May 2011
Barcelona have eliminated Man United in the ECC semi with a 4-0 thumping in the second (home) leg, 6-2 on agg; Olympique Lyonnais beat Inter Milan 2-0 on aggregate so there are the finalists. In the Euro Cup, it's Dortmund and Atletico Madrid who prevail (Atletico are the holders). Incidentally, for Barca it's David Villa who is the big scorer, the one he potted in that 4-0 match was his 41st of the season overall.
We'll have to think lots about next year starting very soon. Some is already in progress; in addition to defender Ojala, we've made two other player transfer agreements, a goalkeeper Zacharie Boucher, 19, from Havre AC and a defensive oriented midfielder from ESTAC Troyes, Dialo Guidileye, 21. Both are very highly rated by our scouts, and we're pleased to have arranged the deals, each will cost us 70k, so we're still on the frugal track.
We should know by now who's done enough to earn a new contract, but we'll still give some of the players being considered a run out in the next one, against Celtic.
Match: Celtic - Hibernian (SPL Championship Group)
Score: 3-2 (Hooper pen 56, Ledley 89, Kapo 90+2 - Stevenson 47, McRobbie 59)
League Position: 1st (winner)
Summary: Wotherspoon concedes a penalty on a corner to put us in danger (looked pretty harsh from the way corners are usually officiated) but Maloney rolls if off the left post. With that exception, we had a more than decent start, unfortunately punctuated by Miller being found wide open and not even getting the shot close to on target. Miller is one who hasn't quite sold me on an expensive (for us) new contract yet. Things begin to swing Celtic's way but at the break we've still had 58% of the ball. Unfortunately, there doesn't even remotely look like there's a goal lurking for us, it's going to have to take something special. Two changed at the half as they're banged up. McRobbie looks out of his depth now, after good early performances. Ooh, we get a sudden goal on a bit of magic indeed, Zaluska is readying to collect a bouncing ball and Stevenson, just in at the break, comes out of nowhere, launching himself and getting a header that trickles in off the far post. Keeper holds his head, and with good reason. 1-0 in the 47th. The referee starting to give us trouble, a couple of unwarranted cards and now a second penalty, which he also shows a card on. Hooper almost misses, it's hit the underside of the bar and just barely bounced in over the line, but it counts. 1-1 on 56. McRobbie gets it right back after a quality passing sequence, although Celtic are screaming he was offside. As the game wound to its final quarter hour, we were playing superbly as a team, converging in pairs on a Celtic player when they stayed on the ball too long and every time taking it away. Stevenson (although he still can't shoot) and Wotherspoon finally giving us the kinds of performances that we absent in the pressure run-in. Darn, Agogo was breaking through but he fed Stevenson, open admittedly but he misses badly again. I know what we're working on there! Ledley gets the equalizer in the 89th as we fall asleep on a cross. And we're still asleep, Kapo scores in stoppage to steal a win we actually deserved on balance. Very disappointing to let it slip away like that even if it doesn't matter with the title already - it's an issue of pride. I don't yell at the players, though. Put in perspective, it's very hard to get a win at Celtic Park and there wasn't anything to gain but a bragging point by actually winning this one.
McRobbie follows his goal v. Celtic with a goal and excellent performance for Scotland U19s v Turkey. And a couple days later he's good again, getting on the scoresheet v. England.
Match: Hibernian - Aberdeen (SPL Championship Group)
Score: 4-2 (Riordan 16, 84, Hanlon 55, Douglas pen 66 - Brown og. 27, Paton 59)
League Position: 1st (winner)
Summary: Riordan gets us on the board with a pretty shot, 100th ever league goal. Very tough right angle. Brown, who's not been that great recently, lets one in that he shouldn't, and it ends up a disappointing first half, we've been outplayed in front of the home fans who came out for a party. My shooting-challenged wingers do me in again as Wotherspoon puts it wide when he has a break. We've got a play like the one that got Celtic the tying goal last time out, but for Aberdeen Diakba is alert, stays with Galbraith, and just gets a head to it. Two corners later, Hanlon of all people gets in to head home. That leaves Hart as the only field player not to score (other than a couple of limited-duty reserves), Hart is out injured today. Certainly wasn't classic technique, instead of keeping his feet moving forward, he leaned way over... lucky to get it. We get beat on the break following a corner, as some of the players who were to stay ready didn't hold back enough, and the finish was true from Paton, who's a good player. This is the same referee who was so fussy last time out at Celtic Park, and he's given us a penalty. It's Douglas who takes it, and he slots in in the left corner low no problem, 3-2. Riordan adds a fourth on an impressive volley of a long angled cross from Douglas. So we did in the end put on a bit of a show for the fans. And Brown really put on a performance after the early mistake; he's been named man of the match. It's Rangers over Celtic in the finale for those two, which jumps Rangers into second on the very last day after trailing behind Celtic for months.
