Football News: Celtic strengthen and for once the fans all agree.

For the first time in a while the Celtic support were united, everyone was in agreement that the team had been strengthened when the transfer window SLAMMED shut.

It never just closes, twice a year it slams shut to and to some it is a more poignant moment than hearing Big Ben strike at midnight bringing in a new year.

With the signings of Stuart Armstrong and Gary Mackay-Steven Celtic have managed not only to get two of the best young Scottish players but also two players that the support has long spoken about as players the club should target.

It's good to see the club buying the best Scottish talent and that the money is staying in the Scottish game and not being spent on some foreigner who only comes to Scotland because of our billionaire neighbours, the ones down south not the noisy ones from across the city.



Add in the young Derry lad - and life-long Celtic supporter - Michael Duffy, who I've been told by people who know more about the Irish League than me is a very good prospect and all in all it turned out to be a good window for Celtic with regards to incoming players.

Over the weekend Celtic made two massive strides towards Ronny Deila securing his first trophy as Celtic manager, the comfortable win on Sunday along with signing Armstrong and Mackay-Steven weakening Dundee Utd makes Celtic the strong favourites against Jackie McNamara's team who will also have Nadir Ciftci suspended in the League Cup final next month.

With the games we have coming up this month it was also important to keep players we have like Virgil van Dijk and although I'm still not 100% convinced about Kris Commons long-term future at the club I do think he could be useful in the remainder of this season. Van Dijk was never leaving in this window and any enquiries were given short thrift and the ongoing almost chess like negotiations with Commons could have went either way.

As I'm writing this it's just been announced that Commons has signed a new two year deal for Celtic, a lot of fans will be delighted with that news. Domestically Commons has proven his worth but on the European stage he has never really done it for me.

January was consumed by the League Cup semi-final against the club currently playing out of Ibrox. The media as expected went overboard with their saturation coverage of anything to do with the game, it was just a stream headline after headline stoking the flames and it seemed every old rent-a-quote player who could still speak was targeted by the gutter press for the back page morning headlines.

All in all it bored me, the whole Ibrox situation has done for a long time now, it was a waste of time writing anything because all people wanted to read, talk or argue about was the Hampden 'showdown' and I really couldn't be bothered going over it all again.

The game itself was as I thought it would be a complete non-event, Celtic looked comfortable and their opponents looked like, well basically what they are and that's a poorly run lower league club (or is it company?). Celtic never looked troubled and dominated the match for long periods and I still can't understand why any Celtic supporter was worried about getting the result, I always knew Sunday would be a formality, I know anything can happen in a cup game but would the same people have been worrying if we were playing Queen of the South?

The other semi -final between Aberdeen and Dundee Utd was nothing more than an irrelevance to the press pack as day by day they whipped their gullible readers into a frenzy with more and more pointless sound bites from anyone who was willing to provide them with what they wanted, I was surprised Tom Boyd's opinion made it to print - probably to show how neutral our media is eh?

So with the League Cup pantomime over and more and more people realising Scotland only really needs 'a strong Rangers' if sectarian singing ever becomes an Olympic event it'll be good to get back talking about football, we can't even get tore into Peter Lawwell after the week he's just given us with signings and Commons contract sorted, and with Ronny Deila winning more and more fans over what will people find to moan about?

I've had what I can only describe as chronic toothache so I've got that to whinge about but I can't really moan about anything Celtic related and that's not happened for a lllooooonnngggg time!

Written by Mark B Jamieson February 05 2015 18:00:08