come. It hasn’t rained for a year. The weather is sick, says one of the villagers. Virgino is sick. He says the llamas are sick too, because of the heat.

Sisa needs to walk to the nearest river but like her husband, she is old and tired.

Clever (Santos Choque) with his mobile phone arrives on a motorbike. He wants to take them to the city. He wants to take his grandparents home. But they are already home.

A film all the more poignant with Cop-out 18  being held in Saudi Arabia. A bit like holding an Alcoholic Anonymous meeting in a brewery.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/29/a-biodiversity-catastrophe-how-the-world-could-look-in-2050-unless-we-act-now-aoe

Pascual said: “More than two-thirds of the projected population of 10 billion people will live in cities by 2050. This will increase the energy requirements to manage the growing complexity of urban metabolism

“But today we’re facing a perfect storm: almost 60% of the continent’s arable land is degraded. Over 280 million Africans face hunger. Climate-driven droughts and cyclones are wiping out development gains made in the past decades.  

Lazio 2—0 Celtic

Win or bust for Celtic. Lazio took off Taty Castellanos, bringing on Ciro Immobile, when they needed a goal. It was like Celtic bringing on Henrik Larsson. Immobile scored in the 82^nd and 85^th minute to put the game beyond Celtic. It was the first goal that mattered. A deflection played Immobile onside and he ghosted in behind Carter-Vickers. He wasn’t going to miss from six yards. His second goal was all his own work—with a big bit of help from Liam Scales, who simply wasn’t strong enough and claimed for a foul, which was never going to come—Immobile turned in the box and found the corner.

Celtic got a late penalty on the 93^rd minute when it didn’t matter. A push on substitute Oh. Before we decided who was going to miss it, the penalty was overturned by VAR and the referee who’d initially seen the push.  Sums up the match.

Even if we did win, odds on to be bust. Glorious defeat is our schist. We don’t win in Italy, generally. And with one win in fifteen Champion League fixtures we’re the team every other European team wants to play against as they’re almost guaranteed points. But we get the usual guff about it being a great stadium with great fans.

 Return of James Forrest isn’t such a shock. The return of Mikey Johnston, with so many injuries, means he’s got a chance again to prove he can keep his place in the team. He came off the bench for Forrest. And like his cameo on Saturday, showed Mikey Johnstoness. I don’t know what that means either. You’d need to ask Mikey or Brendan Rodgers.

 Bernardo is a strange one. He’s played one domestic fixture, but in the biggest and most difficult stadiums he’s been given the nod. We take off Bernardo (we took off Holm on Saturday) and stick on Oh as a mark of creative intent. Around the hour mark, Immobile is brought off the bench. I wouldn’t call that small margins.   

Bernardo was decent in some ways. He set up a chance with a back-heel pass, which if he meant it was fantastic play—even if he didn’t mean it, still a chance. He might fall into that elusive category: one for later. There’s little doubt he has ability.

Celtic dominated the ball. Kyogo had two chances, one in each half. Yang tried to set him up with a header, when from close in he really should have been going for goal.

Here’s one for the purists. We didn’t concede from the first two corners in ten minutes. But it was too early to say it was going to be our day. Joe Hart flapped. Two headed chances were missed.

Provedel clutched most efforts on goal quite easily. But Carter-Vickers had a headed chance on goal. Just when we look most like scoring, we concede.

We’ve not been embarrassed. No team in our group is going to get anywhere near the latter stages of the competition. We should have had more points. The next home game against Feyenoord isn’t meaningless because a win gives Celtic a couple of million quid or the equivalent of the average running costs of your Livingston. But it’s also about putting down a marker. I wasn’t impressed with the Dutch, Italians, or even the Spanish. Like last season, under the Sainted Ange, we played well for large parts of the European ties. We got two points. I can see us getting two points or more this season.

How do we measure success now? Certainly, if Brendan Rodger’s team manages to fling away the league, we’ll be looking to bring in another manager. But what if Rangers win the two domestic cups? Would that too be a sackable offence?  The Champions League isn’t just prestige. It’s a whole wad of cash that supposedly takes us to another level. Celtic have gone sideways and backwards this season. There’s little evidence this putative other level is within grasp in the near future. But without that cash doesn’t bear thinking about. The biggest game of the season is always the next one. The Old Firm fixture at Paradise at the end of December takes care of itself. We’re better than all the mess and soul searching seems to suggest. It’ll be interesting to find out what the Pope predicts tomorrow. Disappointed tonight, but not surprised.  