Monthly match summary:
Celtic 3-2 Hibernian (SPL Championship Group) (Hooper pen 56, Ledley 89, Kapo 90+2 - Stevenson 47, McRobbie 59)
Hibernian 4-2 Aberdeen (SPL Championship Group) (Riordan 16, 84, Hanlon 55, Douglas pen 66 - Brown og. 27, Paton 59)
Final table:
The Scottish Cup is Dundee v Rangers; Dundee take the final European spot if they win.
So the falloff from last year isn't that big at the top - Rangers had four points less than last season, Celtic three; we're responsible for those, I guess, and we just shot through with a 31-point gain (wow!!!). One of my concerns was could we make Easter Road a difficult place to play - and we did. Rangers were deadly at 17-1-1, but we were quite good at 15-4-0, so we were unbeaten although we dropped six more points than Rangers at home. It's what we needed. Our 11-3-5 away record topped the league with 36 points, over Aberdeen's 35. Aberdeen suffered troubles at home, was their downfall - only 8-3-7, 8th in the league. We were the best defensive side with 29 conceded, ahead of Rangers 34 and Celtic 39; our late scoring slump left us third in goals with 68 behind Rangers 78 and Celtic 77. My future target is for us to be getting into the 80-goal range.
For this time around it was really a team effort, Riordan's final day brace puts him joint 7th in the league with 13 goals, noticeably behind the top group who were 20-19-17-16 goals. We're not in the top end of any of the other individual stats except Bamba was 7th in average tackles. We only ended up with one player in the team of the year, the departing Sol Bamba - and for the most of the year he really was superb, sad to see him going.
£1.36m is our share of the spoils for the first-place finish. This for the moment leaves us at £4.3m in profit for the year, £6.6m balance.
For the full season, we've had these results:
Euro Cup 10-1-3, eliminated in 2nd knockout round
League Cup 4-0-0, winners
Scottish Cup 3-0-1, eliminated in semi final
League 26-7-5, winners
Total: 43-8-9 (60 matches played, eek!)
I go watch the Euro Cup, and the referee messes it up by inserting himself, giving a red card on 30 seconds to a Dortmund player. Dortmund don't let Atleti dominate though, and it's left to be a Diego Forlan show, will he or won't he? He's sliced through to head a free kick into the net, but it's taken away for an imagined foul; later in the half a chip is near-perfect, but when it clips the bar it goes down but not in. Dortmund sneak a goal at the end of the half. The keeper denies Forlan in the 2nd half. The referee decides to insert himself again with a phantom penalty, it's finally a way for Forlan to score. Aguero pots the winner in stoppage time.
Rangers beat Dundee Utd. for the Scottish Cup.
Sunday, Chelsea need a win v. league champions Liverpool to have even a chance at the final ECC spot, and to save Ancelotti's job. Too many draws. They don't get it (2-1 loss), finish fifth, and he's gone (Everton got 4th, and with their win would have gotten 4th even if Chelsea managed a win). Unimaginably, they go with the other Italian "failure", Roberto Mancini, who's been sacked after a poor Man City season, where it took a late surge to even finish 12th. So they've sacked an Italian who took them to 5th and replaced him with a sacked manager who finished 12th. This makes sense how? Yeah, I'd have taken the Chelsea job if they offered, but there wasn't any realistic expectation of that, even if I let them know I'd be interested if they were. For that job, I'll concede I'm not experienced enough. My slight interest happily doesn't cause any problem back home, in fact the board offer a contract extension at a slightly improved rate. It's not much, but I want to stay on their good side so I accept quickly.
