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Kris Commons

Discussion in 'Ex Players' started by z1c0, Apr 28, 2014.

Discuss Kris Commons in the Ex Players area at TalkCeltic.net.

  1. clonbhoy

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    In fairness to him, Commons would have had more to offer than the other two, regardless of the contract situation. He was never going to lose any pace and, if fully fit, would have been a great option from the bench if a goal was needed. Players like him are a rare breed and I'm sure Brendan gave him every chance.
    Stokes was never going to cut it under Brendan, one of those players who will sit down at the end of his career and realise what he could have had. Whenever I think of Stokes I think of Griff, as both were players who I thought would never make it at Celtic and had off-field issues. Griff decided to get his head down and become a better player than I ever thought he would be, while Stokes is still being Stokes. I hope Lenny can get the best out of him but he has wasted his talent.
    Mulgrew's time at Celtic was up long before Brendan. Perhaps Lenny did him no favours in moving him around the defence and midfield, but he needed to move on.
     
    packybhoy likes this.
  2. Sean Daleer Free Palestine Gold Member

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    I think Stokes more than the other two would have suited Brendan's style. Stokes had the first touch and technique to play a forwards role in a Brendan side.

    Put it this way, I would have rathered Stokes than GMS before Sinclair came in.
     
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  3. The IRA

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    Doubt it.

    If he was surplus to requirements he'd have been sold, even at a low price, just to get him off the wage bill.
     
  4. clonbhoy

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    Yeah, but Stokes retired from football in 2014, bar the Hibs final.
    Stokes had the ability to play where he wanted for who he wanted, but he didn't want it enough.
     
  5. honda Gold Member Gold Member

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    Rodgers wouldn't have done it. He knew we all loved him. Straight in the door and punting a 30 goal midfielder. He's been very clever about it imo.
     
  6. Valhalla Thus spoke Batistuta.

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    Or Commons would only leave on loan because he wanted to keep his full wage...
     
  7. HoopswithPride

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    If he wasn't surplus to requirements. Why was he loaned out at the 1st available opportunity? In that month of December we had 8 games to play.
     
  8. The IRA

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    It wasn't the first available opportunity.
     
  9. Henrik 07 Gold Member Gold Member

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  10. Blochairnbhoy

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    Hate to admit it but I like commons and Boyd on that show talk football!
     
  11. Saul Goodman Gold Member Gold Member

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    At least Sky appear to be making a bit more of an effort.
     
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  12. Henrik 07 Gold Member Gold Member

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    KRIS COMMONS is talking about his excruciating back pain, and how it made him feel like a man twice his age, not a footballer at just 33.

    But wait. Hold on a minute. Ex-Celtic star Commons stops what he’s saying and suddenly has a puzzled, confused look on his face.

    He says: “Am I not 34? Well, you should know, Kris, I think you’re 33, but . . .

    Commons replies: “I don’t know, am I still 33? I was born August 30, 1983. It’s my birthday this month, so, that’s right, I’m about to turn 34. Yeah, that’s good. I’ve gained another year.”

    Commons, whatever age he is, laughs out loud — for the first time in a while.


    It’s five weeks on from surgery to repair nerve damage to a slipped disc in his lower back that gripped him for 16 months.

    Four cortisone injections. Acupuncture. Physiotherapy. Ice baths in the morning, anti-inflammatories to get him through the night.

    Commons said: “I’m pain-free now which is the main thing for me, to be honest. At its worst it was horrific, just horrific. One day coming down the stairs in just my underwear, I was almost in tears to Lisa who was having her hair done at the time! I just stood there in my living room with my arms crossed, screaming for pain-killers. I was in a bad way that day.


    “I couldn’t sit down, I couldn’t stand up. It was a constant battle to bring the pain level down just to get through the day.

    “I was on Tramadol, which are pretty strong, and at one point I was taking ten of those a day. Even then I was still waking up in agony in the middle of the night. It was only when they opened me up the surgeon saw the damage was worse than he thought, so he knew having the surgery was the best thing.

    “It was a worry, of course it was. They don’t open you up to do back surgery for nothing.