Celtic 1—1 Motherwell.

Two penalties. Two points dropped to a Motherwell team in freefall. One penalty scored by David Turnbull in the 86^th minute, which looked to have won it. Celtic’s long inability to defend from corners or cross balls resurfaced. Substitute Obika getting the slightest of nicks from an in-swinger on the ninetieth minute.

We’d ten minutes to get ahead again as we did at Fir Park. O’Riley in the 98^th minute having the last headed-chance of a game that showed the good and awful of Brendan Rodger’s Celtic team.   

Most of us will have an eye on tomorrow’s fixture in Aberdeen. We expected to win today. Rodgers put out much the same team as the six-goal humbling of Aberdeen. Antony Ralston comes in for Alistair Johnson. Holm retains his place in midfield. He almost had a chance in the first-half, with the ball not quite falling to him inside the box. It’s been that sort of season for him. He was taking off at half-time.

Oh brought on. Kyogo, who didn’t get a kick of the ball in the first-half, dropped back a little, but he too was taken off shortly afterwards.

Turnbull and Mikey Johnson brought on to get that all-important first goal. Paper talk is of O’Riley going in the summer for a big fee. He had one of the few chances of the first-half. Taking it first-time and stabbing it towards goal on the eight minute. But it was easily saved. I don’t care about the summer or even Tuesday night’s fixture in Rome (well, not until Tuesday night). I care about now. Pragmatically, a domestic double is the best we can hope for. Flinging two points away isn’t a good sign.

Our bench is interesting. Turnbull will, once again, hope to steal into the team and take Holm’s place in midfield. The former Motherwell man had a shot easily saved by Kelly from outside the box. Celtic’s strike rate from the penalty spot is awful. It averages one scored and one missed, or fifty-percent.

Luis Palma pretty much nailed the penalty-taking spot after his penalty against Aberdeen. He took his time, gave the keeper the eyes and placed it in the corner. Palma and Yang were combined man of the match against the Dons. Here they weren’t up to the job. Palma missed a penalty.

Yang was back to giving the ball away and putting in hopeful crosses. The South Korean also misses a headed chance from six yards. He went off with cramp or a hamstring problem. I’m too disappointed to care.  

Tilio. Remember that wee Australian guy? He came on and did OKish, without actually doing anything being better than Yang.

Mikey Johnson. Seems he had a man-of-the-match performance for the Republic. I’ve always had high hopes for Mikey. But he’s always seemed to find different ways of letting us down. Here he was an improvement on Palma. Got us a penalty, and had some jinking runs and shots which, in Mikey fashion came to nothing. But many of us thought he’d bought us the matchwinner.

The first penalty was quite straightforward. Oh was wiped out. The second went to VAR. Liam Scales’ header from a corner was going past the post. But Mikey was looking to divert it in. He was tugged back. Clear penalty. Game over. Only it wasn’t.   

The Motherwell defender Stephen O’Donnell, who has Scotland caps and is no better than average at the best of times, epitomised the Motherwell (and other Scottish Premier League teams’) approach. He got booked for time wasting at the end of the first-half. Celtic camped outside the Fir Park team’s penalty box. Attack against defence with us having between seventy-five and eighty percent possession. In simple terms, the Fir Park played for a draw, which they achieved. Words like stalwart defending will be used, which is just the usual shite.

O’Donnell nearly got on the score sheet at two ends. Firstly from an in-swinging  Palma corner. The Motherwell man got his head on it. Kelly had to make a great save to prevent an own goal, which, apart from the Palma penalty was one of the few saves he had to make.  

Then at the other end, when the first-half came to a close, and Celtic’s play became ragged. A rare Motherwell breakaway saw Joe Hart dart out of the goal and missing the ball. We’ve not seen him doing that Keystone Cop routine for a while, but it is part of his game. O’Donnell getting on the end of it but unable to score from outside the box was something would should be glad of. Make no mistake; a random fan taken from the Green Brigade would have scored. I’d like to say in my glory days I’d have scored. But my name’s O’Donnell too.  

 Phillips, the on-loan Liverpool central defender will stay on the bench, until we send him back in January. Bernarbei hasn’t a chance in hell of replacing Taylor. I’d like to see a defender who is bigger and better than both. Ironically, Postecoglou, when he gave Scales a start, played him on the left. The Republican stalwart picked up a second-half injury and was down for six minutes.  I’d be worried. But with the score 0—0, I’d have just taken him off and not wasted as much time. Sometimes a curse is a blessing for some as Scales has shown and Turnbull has largely not. His time looked to have come again.