League leaders:
Goals: Calum Elliot, Hearts 20; Kenny Miller, Rangers 19; Georgios Samaras, Celtic 17; Adam Rooney, Inverness 16
Assists: Vladimir Weiss, Rangers (loan) 19; Shaun Maloney, Celtic 18
A little scout around the world:
English Premier:
ECC: 1. Liverpool 82, 2. Arsenal 74, 3. Man United 68, 4. Everton 64
EC: 5. Chelsea 63, 6. Aston Villa 60, 7. Bolton 60
Relegated: West Brom, Newcastle, Blackpool
Promoted: Nottm. Forest, Middlesbrough, Hull City
FA Cup: Aston Villa (2-0 over L1 Huddersfield, if you can believe it!)
League Cup: Aston Villa (1-0 over Newcastle)
Top Scorers: Steven Fletcher 26, Bobby Zamora 21
Spain La Liga - closest race imaginable:
1. Real Madrid 85 +57, 2. Barcelona 85 +50, 3. At. Madrid 82
Italy Serie A - also very very close:
1. Roma 79, 2. Napoli 78, 3. AC Milan 76, 4. Juventus 73
Portugal Liga Sagres - rather close:
1. Sporting CP 66, 2. Porto 63, 3. Maritimo 61
France Ligue 1 - again, close:
1. Marseilles 71, 2. Lyon 67 +32, 3. PSG 67 +20, 4. Rennes 67 +10
Germany Bundesliga - again astonishingly close:
1. Leverkusen 63, 2. Bayern 62, 3. Wolfsburg 61, 4. Dortmund 60, 5. HSV 59, 6. Schalke 57, 7. Hoffenheim 56 - only seven points 1st to 7th!
And in the final interesting match of the season:
Barcelona 2-0 Olympique Lyonnais for the European Champions Cup.
Barcelona have eliminated Man United in the ECC semi with a 4-0 thumping in the second (home) leg, 6-2 on agg; Olympique Lyonnais beat Inter Milan 2-0 on aggregate so there are the finalists. In the Euro Cup, it's Dortmund and Atletico Madrid who prevail (Atletico are the holders). Incidentally, for Barca it's David Villa who is the big scorer, the one he potted in that 4-0 match was his 41st of the season overall.
We'll have to think lots about next year starting very soon. Some is already in progress; in addition to defender Ojala, we've made two other player transfer agreements, a goalkeeper Zacharie Boucher, 19, from Havre AC and a defensive oriented midfielder from ESTAC Troyes, Dialo Guidileye, 21. Both are very highly rated by our scouts, and we're pleased to have arranged the deals, each will cost us 70k, so we're still on the frugal track.
We should know by now who's done enough to earn a new contract, but we'll still give some of the players being considered a run out in the next one, against Celtic.
Match: Celtic - Hibernian (SPL Championship Group)
Score: 3-2 (Hooper pen 56, Ledley 89, Kapo 90+2 - Stevenson 47, McRobbie 59)
League Position: 1st (winner)
Summary: Wotherspoon concedes a penalty on a corner to put us in danger (looked pretty harsh from the way corners are usually officiated) but Maloney rolls if off the left post. With that exception, we had a more than decent start, unfortunately punctuated by Miller being found wide open and not even getting the shot close to on target. Miller is one who hasn't quite sold me on an expensive (for us) new contract yet. Things begin to swing Celtic's way but at the break we've still had 58% of the ball. Unfortunately, there doesn't even remotely look like there's a goal lurking for us, it's going to have to take something special. Two changed at the half as they're banged up. McRobbie looks out of his depth now, after good early performances. Ooh, we get a sudden goal on a bit of magic indeed, Zaluska is readying to collect a bouncing ball and Stevenson, just in at the break, comes out of nowhere, launching himself and getting a header that trickles in off the far post. Keeper holds his head, and with good reason. 1-0 in the 47th. The referee starting to give us trouble, a couple of unwarranted cards and now a second penalty, which he also shows a card on. Hooper almost misses, it's hit the underside of the bar and just barely bounced in over the line, but it counts. 1-1 on 56. McRobbie gets it right back after a quality passing sequence, although Celtic are screaming he was offside. As the game wound to its final quarter hour, we were playing superbly as a team, converging in pairs on a Celtic player when they stayed on the ball too long and every time taking it away. Stevenson (although he still can't shoot) and Wotherspoon finally giving us the kinds of performances that we absent in the pressure run-in. Darn, Agogo was breaking through but he fed Stevenson, open admittedly but he misses badly again. I know what we're working on there! Ledley gets the equalizer in the 89th as we fall asleep on a cross. And we're still asleep, Kapo scores in stoppage to steal a win we actually deserved on balance. Very disappointing to let it slip away like that even if it doesn't matter with the title already - it's an issue of pride. I don't yell at the players, though. Put in perspective, it's very hard to get a win at Celtic Park and there wasn't anything to gain but a bragging point by actually winning this one.
