I'm a Celtic fan, so sadly my main interest is in one of the 'backwater leagues', but this season has nevertheless been a hilarious and interesting season, Rangers are in the worst state they've ever been in at any point in my life-time, Paul Le Guen was a complete failure, and it comes on the back of a disastrous season for them last year, their chairman Sir David "Smoke and Mirrors, The Mint, Lord Moonbeam" Murray is now refusing to give any serious financial backing, their youth programme is poor, they resort to betraying their country and stealing our national team manager (Who's not that great anyway, sadly we'll no doubt appoint another Rangers reject - Alex McLeish as his successor) to be their new coach... It's a fantastic spectacle.
Meanwhile, we soar majestically into the last 16 of the Champions' League, with the best home record in Europe (We are just a
wee bit crap away, mind you), 17 points ahead in the league, Nakamura emerging as an absolute genius, buying up all the best talent in Scotland, things are looking up. There are some problems though, Gravesen and Jarosik are absolutely terrible, but hopefully we'll replace them with Thomson and Brown from Hibs, with Sno stepping into the Lennon role next year. We might lose our goalkeeper, Boruc, who's been great, which'd be sad, but given the over-inflated English market we should be trying to get £8-12 million from Arsenal or whoever (Knowing our luck, we'll get about £500K
), Scotland is blessed with goalkeeping talent, and if we got anything near that, we now have a decent replacement with Mark Brown signed this week, or we could go for Craig Gordon or whoever.
Scottish football as a whole is in a weird state, some claim it's the weakest it's ever been, others point to the fact that we've had two different teams in the last 16 of the CL in consecutive years, Hearts and Hibs are the strongest they've been in years, Aberdeen are resurgent, and pushing for their rightful place in second, Dundee United are a bit away yet, but they've finally got a good manager, and if they give him some money they could get, even if not fully back to the glory days of smashing Barcelona in the Camp Nou, at least back to the top four or five. The Scottish national team is of course not doing too badly these days, and whilst our position at the top of the group containing Italy, France and Ukraine (Word Cup winners, WC Finalists and WC Quarter-Finalists respectively) may be flattering, we're still probably better than Ukraine, and good enough to finish third and fight for second. That said, the managerial situation is far from ideal, with Wally Smith turning traitor to the Forces of Darkness and McLeish (Who got Rangers to a mighty 3rd place last season
likely to succeed him)...
This are uber-long post, but in summation, I hope we beat AC Milan, I have always had a liking for Inter, and this season, exactly forty years after our last European Cup win, I'd like to see us do well. We've beaten better teams that Milan over two legs in the past, so why the hell not?
P.S. Best wishes to two ex-Celts now plying their trades in England, Henrik Larsson and Paul Lambert, representing the only two World Class players we've had in the last, oh... 20+ years (?), all the best at Man U and Wycombe. Legends both.
EDIT: Whoops, forgot to be spiteful and wish ill on Petrov, a truly loathesome individual.
I'm up for it ^^. Chelsea vs Liverpool. I got to say Liverpool. Chelsea is strangely inconsistent compared to the 2 previous years.
But as much as I support Arsenal, MU is in great form now. Definitely a great match ^^