Next up Rome. Expect to start well, spray the ball about, nearly score a goal and concede two. Perhaps with a Celtic man sent off. Days like today make you cynical, old and bitter. I know. I already am.

Scrublands, BBC 4, based on the Chris Hammer novel, screenwriters Chris Hammer and Felicity Packard, Director Greg McLean

bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0gnmkvz/scrublands-series-1-episode-1?seriesId=p0gnmk66

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0gnmlbt/scrublands-series-1-episode-2?seriesId=p0gnmk66

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0gnmm2g/scrublands-series-1-episode-3?seriesId=p0gnmk66

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0gnmmcc/scrublands-series-1-episode-4

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrublands_(novel)

Scrublands begins with a bang. Literally. Father Byron Swift (Jay Ryan) after mass at St Michael’s church in the fictitious dust-riven farming town of Riversend brings not words of peace and thanksgiving but a telescopic rifle out of the sacristy. He kills five male parishioners. This isn’t America where such atrocities seem to happen every day, with the gun lobby arguing more and better kinds of guns are needed, and the former moron’s moron President arguing kindergarten teachers should be armed, but New South Wales. The drought continues, but when the dust dies down a simple explanation offers a kind of closure. The much admired, even loved, Father Byron Swift couldn’t keep his cock in his pants and was screwing parishioners’ kids. 

Award winning journalist Martin Scarsden (Luke Arnold) is sent to do a kind of fluff piece on how the townsfolk are coping one year after the shooting. But he’s shunned by the townsfolk. Some are more antagonistic than others. The local cop, Constable Robbie Haus-Jones (Adam Zwar) feted as a hero for bringing down and killing the paedophilic mass shooter, modestly says he was just doing his job. Local beauty and bookshop owner, Mandy Bond (Bella Heathcote), seems ready to speak out, but then bites her pretty bottom lip.

No great surprise that charismatic priest and local beauty equal Thorn Birds territory. Scarsden has to hang about because (a) his shitty car hire breaks down and a bumpy, out of town road where he doesn’t know where he’s going. (b) he finds two bodies that have been missing since Christmas and nobody else could find. In the latter, but not the former we are in Scooby Doo territory. (I’d have got away with it if it wasn’t for those damn kids or award-winning journalist suffering for PTSD) All writers enter Scooby Doo territory at some point. I like to get in early and set up basecamp.

Back in basecamp, we’re in explaining the backstory. Only the worst kind of Trumpet accepts the simple shooting theory. Holden Caulfield the protagonist in Catcher in the Rye, explains much better than me how backstory works.

    ‘If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap.’

Caulfield is the kinda cynical kid Father Byron Swift knew too well as does journalist, Scarsden. One of the many questions Scrublands asks is whether it is truly possible to begin live anew. Change, really change and become someone else. Worship God as you understand him. Scrublands even takes a tilt at QAnon (‘PizzaGate’) conspiracy thinking and the followers of the moron’s moron, which is always good, while holding out a more adult explanation of what happened, which isn’t convincing. But as any writer knows A and B doesn’t need to equal C. It just needs to feel like it does. Worth watching.

Alan Parks (2023) To Die in June.

I’ve read a few Alan Park’s novels. Don’t ask me which ones. I thought To Die in June had won the McIlvanney Prize, but it was his last Detective Harry McCoy novel. I’m a book or two behind.  I continually use the same line when talking about McIlvanney’s Detective Laidlaw series; his aim wasn’t to solve the crime but to solve the world. Detective Harry McCoy is from the same mould.

‘Wisdom comes through suffering.’ Aeschylus.

I’m all for wisdom. Bring it on. A first-page preamble which becomes understandable by the end of the book but which I’d have cut.

Straight into the action. Wedneday 28^th May 1975. The final pages, a week after Saturday 28^th June 1975.

Detective Inspector Harry McCoy is being shipped across town to Possil Police station. The supposed reason is Glasgow is being merged into the larger Strathclyde Police (later merged into Police Scotland). The real reason is police corruption.  He’s been sent to have a nosey about by Hector the Chief Constable who also happened to have adopted McCoy as a kid. Not even McCoy’s sidekick Wattie, Detective Watson knows about that and they’re thick as thieves. McCoy’s thick with a lot of thieves. He was brought up in children’s home. Cooper, his best mate is gangster, and McCoy owes him (that was in the last book, seemingly). Quid pro quo. Cooper is not one for letting go or bygones be bygones.