McRobbie follows his goal v. Celtic with a goal and excellent performance for Scotland U19s v Turkey. And a couple days later he's good again, getting on the scoresheet v. England.
Match: Hibernian - Aberdeen (SPL Championship Group)
Score: 4-2 (Riordan 16, 84, Hanlon 55, Douglas pen 66 - Brown og. 27, Paton 59)
League Position: 1st (winner)
Summary: Riordan gets us on the board with a pretty shot, 100th ever league goal. Very tough right angle. Brown, who's not been that great recently, lets one in that he shouldn't, and it ends up a disappointing first half, we've been outplayed in front of the home fans who came out for a party. My shooting-challenged wingers do me in again as Wotherspoon puts it wide when he has a break. We've got a play like the one that got Celtic the tying goal last time out, but for Aberdeen Diakba is alert, stays with Galbraith, and just gets a head to it. Two corners later, Hanlon of all people gets in to head home. That leaves Hart as the only field player not to score (other than a couple of limited-duty reserves), Hart is out injured today. Certainly wasn't classic technique, instead of keeping his feet moving forward, he leaned way over... lucky to get it. We get beat on the break following a corner, as some of the players who were to stay ready didn't hold back enough, and the finish was true from Paton, who's a good player. This is the same referee who was so fussy last time out at Celtic Park, and he's given us a penalty. It's Douglas who takes it, and he slots in in the left corner low no problem, 3-2. Riordan adds a fourth on an impressive volley of a long angled cross from Douglas. So we did in the end put on a bit of a show for the fans. And Brown really put on a performance after the early mistake; he's been named man of the match. It's Rangers over Celtic in the finale for those two, which jumps Rangers into second on the very last day after trailing behind Celtic for months.
Monthly match summary:


Final table:
Pos Inf Team Pld Won Drn Lst GF GA GD Pts 1 ECC | Hibernian | 38 | 26 | 7 | 5 | 68 | 29 | +39 | 85 2 EC | Rangers | 38 | 25 | 5 | 8 | 78 | 34 | +44 | 80 3 EC | Celtic | 38 | 24 | 6 | 8 | 77 | 39 | +38 | 78 4 EC | Aberdeen | 38 | 19 | 5 | 14 | 52 | 52 | -2 | 62 5 | Hearts | 38 | 18 | 5 | 15 | 60 | 46 | +14 | 59 6 | Dundee Utd | 38 | 16 | 5 | 17 | 50 | 58 | -8 | 52 --------------------- split ---------------------------------- 7 | Motherwell | 38 | 14 | 8 | 16 | 46 | 49 | -3 | 50 8 | Kilmarnock | 38 | 13 | 6 | 19 | 43 | 57 | -14 | 45 9 | Inverness CT | 38 | 14 | 2 | 22 | 47 | 61 | -14 | 44 10 | St Mirren | 38 | 12 | 5 | 21 | 46 | 60 | -15 | 41 11 | Hamilton | 38 | 8 | 8 | 22 | 25 | 56 | -31 | 32 12 R | St Johnstone | 38 | 6 | 4 | 28 | 32 | 80 | -48 | 22
The Scottish Cup is Dundee v Rangers; Dundee take the final European spot if they win.
So the falloff from last year isn't that big at the top - Rangers had four points less than last season, Celtic three; we're responsible for those, I guess, and we just shot through with a 31-point gain (wow!!!). One of my concerns was could we make Easter Road a difficult place to play - and we did. Rangers were deadly at 17-1-1, but we were quite good at 15-4-0, so we were unbeaten although we dropped six more points than Rangers at home. It's what we needed. Our 11-3-5 away record topped the league with 36 points, over Aberdeen's 35. Aberdeen suffered troubles at home, was their downfall - only 8-3-7, 8th in the league. We were the best defensive side with 29 conceded, ahead of Rangers 34 and Celtic 39; our late scoring slump left us third in goals with 68 behind Rangers 78 and Celtic 77. My future target is for us to be getting into the 80-goal range.
