It's All About Lovin' Artur And Craig Bellamy.

It was all about Artur Boruc. Though.

He was welcomed like the legend he his and the second half was a homeage to The Holy Goalie. After 60 mins The Holy Goalie wandered to take a free kick inside the box. He turned to what is known as 'The Green Brigade Corner', thumped the Celtic badge and gave a wee clenched fist salute.

Like a showman playing the crowd, it was an encore we wanted. We got it. Just after, Villarreal sprung a Feeder Club tactic, long ball over the top, and the Villarreal player was bearing doon on goal. The Holy Goalie set himself up and produced the save. The ball was cleared. The Holy Goalie punched the air. After that it was all waves and claps to his adoring public.

The message was clear. The only Goalie catching, or not as the case maybe, Easter Roaditis was Viera in the Villarreal goal. I fully expect a witch-hunt in the Spanish press to be underway to chase him out of Spain.

After a decent nights work, when he was not troubled, Artur went home and listened to the new Dido album.

Don't Look Back In Anger

"You have taken me from a calm manager preparing to experiment....." said WGS before the game, so playing yer best team in it's best formation is experimenting. Long may it continue say 99.9% of Celtic fans.

The Euro Disney Nights that CP is famed for last night had a Santa's Groto in Devon atmosphere around it as the maist unimportant Big Cup game since Juventus or as meaningless as the turkey shoot against Artmedia Bratislava.

The predicted mass stay-away due to the meaningless nature and glamour December friendly feel was a damp squib for those Tv watchers wanting to see a car crash. The playing for pride, points and money brigade won a points victory as watching Marcos Senna being so far in Scott Broon's pocket that he was keeping his cahonas warm was worth the expense.

Added to a final Big Cup cameo by oor Japanese Number 25, the return of Aiden McGeady and Andy Hinkel turning in another decent performance made this glorified training session, made even mair worthless by a comedy M.I.B, a confidence boosting 90mins that still left you feeling empty at the end.

The media, quite rightly, focused on what might have been and kept mentioning that we finished bottom of the group. "We did enough in Aalborg to win the game, everybody in this room whom I met has said we deserved to win." moaned oor manager, " We had a smashing performance against Villarreal away and we were six minutes away from beating against Manchester United here although we obviously had our backs to the wall." he added stretching the truth a bit and hiding the bit of paper that say's only Bate, Keiv and Famagusta had less shots on target than us in the whole of The Big Cup.

The fact that we scored only 4 goals shows were oor problem lay. Bad finishing and injuries can be blamed for us going from being last 16 contenders to sharing a bath wie Cluj, Anorthosis, Basel, PSV, Steaua, Fenerbahce and Bate when the Europa contenders reconvene early next year. Blaming those things only is being kind. Cards on the table? We weren't good enough.

At least Scott Broon commited the most fouls in the group section and Celtic were like 11 Wayne Rooneys and commited a massive 97 fouls in oor 6 games.

Glamour friendly highlights here, short arsed goal links, here and here.

Rumour O'Filter

".......we have a plan already. I can't do any of the finance bit -that's the chief executive's role - I just deal with the football bit. If you think there is a really good one out there for £500,000, then it is well worth it, or I might just get a Bosman and pay him a half a year's wages." muttered WGS the other day.

Not an indication that we expect the econnoisseurs of the PLC to spend £5m big ones on Welshman wie questionable tattoos and a history Hessellinkities so bad that Big Jan signs his sicknotes.

The usual Celtic 'source' is quoted as not saying: “Gordon is desperate to land him. He isn’t concerned by his reputation, having handled the younger version and others like Noel Whelan. Bellers was a huge hit when he was on loan up here and, at around £5m, the signing would be good business.”

Aye, that Noel Whelan was a £5m, £70,000 a week Big Time Charlie right enough.

Well at least you won't be waking up to Charlie Nicholas on Xmas morning and I'm off to ponder why bands from Glesga want to sound like West Coast Americans.

Forza