The inciting incident (or what happens) is Govan Jamie, an alky, is found dead on waste ground near Buchanan Street Bus Station.  Nobody gives a fuck. Alkies die all the time.

But McCoy cares, because his da is an alky too. He’s out living on the streets. Because McCoy cares the reader cares too. If we don’t love our protagonist for his faults and failings there’s little point in turning the next page.

The leading storyline is the Govan Joe and then other alkies dying. Word from the street is their being poisoned. (I think this did happen in real life). McCoy’s on it. Because he’s on the case Phyllis in forensics (although it wasn’t called that then) has to look again at the sudden deaths of elderly male drinkers (men over fifty, that’s my age—that could be me and I want McCoy on the case).

A secondary storyline or plot is the disappearance of an eleven-year-old boy, Michael West. McCoy is quick to scramble all the cars and call in reinforcements from neighbouring cop shops. But his mum has what we now call mental-health issues. Reverend West of the local Church of Christ’s Suffering explains to McCoy he and his wife are childless. There’s something not right about her, but there’s also something not right about him and his cultish church.

I could tell you another couple of minor storylines that come together in a denouement that is emotionally satisfying as long as you don’t look too closely at the stitch in time. I’ll need to go backwards in time now and read The McIlvanney Prize Winner: May God Forgive. Read on.  

La Civil (2021) Film4, Directed by Teodora Mihai, Written by Habacuc Antonio De Rosario and Teodora Mihai

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/la-civil

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_civil

How much is your daughter worth? El Puma (Juan Daniel García Treviño) gives Ciero (Arcelia Ramírez) a price she must pay to see her daughter again. To keep her alive. He also demands her ex-husband’s truck. The smiling assassin and his companion assure her it’s just business. And she’d not to contact the police, because obviously in Northern Mexico they’re on the take and they’ll know.

Corruption is endemic. Part of the everyday economy. People just keep their heads down and get on with living their lives. They pay tax to the cartels. They do as their told and just hope it won’t be them or theirs. When that hope it taken away from Ciero, she refuses to stop believing she’ll see her daughter again. There are so many other women like her, but she is alone in the silent crowd.

She is willing to speak out. To stand out from the crowd and speak to the corrupt military tasked with dealing with the cartels grip on civil society and everyday life. She is trading her silence and collusion for her daughter’s life.

Her local knowledge is invaluable but she is told by the commander of the anti-corruption military group not to question him, or his bloody methods, which include extra-judicial torture and killings. Based on true events.

Friedrich Nietzsche: When you stare into the abyss; the abyss stares back at you.  

Paul Joseph Fronczak and Alex Tresniowski (ghostwriter) (2017) The Foundling. The True Story of a Kidnapping, a Family Secret, and My Search for the Real Me.

The title is longer that some of the books I’ve written and pretty much covers it. Alex Tresniowski has to shape a made-for-TV-kinda testimonial, true-story genre, into a three-part traditional beginning, middle and end with a bang. He gets nationwide coverage and a documentary programme to help with his search. 

The SET-UP establishes a normality that suggests this is who I am. In December, Paul Joseph Fronczak is just your typical ten-year-old kid in Chicago, Illinois. His dad works long hours in a power plant that makes things like transmission belts for helicopters. He’s a blue-collar worker with a steady job. His mum is a stay-at-home-mom. Brother David, who is a year younger, has the bigger of the two bedrooms.

UNEXPECTED CHANGE. 

‘THE FIRST STEP of my long journey was into a dark crawl space.

I was ten years old. I was snooping around for Christmas presents in my family’s two-story house in working class South Side Chicago.’

THE REJECTION. ‘I DON’T WANT’  Mum and Dad, Dora and Chester have hid away newspaper clippings. They’ve hid away their past and Paul’s past. They don’t want him to find it or to relive it.

THE COMMITMENT.

Headline:

“Police were combing Chicago last night in search of a one-and-a-half day old baby boy who was kidnapped from his mother’s arms.”

‘The details of the kidnapping were sensational. A woman pretending to be a nurse simply walked into the hospital, took the baby from my mother, and walked out the back door. The hospital went into lockdown, and the FBI and the Chicago PD lunched the biggest manhunt in the city’s history.’

EMBRACE THE UNEXPECTED CHANGE.

Paul Joseph Fronczak always knew there was something different about him. He didn’t look much like his mum, dad or his brother. He loved music, for example, and they didn’t. He was athletic in the way his brother never was. He loved his mum and dad but felt ‘alien’. He was alien.