For this time around it was really a team effort, Riordan's final day brace puts him joint 7th in the league with 13 goals, noticeably behind the top group who were 20-19-17-16 goals. We're not in the top end of any of the other individual stats except Bamba was 7th in average tackles. We only ended up with one player in the team of the year, the departing Sol Bamba - and for the most of the year he really was superb, sad to see him going.
£1.36m is our share of the spoils for the first-place finish. This for the moment leaves us at £4.3m in profit for the year, £6.6m balance.
For the full season, we've had these results:
Euro Cup 10-1-3, eliminated in 2nd knockout round
League Cup 4-0-0, winners
Scottish Cup 3-0-1, eliminated in semi final
League 26-7-5, winners
Total: 43-8-9 (60 matches played, eek!)
I go watch the Euro Cup, and the referee messes it up by inserting himself, giving a red card on 30 seconds to a Dortmund player. Dortmund don't let Atleti dominate though, and it's left to be a Diego Forlan show, will he or won't he? He's sliced through to head a free kick into the net, but it's taken away for an imagined foul; later in the half a chip is near-perfect, but when it clips the bar it goes down but not in. Dortmund sneak a goal at the end of the half. The keeper denies Forlan in the 2nd half. The referee decides to insert himself again with a phantom penalty, it's finally a way for Forlan to score. Aguero pots the winner in stoppage time.
Rangers beat Dundee Utd. for the Scottish Cup.
Sunday, Chelsea need a win v. league champions Liverpool to have even a chance at the final ECC spot, and to save Ancelotti's job. Too many draws. They don't get it (2-1 loss), finish fifth, and he's gone (Everton got 4th, and with their win would have gotten 4th even if Chelsea managed a win). Unimaginably, they go with the other Italian "failure", Roberto Mancini, who's been sacked after a poor Man City season, where it took a late surge to even finish 12th. So they've sacked an Italian who took them to 5th and replaced him with a sacked manager who finished 12th. This makes sense how? Yeah, I'd have taken the Chelsea job if they offered, but there wasn't any realistic expectation of that, even if I let them know I'd be interested if they were. For that job, I'll concede I'm not experienced enough. My slight interest happily doesn't cause any problem back home, in fact the board offer a contract extension at a slightly improved rate. It's not much, but I want to stay on their good side so I accept quickly.
League leaders:
Goals: Calum Elliot, Hearts 20; Kenny Miller, Rangers 19; Georgios Samaras, Celtic 17; Adam Rooney, Inverness 16
Assists: Vladimir Weiss, Rangers (loan) 19; Shaun Maloney, Celtic 18
A little scout around the world:
English Premier:
ECC: 1. Liverpool 82, 2. Arsenal 74, 3. Man United 68, 4. Everton 64
EC: 5. Chelsea 63, 6. Aston Villa 60, 7. Bolton 60
Relegated: West Brom, Newcastle, Blackpool
Promoted: Nottm. Forest, Middlesbrough, Hull City
FA Cup: Aston Villa (2-0 over L1 Huddersfield, if you can believe it!)
League Cup: Aston Villa (1-0 over Newcastle)
Top Scorers: Steven Fletcher 26, Bobby Zamora 21
Spain La Liga - closest race imaginable:
1. Real Madrid 85 +57, 2. Barcelona 85 +50, 3. At. Madrid 82
Italy Serie A - also very very close:
1. Roma 79, 2. Napoli 78, 3. AC Milan 76, 4. Juventus 73
Portugal Liga Sagres - rather close:
1. Sporting CP 66, 2. Porto 63, 3. Maritimo 61
France Ligue 1 - again, close:
1. Marseilles 71, 2. Lyon 67 +32, 3. PSG 67 +20, 4. Rennes 67 +10
Germany Bundesliga - again astonishingly close:
1. Leverkusen 63, 2. Bayern 62, 3. Wolfsburg 61, 4. Dortmund 60, 5. HSV 59, 6. Schalke 57, 7. Hoffenheim 56 - only seven points 1st to 7th!
And in the final interesting match of the season:
Barcelona 2-0 Olympique Lyonnais for the European Champions Cup.