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[Official TC Thread] Celtic 9 in a row Champions

Discussion in 'Celtic Chat' started by Henrik 07, May 18, 2020.

Discuss Celtic 9 in a row Champions in the Celtic Chat area at TalkCeltic.net.

  1. Henrik 07 Gold Member Gold Member

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    WE'RE no strangers to a title party here at Celtic, but this season it’s going to be a little different…

    The Bhoys have sealed their ninth consecutive league title for the second time in the club’s history and we are inviting Celtic supporters all over the world to join in from home as we celebrate another historic victory together!

    Tune in this Saturday (May 23) from 3pm as we kick off the ‘#HoopsAtHome 9 in a Row Show’.

    Neil Lennon and his squad of champions get the party started, with some special guests joining in the celebrations, and you can watch every magical minute live on YouTube, Facebook Liveand Celtic TV.

    You can also follow all the action on Twitter with our Player Party Takeover!

    So, get your Hoops on and party at home with the champions!

    This is our way. This is our 9. This is our time.

    We hope we can have a real celebration at Celtic Park with you all soon but in the meantime, as always #StayHomeStaySafe
     
  2. blackfish Screaming from beneath the waves...

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    A man who received bullets and bombs in the post, repeatedly attacked on the streets of Glasgow, pilloried in the press, hangman graffiti in his homeland, attacked at Tynecastle.

    He came back in our time of need, he withstood criticism from his own support who wanted some fairytale fanciful manager. He took it all in his stride and he makes more history with immortality standing on the next step on our quest to lay to rest any quibble over our superiority!

    Neil Francis Lennon!!!!!
     
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  3. Dallas Cowbhoys

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    Nobody would prefer for it to be won this way.

    The club, the players, and the vast majority of Celtic fans wanted their ninth consecutive Scottish title to be won out on the pitch, fair and square. Unimpeachable. Inarguable.

    Given their 13-point lead in the league, they could be fairly confident in their team getting it over the line; particularly when, as the table stood when football paused two months ago, all five of their remaining games after the planned Premiership split in April would have been at Celtic Park because of a quirk of the system.

    After a month of impassioned dialogue following the controversial and chaotic fallout from the SPFL’s vote on resolving all three lower leagues, the SPFL held an EGM last Tuesday to vote on Rangers’ resolution to hold a second independent investigation into the SPFL’s conduct during and following the SPFL’s initial vote.

    The first investigation, handled by professional services firm Deloitte, had been facilitated because of Dundee’s change in vote from “no” to “yes,” approving the resolution in the process. But while Deloitte’s investigation found no evidence of wrongdoing — Dundee’s initial vote had allegedly gone into an SPFL employee’s spam folder — a group of member clubs were unhappy with the report’s conclusions as they believed it omitted compromising evidence discreetly withheld by clubs at that time.

    Rangers tabled the vote for a second independent investigation and last Thursday released a 200-page dossier of what they argued was incriminatory evidence of SPFL wrongdoing. Requiring 32 votes to pass, 13 voted in favour of the resolution, with 27 against and two abstentions. It paved the way for the SPFL to declare the 2019-20 Premiership season over, relegating Hearts and crowning Celtic as champions once again in the process. That announcement came today.

    There are separate, weighty issues for the SPFL and its member clubs to now confront, including the imposing problem of developing a Project Restart-type strategy for beginning the 2020-21 season as close to its currently-scheduled August 1 date as possible and ensuring the working conditions for every employee involved will be safe.

    There’s also the haunting prospect of the Scottish clubs facing administration and potentially liquidation over the intervening months who will need any help that can be afforded to them; and while the various divisions’ 2019-20 seasons have been officially declared, there certainly hasn’t been a line drawn under it with various legal challenges promised from clubs adversely affected by its outcomes.

    All of the real-world challenges related to both postponing the season and declaring it — the steep costs of coronavirus testing, the extent of gate-receipt losses, contingency plans for player infection, returning staff from furlough, reforming clubs’ budgeting and corporate structure, negotiating the changeover in Sky TV deals on August 1 — remain, unaffected by an administrative decision.

    While acknowledging the wider context and the more ominous ramifications of what comes next, we can focus for the moment on the specific decision to award Celtic the title.

    Firstly, let’s address the asterisk question.

    Celtic fans can, with some justification, argue that their latest championship shouldn’t be tarnished with an asterisk given the 13-point gap between them and second-placed Rangers when football paused made the “race” a near-certainty, compounded by this team’s experience in getting league titles over the line. But those arguments will be met by opposition that anything not decided mathematically is invalid. This title’s legitimacy will, unfortunately, become a partisan question.

    But are Celtic deserving of it? In this post-pandemic football landscape, where the mathematics of league tables have become deferential to more mitigating factors, they are deserving by every other metric.

    Celtic comfortably deserve it judging by both current league position and by points per game, the two — obviously flawed — key metrics discussed across European football for deciding league titles other than null and voiding. Breaking it down into probabilities of winning the title is, naturally, where the loudest opposition lies.

    One, reasonable, counter-argument offered over the past two months is that, while Celtic were 13 points ahead, Rangers had a game in hand as well as two derbies left to play and potentially win back a further six points. This could take them within four points of Celtic with each team having six other games still to play — assuming Rangers won that game in hand. Celtic’s goal difference of plus-70 compared with Rangers’ plus-45 effectively adds a further point to the equation. Still, overcoming a five-point deficit from those final 18 available is unlikely but by no means impossible.