THE EMBRACE – “I DO WANT” 

His mum and dad don’t want him metaphorically or literally digging up the past. What happened forty years ago should stay buried. But Paul has other commitments. He’s married with a daughter of his own. He feels he needs to know for their sake as much as his own.

THE RETURN OF THE MAIN OPPONENT

His mum and dad at first agree to help. They give him a sample of their sputum (spit) for a DNA test. But then they tell him they don’t want him to use it. His brother David refuses to give him a sample and warns him off, asking him to respect mum and dad’s wishes.

THE ESCALATION

Paul disregards their wishes. His argument that his need to know is the greater good. He sends away their sputum sample and finds out they are not genetically related. They are not his mum and dad. David, genetically is not his brother, which kinda makes sense since they’ve never been brotherly.

THE FINAL BATTLE

Mum and Da (and his brother David) cut off all ties with Paul and his wife and their granddaughter.

THE TWIST

Paul was adopted. The family which brought him up does not match his DNA. His mum was placed in a terrible position akin to Sophie’s Choice. A toddler broadly matching the birth age and description of baby Fronczak had been left outside a department store. She has to decide whether her prayers have been answered.

ROCK BOTTOM

Paul has to solve two mysteries. Who kidnapped the boy that wasn’t him? Who left him outside a department store? DNA and genealogy profiling have come a long way in forty years. But since he doesn’t know his father, mother or any known living relatives, pattern recognition is based on what his own DNA can reveal.  

THE SACRIFICE – “I RELUCTANTLY GIVE UP”

Paul gives up on his relationship with the family that brought him up. But he’s also giving up more and more time and this is hurting the relationship with his wife and even his daughter.

THE REWARD

A crack team of genealogists. They find out he is the boy left outside the store. His social care mum and dad loved him and would have kept him, but they had to give him back to his ‘birth’ mum and dad the Froncsak’s. But Paul’s team also find out his genes suggested an Eastern European immigrant connection. Paul had been brought up Roman Catholic. His ancestors were Jewish. His name was Jack Rosenthal. He’d a whole new family. Jack also had a twin sister, Jill. Nobody knew what happened to her. He’d cigarette burns on his toddler’s body and was scared of males.  Read on.

Celtic 6—0 Aberdeen

Celtic hit six goals, three in the ten minutes added on at the end of the second-half. Brendan Rodgers has brought in Odin Holm and Yang to the team that started well for six minutes but were hit for six and dismantled in Madrid. Questions have been asked. The usual suspects on display. Maeda is a big loss. Quite simply, he does the work, and the doggies of two players. Yang has shown some flashes of potential. Now it’s time for him to step up. And he did today. Scoring the first in the nine minutes. An outside of the foot cross from Luis Palma allowing him an easy enough header from four yards.

I wasn’t sure about Luis Palma when he first arrived. He seemed to lack pace and didn’t have a trick in him the way, for example, Jota had. But the Honduran had the beating of Nicky Devlin today. As did Yang on the right wing against MacKenzie. The Aberdeen defender also gave away the penalty with a late challenge on Oh.  That width, and use of the ball, made it easier for Celtic to penetrate a packed Aberdeen defence. Palma edged it, the better of the two wingers, and had a good shout for a man-of-the-match performance. Without doubt Celtic have a new penalty taker. Hatate and Turnbull have both missed penalties in recent games. With Luis Palma you get the feeling this isn’t going to happen any time soon. His penalty on the 77^th minute—from a clear foul on Oh—was  composed. He was watching the keeper before he hit it. I like that confidence. All it takes is one miss, of course, for me to not like it.

Celtic had picked apart the Aberdeen defence in the first five minutes. Kyogo failing to score from around the penalty spot. O’Riley failed to keep down the rebound from the Aberdeen keeper, Roos, and score.

They combined to create the second goal in sixteen minutes. Yang cut inside across the penalty area. O’Riley took his perfectly weighted pass to the touchline and cut it back. Kyogo nipped in at the front post and it looked a simple enough goal, but it was all about the constant movement.

Odin Holm makes his first Premiership start and steps into a midfield that largely picks itself. McGregor and O’Riley fill two slots. Hatate fills the other. But as we know, the Japanese international is out injured. Bernardo has fluttered about to no great effect and didn’t appear today. Early days, but my guess is when the loan deal is finished, we won’t be keeping him like we did with Jota. I hope he proves me wrong. Pity we can’t say the same for Lagerbielke.

