A Judy Collins fan blubs . . .

One drawback of leaving stuff on your desktop that you were meaning to use in happier days is that if you leave it lying around long enough, it will come back to bite you in the arse. December 30th 2017 was not a good day . . . and nobody in green and white was laughing. 

Granted, it could have been a lot worse. Can Dembele do an offski for a shedload of cash now? I fear my current hoops dream, Leigh Griffiths, will go the way of Riordan and McCourt. (I know, I'm stretching it a bit here.)

The above screen grab has been waiting patiently on the desktop since the 18th of August of last year. I really missed my punchline there, reader.

Sicknote #2

Following on from this post, the Derry Pele's wonder goal for Barnsley against Middlesbrough:



Paddy McCourt, I think I love you.

Sicknote

Paddy McCourt scores for Barnsley  . . . and then goes off injured three minutes later. I think that's his career in a nutshell.

SubLIME

I don't know about the 'Derry Pele' nickname but, going by this brilliant individual goal against Inverness Caley Thistle yesterday, Pat McCourt does a pretty good impersonation of Socrates.

And as my man crush on Pat McCourt grows a pace, a two year old clip from an Irish football show where McCourt talks about his move from Derry City to Celtic. Nice selection of highlights from his time at Derry City are also included in the clip.

McCourt goes marching straight through the Saints

It looks like McCourt's goal against Falkirk in the cup midweek was no fluke.

The commentator may be right about St Mirren's "powder puff defending" but it was no more weak or ineffectual than the Brazilians against John Barnes all those years ago in the Maracana or the Belgium defence falling like ninepins against Al Owairan at the 1994 World Cup. It's just a case of the stage being a wee bit on the smaller scale.

It's Rapid Vienna on Thursday and R*ngers at Ibrox next Sunday in the lunchtime kick off.

On that sort of form displayed by McCourt, Mowbray has to give him his chance in at least one of the games. The obvious would be against Rapid Vienna at Parkhead but it'd be a nice surprise if Mowbray went all out and employed him on the Sunday at Ibrox. The game will be the usual fast and the bloody furious, so someone with McCourt's guile and skill can only prosper in such an environment with the headless chickens in the blue jerseys running around in circles hacking away at all and sundry. The freekicks he'd win in and around the box would set up Maloney perfectly for the perfect away smash and grab.

Watch this blog as I eat my words next Sunday afternoon.

From me trying to convince myself we have a future Celtic legend in the making to footage of the Celtic legend of the last twenty years still doing the business at the age of 38 for Helsingborgs IF against AIK Stockholm a couple of days ago.

The bloke's still got it in abundance. That abundance should still be on display at Parkhead.

Hat tip to 101 Goals website for both clips. It's the first place to go to on the net if you want 45 second clips of Chilean football with Cantonese commentary.

Touring down the middle of the park

Nearly a year to the day after this minor post, it's nice to see McCourt score this gem (46 seconds into the clip) for Celtic against Falkirk last night in the cup:

Btw, it's worthwhile checking out that Mail article linked to in the older post.

Not just because of the pleasing possibility of a 'might have been will soon become' aspect to the story but because it's mentioned in passing that West Brom, then managed by Tony Mowbray, were poised to sign him before he joined Celtic and Peter Grant is quoted all over the piece as someone who really rated McCourt.

Grant's now First Team coach at Celtic.

It looks like McCourt will got a decent chance of getting *cough* a chance in the first team, and that's not something that could always be said for squad players under Strachan's regime.

PS - With regards to that YouTube clip, what's with the included snippet of Grant at the post-match press conference talking about the seriousness of McGeady's injury? Out of sync or just dubbed? Are people from Bellshill really that difficult to comprehend. I guess it could explain Sheena Easton's mid-atlantic monstrosity of an accent.