Pre-Season Friendlies - Those who care are for the watching.

Pre-season games are training sessions. No-one will remember when real trophies are played for.

Danny Baker once said that football fans should be paid to attend pre-season friendlies. His assertion was that they are just training sessions for the clubs to get the players up to scratch and that the reason they want supporters there is to get them used to playing in front of an atmosphere. In effect, the spectators were actors creating the feel of a real game. And just like actors, they should be paid.

I don't necessarily subscribe to the paying of spectators at friendlies concept; people are entitled to pay and go and see whatever they want, however,I do subscribe to the principal that they are utterly useless for supporters engaging what is happening and that those supporters who take every result in a pre-season friendly with great meaning, are for the watching. Pre-season friendlies don't matter!

I recall a pre-season friendly that once had Hugh Keeven's writing at length about how Celtic were going to be dreadful that season and Davie Provan writing an opinion piece about how Martin O'Neill had lost it. The reason? Alan Thompson played centre-half !!

He played centre-half because the defenders had small niggles and, since pre-season friendlies are training sessions, the manager didn't want to risk anybody iin a game that didn’t matter.

Playing Thompson at centre-half was about giving him game time as he'd missed a couple of preseason friendlies, and excluding some of the centre-halfs was about protecting them for the games that mattered. Provan had written at length about how this demonstrated that Celtic needed to sign new centre-halfs. We didn't, we had a plethora at the time, we just didn't want them exacerbating an injury if they had a small niggle. You would have thought Provan would understand that better than anyone having been an ex-pro, certainly better than the hyperbolic Hugh Keevins, a man I've long since stopped paying attention to, but often get told by others about his latest melodrama on why Celtic are going to be dreadful and Rangers are going to win everything.

But back to the stuff that matters (or doesn’t matter) - pre-season friendlies.

We are right in the middle of them. Celtic are on a tour of America, which is as much about getting paid appearance money and developing commerical activities, as it is for participating in them. (We need to train somewhere so we might as well get paid for doing it in America.).

Gone are the days when you would pick up a paper in the summer to find out that Celtic had beaten some amateur Austrian team 36-0 in a pre-season friendly. Now the club are as much to blame as anybody else for over-emphasising the importance of these unimportant games. From April or May onwards, Celtic have been trumpeting the fact that the American tour, and every pre-season game, will be alive on Celtic TV. I suppose for those supporters who take these games seriously, the ability to watch them is important and that necessitates these games being against established clubs and established grounds - I'm not sure Celtic TV would want to broadcast a 36-0 victory against amateurs taking place in a park.

We all obviously want summer signings and pre-season matters to the club and the players, to ensure that players are developing. Pre-season training itself is also different. 21st centrury players are now 12 month, 24/7 athletes. They keep their physical fitness at peak levels all year round. They go on summer with dietry and gym regimes. Clubs don’t need to send them to the sand dunes of Scotland until they throw up, like Sean Connery in The Hill.

We all want signings and pre-season is a great place for the doom mongerers to tell you that the new guy “is shite” earlier than anyone else. I am also quite sure that having new signings in during this pre-season window would help them gel with their teammates earlier (the debate around where we're going right or wrong with the recruitment department is for another day - possibly a podcast this week…). We're in the midst of pre-season. We're in the midst of the pre-season friendlies.

Yesterday I woke up to a 4-0 victory against DC United and the only reason I was bothered about it was because I couldn't be arsed with the whinging from some people in WhatsApp groups or on Twitter, who take this stuff far too seriously.

Those of us with a memory will recall that not only did we beat amateur Austrians multiple goals -0, Alan Thompson played centre-half in a friendly and Mowbray’s side won the Wembley cup. Us Celtic Da’s also remember that we lost 5-1 at home to Arsenal pre-season in the centenary season. Rangers, no doubt that won pre-season cup too.

Enjoy your break and remember, winning or losing pre-season games means nothing - unless of course it’s RFC - then it’s a right laugh!