    The key issue is that a lot of difficult assumptions have to come true to even reach that point, including two derby wins for Rangers. This is a further problem with the peculiar quirk of the Premiership’s split system. If the league table remained the same to the time of the split, five of Celtic’s remaining six non-derby matches would take place at Celtic Park, whereas five of Rangers’ remaining seven would be away from Ibrox.

    It would have taken an unprecedented capitulation for Celtic to concede the title from this point, despite those two remaining derbies.

    Rangers had been the better team in both previous Old Firm games, winning 2-1 at Celtic Park in the league though losing the League Cup final 1-0, but such arguments account for the dubious metric of form. If accounting for Rangers’ form, in performances at least, against Celtic in December, you must also include their league form since the return from the winter break, where they dropped 13 points over 10 games compared with Celtic’s two dropped points.

    In April, the Euro Club Index football ranking programmed 100,000 simulations of possible outcomes to the Premiership season at the moment it was paused; based on league position, points accrued vs remaining fixtures, form and goal difference. The index predicted that Celtic had a 98.87 per cent chance of finishing first. Now, of course, that lingering 1.13 per cent can be used to support counter-claims to the title’s legitimacy, but the index’s findings reinforce the near-certainty of Celtic’s position.

    This is why comparisons with other leagues, already problematic in nature given each’s country’s differing successes in containing the virus and therefore the timelines of their returns to action, are limited. For instance, parallels drawn with the Dutch Eredivisie’s decision to award European places but not league titles, where Ajax and AZ Alkmaar were level on points with nine games to go when football stopped, don’t hold much water.

    Still, there will naturally be concerns raised by the declaration that Celtic are champions, with the SPFL’s critics arguing it has been decided prematurely.

    The SPFL has tentatively mooted aiming for a July return date, therefore starting 2020-21 on schedule. This has understandably irked those believing the priority should be finishing 2019-20, given it would theoretically allow time to finish that season without overly hamstringing the following one. However, the exorbitant and, given Scottish football’s precarity and limited resources, potentially prohibitive costs of returning to football regardless of declaring seasons over or not — as well as lacking a tangible trajectory of virus containment in the UK — suggests such a timeframe is optimistic.

    The SPFL’s priority is both starting next season and helping clubs stay afloat by distributing payments by league position when they are haemorrhaging money each month, but realistically there can be no accurate prediction of when that might be. In the SPFL’s view, the conclusion of 2019-20 and the release of cash flow that would prompt had to be reached before preparations could begin for the next. Declaring the Premiership solves one problem; although, with legal challenges from incensed clubs likely it introduces many others.

    No-one preferred it this way, for all the reasons outlined above but also because the celebrating has to be done isolated at home rather than in the world’s pubs with friends and family. But this is what they have and needs must.

    With everything else going on, Celtic fans can feel vindicated in cracking open a beer, logging onto Zoom with their pals, and toasting a ninth title in a row.
     
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  4. Peej Gold Member Gold Member

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    I've been at work today, first day back to a working environment since lockdown - I am happy for this in many way - so I knew we were more than likely getting the title today, I knew when it came through, but only in the last 30minutes or so have I been able to sit down and read all the mayhem and love pouring out from players and clubs around the world, and seeing our amazing fans (stay at home guys!) being so happy today, truly bringing a tear to the eye.

    Next year, I will be a greeting mess if we get that tenth title! Unbelievable from our club, this truly is amazing times!

    This is how it feels like to be Celtic
     
  5. honda Gold Member Gold Member

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    Time for a bottle if Eldorado... * nae Bucky :56:
     
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  6. seamus1967 Gold Member Gold Member

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    That's me half cut already.

    Got my alcohol from the village, singing all the way home.

    Wales is now aware we got the 9. Even the * sheep.

    Hail Hail. :ynwacelti
     
  7. Slater67

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    Cracking wee video- funny that song was in my zoom quiz yesterday asking what film the song was for and a didn’t get it
     
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  8. kinglenny

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  9. MickeyyMack CELTIC GLASGOW OK Gold Member

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    2565499D-5324-4871-B0E0-06A3CCED0505.jpeg
    Try this mate , nicer than that el D pish.
     
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  10. Hammy89 Gold Member Gold Member

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    Champions! Champions! Champions! Champions! Champions! Champions! Champions! Champions! Champions!
     
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  11. Da-HunSkelper

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  12. Henrik 07 Gold Member Gold Member

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    Big Mickey’s on the 6 day benders.
     
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  13. Henrik 07 Gold Member Gold Member

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  14. seamus1967 Gold Member Gold Member

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    That says it all.
     
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  15. Seán Mac D Gold Member Gold Member

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    Class from the GB :50:

     
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  16. seamus1967 Gold Member Gold Member

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    Oofff....nice alcohol volume. :50:
     
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  17. seamus1967 Gold Member Gold Member

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    :50: take a drink :ynwacelti
     
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  18. Lennon1888

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    Wee takeaway ordered! :36:
     
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  19. Henrik 07 Gold Member Gold Member

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    The only thing missing is some Pyro.

    :56:
     
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  20. Da-HunSkelper

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