    “I got all the warnings, the percentages of probability of something bad happening, like not being able to do the toilet yourself.

    “It’s a tricky business when they tinker with nerves close to your spine.

    “It’s a relatively straight-forward operation for them, it wasn’t like they fused my back together with nuts and bolts.

    “But they were still chopping a little bit of vertebrae off, which carried risks.

    “They said there was a ten per cent chance it would prolapse again, a five per cent chance I’d end up incontinent, and a one per cent chance I’d be paralysed.

    “It stuck in my head that one in every 100 people who had the surgery lost the feeling in their feet.

    “But you know what, I didn’t care about the risks. It was a worry, sure, but at that stage I was literally struggling to get out of bed.

    “Never mind training or running, I could barely tie my shoe laces. I worried what I was going to be like at 50 if I didn’t do anything about it. In my head, if that meant retiring from football then I was ready for that.



    “I needed it done, not just to play football, but to live right. I still feel like I’ve got the prime years of my life ahead of me, and I want to do that with my kids, kicking a ball around in the garden.”

    Right now life is good for Commons. His surgery went really well, and he’s starting to feel like his old self again, swimming and cycling every day.

    Commons feels like he’s still got more football in him, but if there’s not, so be it.

    He added: “I still want to come back. I’ve not given up on my playing career. But it’s strange. I don’t want to build that up in my head, in case it doesn’t happen, you know?

    “I fear building my hopes up too much. In my head I’m thinking if it’s not right I can deal with that.

    “The important thing for me is if I’m going to play again I need to be an influential player.



    “I don’t want someone to watch me play and say: ‘He’s finished, his legs have gone’.

    “I need to be able to make an impact. I need to make the team better.”

    Believe in better. That’s Sky’s motto, and the broadcasting giants have paired him with SunSport columnist Kris Boyd in programmes this season, and they have hit it off.

    Commons said: “It’s nerve-racking. I have always been comfortable doing interviews like this because it’s just like a conversation.

    “But when you are hosting a programme it’s a whole different ball game.

    “I feel I have a decent knowledge of the game, but that doesn’t always mean you are going to come across well on TV. But it’s a learning curve, like anything else you do for the first time. The bottom line is I enjoy it.


    “I’ll always give an honest opinion, I don’t want to just sit on the fence. But it’s early days and it will take time. When I first started getting interviewed as a player I would come out with all the cliches in the book.

    “As you get older you become more confident and comfortable talking to journalists. Right now I’m having to learn how to talk into a TV camera.

    “It feels unnatural at the moment, and I’m as nervous as *. But I’m looking forward to games and I hope I can become better at it.

    “I keep calling Celtic ‘we,’ which I know I have to stop. But I was at Parkhead for over six years, it’s been ‘we’ and ‘us’ for a long time.

    “Boydy picked up on it straight away on our first programme and he was right.


    “I know I need to change the way I speak about Celtic on camera. It will come, though.

    “I’ve not had a proper job in my life but I want to work. I wouldn’t want to sit at home every day or just go to the gym or play golf.

    “I couldn’t just stay at home and vegetate. If I just sat on the sofa, I’d probably be dead by my 40th birthday.”

    Whenever the * that is!
     
    Last edited: Nov 8, 2017
  13. Henrik 07 Gold Member Gold Member

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    Two folders, one celebrating a football past, the other offering a guide to a coaching future. The Kris Commons story can be gleaned by taking a peek at both but the enduring lesson of his experience is how football can offer not only fame, glory and continued employment but refuge from the most profound sadness.

    The former Celtic player talks of these folders with affection and animation. The first is the property of Pete Commons, husband of Euphemia Lorna Commons, the granny who supplied the midfielder with his eligibility for the Scotland team.

    'He has a shrine to me in his house in Mansfield,' said Commons with a smile. 'He has collected all my newspaper clippings in a scrapbook. He texted me during the summer and asked: "Is it worth me getting a new folder?"'


    This was a mischievous reference to the injury problems, culminating in a severe back injury that required surgery, that dogged the internationalist's last season with Celtic.