Turnbull, is also his own last-chance scenario, at least offered another decently taken goal after coming on a substitute of Holm. It was typical Turnbull strike in off the post from outside the box to make it 4—0 in the 92^nd minute, but it looked to be in slow motion and the keeper should perhaps have done better. The former young Scottish Player of the Year remains on the bench. But three goals in his last three games give him a stronger than usual chance of starting.

Turnbull had a hand in one of Oh’s late-late goals in the 96^th and 99^th minute, but it was that man Palma again that had a major part.

Holm got himself sent off against Feyenoord in Rotterdam and has pretty much faded since then faster than memories of Michael Beale, but Holm has come off the bench and showed some decent touches in cameos. Holm has a chance to stand out and make that other midfield slot his. He’d an early instinctive shot from a ball played into him from Palma, early in the first half, which Roos palmed over the bar. I’d guess he’s ahead of Bernardo and on par with Turnbull for that other midfield slot before Christmas and, in particular, the Old Firm game.  

The major talking point were the goals. Kyogo’s head injury five minutes into the second-half was our major worry. Slobodan Rubezic went for a header and wiped out the Japanese international. He got a yellow card, which might have been a red, but more importantly, Kyogo was helped up and was able to get up and walk off the park. If that puts him out of contention for the next Japanese internationals that would be a bonus. We’ve enough injuries to contend with. Oh proved himself, on the day, to be an able deputy with his late double, which was an easy enough game, more a training exercise. Aberdeen, like Celtic in Madrid, mustered one effort on goal, a Miovski flick which never looked like going in. A gulf in class. I hope Aberdeen are able to pick themselves up play better, and more importantly win, in their next home match after the International break.  

Atletico Madrid 6—0 Celtic.

There’s an old joke that Celtic go from somewhere between no luck and bad luck. We’ve been here before. We can’t live with the best teams in Europe. I’m not putting Atletico Madrid in that bracket.

Sure Griezemann and Morata hit a double.  Samuel Lino came on a substitute and bent the ball into the net with almost his first touch. Saul Niguez hit a sixth, after mishitting his first chance, the fellow substitute, had time to have another shot on goal from which he scored.

Not every Atletico chance went in. It just seemed that way with Atletico players popping up at regular intervals at the front or back posts. The Belgian midfielder, Witsel, for example,  attempted an overhead kick. The ball bounces, which turns into a pass for Gimenez. The Uruguayan defender loops a header but it coming off Hart’s crossbar. In other words, Celtic didn’t defend well inside or outside the box. A common failing. Correa, the Argentinian’s shot is mishit. Scuffed past Hart but onto the post.

Joe Hart made a number of saves you’d expect a top-class keeper to make. But I’ve yet to find any evidence he’s top class. I’d put him as average.

Celtic had a single shot on goal. Luis Palma’s early shot-cum-cross easily held by Oblak. We were a goal down at this stage. Of course, we started well. Dominated possession. Popped the ball about. Looked as if we might work our way back into it.

There was even a VAR decision that might have given Celtic a penalty and early equaliser. Maeda gets beyond his man at the byline. He gets into the penalty box. The VAR check might have thought it was a foul challenge or foul handball.

Celtic lost two goals that way to penalties in the corresponding Champion League fixture last season also in Madrid. But these two penalties were awarded to Real.

The VAR decision was no penalty. Celtic are still a goal down, but have pinned Atletico back into their box for large periods of the opening minutes after losing a goal.

We all know what Maeda is like. He does the doggies for us. He’s like two players in one. There was no great surprise, when he lost the ball he worked hard to get it back. He made two and then a third tackle in succession. His last tackle caught Mario Hermoso above the ankle.  

It was certainly no worse than Molina’s earlier boot on Taylor’s calf, which left our left-back limping. Molina wasn’t booked.

Maeda was booked. Hermoso writhed around on the ground. The referee was told to consult the pitch-side monitor. Inevitably, the Japanese forward was sent off. That’s the kind of luck Celtic have.

Commentator John Hartson said what many of us were thinking, if we can just get in at 1—0 down at half-time. Bang, we lose a goal, just before half-time. We almost lose another from kick-off. I guess we were lucky we didn’t. Then the score could have become embarrassing.

Brendan Rodgers made a slew of changes and used all five substitutes. I just hope Matt O’Riley is OK for the game against Aberdeen on Sunday. That’s my only concern now. I don’t fear going away to Lazio. I imagine we can beat Feyernood at Parkhead. But there’ll be no European football after Christmas. Ironically, I’ve not been impressed by any team in our group. Including us. Same as always.