    The other folder was more than a souvenir and has a more serious purpose. 'On leaving Celtic I got every one of the training sessions that Brendan ever did and put it in a big folder. I added all the match analysis, the pre-match briefing notes. The analysis was as specific for Clyde as it was for Barcelona.'

    Commons, who has completed his UEFA B licence, said: 'I would be sitting up late at night drawing up a training session, tinkering with it and then thinking: "That's the finished article, that's dynamite. Everybody is going to love that. I am going to be the next Mourinho".


    'I would be thinking that if it was a film script then it's like Saving Private Ryan. Then you get to the training ground and it goes to pot, more like Dad's Army than Private Ryan. Seeing how Brendan does it is humbling. He made me think how far I am from being able to think about being a coach.'

    That is said with a rueful smile. But that is for the future. The present is marked with a rehab programme he hopes will see him return to playing, probably under Neil Lennon at Hibernian.

    'I am starting to run in the gym and hopefully I can quickly making a progression to running outside and then maybe getting the boots back on,' he said. 'I want to play football again and Neil wants me to come and play. I do not want to do it just for the sake of it, I want to do it because I love it.'




    The game repaid that love with an extraordinary comfort in a desperate time. At 24, as a player at Nottingham Forest, Commons received a call at the club from his partner Lisa Hague. She told him the baby she was carrying was dead.

    'I went in to tell Colin Calderwood, our manager. He was in tears,' he recalled. A numb and shocked Commons tended to the most awful of family responsibilities, missed one game and returned for the next.

    'It is what I had to do,' he said. 'Football was my saviour. It was a huge distraction for me in a positive way. I was young. It wasn't a subject I wanted to talk about. I was embarrassed about it, I was feeling, awkward, upset.

    'It was strange. All I wanted to do was play football.'

    The football life continued with a move to Derby County and then to Celtic in 2011. The family life has been blessed with the arrival of three children: April, 7, William, six, and Jax, four. 'The boys love their football and Jax is a good player but I am gutted they are both right-footed,' said the left-footer with a smile. 'They are the next generation of the Celtic family,' he added.



    Commons is keen to emphasise his debt to the club. 'I am grateful to the people who signed me, who kept me here, and embraced me, my family, my kids,' he said.

    He repaid that conspicuously, particularly with performances against Rangers and in crucial European games. A diminutive figure, he was a big player in big matches.

    In a week when Celtic prepare yet again for the high-wire act of qualification for the group stages of the Champions League, Commons can testify to the glory, the satisfaction and the physical pain of scrambling up the mountain of qualification towards the bountiful fields of the group stages and beyond.

    His two most significant in terms of European progress were the victories over Spartak Moscow and Shakhter Karagandy. A Commons penalty saw Celtic defeat the Russians in 2011 and reach the knockout phase. 'I was confident about it,' he said. 'I had been practising them all season. One of the things I learned at Celtic is that titles and cups are won by small margins. One missed penalty can kill you over a season.'

    Any mistake from the spot would have been fatal for Celtic's European ambitions on that December night. A draw in the Barcelona-Benfica match meant the Parkhead side had to win. 'It was a crucial goal,' he admitted. 'But that was good side, one that could beat Barcelona..'



    His celebrations were constrained as he lay in the dressing-room with a thigh injury that resembled a beach ball being attached to his leg.

    The joy at the 3-0 victory over Shakhtar was enhanced by Commons scoring a spectacular first goal in a triumph that was achieved in the dying moments by a James Forrest strike. Commons, though, could not jump for joy, merely hirple in happiness. 'I had ice packs on my calves after suffering cramps,' he said. 'It was great, though, to watch Neil [Lennon] jig down the sideline.'

    The relationship with Lennon is a valued one. He laughs as he recalls the social media claims that he had fought with his manager. 'Garry [Parker] taped my head up to look like I had been in a ruckus and it was all over the newspapers the next day,' he said of a jape at Lennoxtown.

    Of Lennon, he commented: 'He was pivotal in making me realise that you had to win, win well, and perform to your best week in, week out. He played in a team against a strong Rangers and he knew how close titles could be. He knew that every single week you needed to be your best. He gave you belief.'


    His relationship with Ronnie Deila was, in contrast, characterised by the public fall-out when he substituted in a defeat against Molde in 2015.

    'There were so many things that just snowballed. Molde was frustration. And not just on the night,' he remembered. 'The anger wasn't at Ronnie or any member of his staff. I just needed to get something off my chest. It is something I look back on and think: 'How embarrassing is that?'

    'It was a big turning point for me. I didn't like that side of me.'

    His relationship with Rodgers was forged through observation. Commons was hampered by injury when the Northern Irishman came in. 'The disappointing thing for me was that I was never fit enough to put forward my claim,' he said.

    'But I was able to watch training and get an insight behind the scenes, to look at the scouting offices, nutrition in the kitchen, sports science and what goes into making a training session.


    'He's a cut above. He doesn't swear, he is always calm, but he is ruthless in terms of if you are not going to cut it. He knows the finished article. He has his fingers in everything. He is looking to the next step. He is looking to guarantee Champions League football every year.'

    Commons, who has 12 international caps, is a student of the game. 'I have always been a thinker and reflected on the matches,' he said.

    But the example of Rodgers has made him realise how much is demanded of the modern coach.

    'He leaves the training ground late at night knowing what he wants to do the next morning. He is a perfectionist,' he said. 'Brendan has given me an insight into what a top coach is about. It is is a 16-hour day, every day. He might get a week off in the summer but there will be phone calls about players or whatever. Does he every switch off from football?'

    He reveals that injury did not prevent him completing one exercise with Rodgers. 'He asked me to write my goals down over the next five years, telling me that I should tick them off once I had achieved them and add others.'

    That list remains private. But Commons is in no mood to abandon the game. 'Football has made me,' he said. It has also sustained him in dark times.

    A future of playing and coaching beckons. The Rodgers files will be well-thumbed. And granda might just have to buy a new folder.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/fo...eltic-star-Kris-Commons-lifts-lid-career.html










    KRIS COMMONS takes huge comfort from the charity work he does to help grief-stricken parents.

    Kris and his partner Lisa Hague tragically lost their first daughter, Lola, when she was stillborn in 2008.

    Since then, the pair have raised thousands of pounds for charity SiMBA which supports mums who have miscarried or lost babies.

    Commons said: “From where it started to where it is now, it’s phenomenal.

    “I saw on Twitter the other day that a football team down south have the Lola Commons brand on their team shirt.

    “They’re arranging a charity match that Lisa and I will try and attend, but it’s amazing to think about things like that.

    “From the absolute disaster of losing your first born, we now have football teams wearing our daughter’s name on their strips.

    “When we went through it in 2008 I’d never even heard of ‘stillborn’.

    “When it happened, I actually thought Lisa was the first ever person to lose a baby that way. I was 24 at the time, Lisa just 22. She’d gone the full term with an almost 39-week baby.

    “She had 24 hours of full labour to get through. That’s a tough place to be, watching the one you love giving birth to what you know is a dead baby.

    “We didn’t see Lola, we never held her. At the time it was too many decisions to make. But Lisa was incredible and has been ever since.”
     
    Last edited: Nov 8, 2017
  14. dbhoy72

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    Loving Kris on radio, overuse of the word 'we' which im loving.
     
  15. Valhalla Thus spoke Batistuta.

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    When Peter Martin comments about you trying to get yourself on every media outlet you no need to tone it down...
     
  16. Henrik 07 Gold Member Gold Member

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  17. Liam Scales Gold Member Gold Member

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    I love how much you hate him :56::56:

    More proper Tims in the media the better.
     
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  18. Valhalla Thus spoke Batistuta.

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    :56:

    Wouldn't class him as a proper Tim the way he's whoring himself all over the media but that's just me...
     
  19. Liam Scales Gold Member Gold Member

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    Aye, I'm sure you wouldn't.
     
  20. Valhalla Thus spoke Batistuta.

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    He writes for the Daily Mail. Kind of says it all for me :56: