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Despite Celtic’s poor run of form, Stevie O’Mao was a happy man. Frost was out of the way for the time being, financially things were going well, with virtually all of his investments returning profits nowadays, and then there was this good looking, if naïve young woman who seemed interested in him. It was a new experience for Stevie that, being the hunted instead of the hunter, but he thought he liked it. Oh, and to top it all off, Hearts were still top of the BPL, four points ahead of current runners-up, their eternal rivals Hibs. Edinburgh was well underway to becoming the football capital of Britain.

In the FA Cup too Hearts were doing well, securing an easy passage into round five by disposing themselves of Oxford United of the Conference. His only Hearts-related worry was manager Stuart Redmond asking for more transfer money, to add to the squad ahead of what would surely be a Champions’ League campaign in 2013/4. Money would be available in the summer, but not just yet. Redmond was displeased with that, and O’Mao hoped it wouldn’t pìss him off enough to pack it in. He counted on the prospect of building two empires in the same city in under ten years being too tempting for his manager to call it a day. Which seemed a fair enough assumption for the time being.

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Saturday 26 January 2013, Premier Division, Belfast Celtic v Cork City, Casement Park

“This game never should’ve been allowed to go ahead, it was just too dangerous out there” – Danny Milosevic, in the immediate aftermath of Celtic v Cork on a frozen pitch at Casement Park.

Celtic’s goalkeeper became one of four injury victims of the clash between second and third, when a dive at full stretch saw him bruise his left arm twelve minutes from time. It came moments after stand-in captain Colin Morton had missed a penalty on behalf of the home side, which would’ve put the game beyond the visitors. As it was, missing that penalty signalled the start of another painful Celtic collapse. A missed spot-kick, an injured goalkeeper, and a soft equaliser, all of these things happened in the final minutes of an action and injury packed match.

In the absence of Glen Keddy, Gary Malone started up front, alongside David Healy. Malone still wasn’t liked by many of his teammates, but won some respect by breaking the deadlock on stroke of half time. It seemed to have set Celtic on their way to an important victory, but brave Cork fought on till the end, despite having three people carried off with painful injuries. In that light, the visitors deserved a share of the points, even if for most parts they’d been second best tonight.

Celtic 1 (Malone 45, Morton m/pen 77)
Cork 1 (McLaughlin 83)
Attendance: 20,032

retired_brendagarvin

Wow.. this story is still going?!? :eek:

Ehh Good Job!

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Wednesday 30 January 2013, Premier Division, Shamrock Rovers v Belfast Celtic, Glenmalure Park

Celtic were back in Dublin, to play the game postponed 11 days ago. This League encounter with Rovers gave them a nasty feeling of deja-vu. Yet again, Rovers captain Bucic defended his goal like his life depended on it, and kept a clean sheet once more, picking up Man-of-the-Match honours in the process.

That sealed off the route to Celtic’s first League win of the year, and things took a turn for the worse when Derek McDonald decided he liked scoring winning goals against the Belfast side so much he’d give a repeat performance. He’d only been a Rover for a fortnight, following his £65,000 arrival from Sheffield Wednesday, but had already scored twice against the biggest club in the League.

Failure to pick up maximum points in this game in hand meant Celtic were still two points behind Linfield, who themselves had drawn against Shels and Rovers in their last two games. All of that closed up the title race once more, with the top five now separated by only four points.

Rovers 1 (McDonald 10)
Celtic 0
Attendance: 12,820

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You wouldn’t be able to tell it was only two weeks from St.Valentine’s Day. Across Britain and Ireland, little vendettas reached their peaks, many made worse by media involvement. Heart of Midlothian were fined £30,000 for their poor disciplinary record this season, which set off O’Mao and Redmond. They weren’t the only chairman and manager in the news that week, as Phil Gartside and Glenn Hoddle fell out at Bolton, leading to the inevitable departure of the manager. There were also trouble at Leeds and Liverpool, and at a range of lower league clubs.

In Belfast, Bruce Arena had his work cut out after sections of the media had a go at his younger players, especially Barry Burns. The 19-year-old, having played nearly 40 games already this season, didn’t talk to the press much, a protective measure by his mentors, but was victimised because of it. Burns was said to be to blame for many goals Celtic conceded recently, due to his failure to close down opponents. Arena thought this to be unfair criticism, and stood up for his youngster, but feared it would still get to Burns. Ahead of the most crucial month of the season, that was a major worry…

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Sunday 3 February 2013, FAI Cup, Third Round, Salthill Devon v Belfast Celtic, Millar’s Lane

That vital month of February started with the easier fixture of the lot: away to Salthill Devon in the FAI Cup. Non-League versus Champions’ League last 16, it couldn’t be a contest right?

But Celtic weren’t the side that beat Celtic, Nantes and Feyenoord as well as avoid defeat to Real Madrid. They suffered from a serious form crisis, and it could yet leave them empty-handed come April.

In any crisis, confidence is the key to getting on top of the situation, and conceding a first minute goal isn’t the way to get any. When Newcastle United reject Gary Burke got the ball almost straight from the kick-off, he laid it off to a teammate who had his shirt pulled. Free kick, on the edge of the area. Burke stepped up and scored the goal of his career, a free kick Roberto Carlos and David Beckham would’ve been proud of. Once again, Celtic would be chasing the game.

In Salthill’s defence, John Millar had the game of his life too, and was named Man-of-the-Match by the... Millar’s Lane faithful!

The home side’s passion and determination was refreshing to see, and at the interval, even Celtic supporters wondered if they were witnessing possibly the biggest Cup upset in Irish history. Two minutes into the second half, however, Gary Malone waved his magic hat, headed towards goal, saw Saul Deeney save the initial effort, but the Salthill goalie was too late to prevent Malone stabbing in the rebound off the wet surface.

Such goals often are a turning point, but not today. Celtic failed to press on and grab a winner. At the end of the game, they wondered what would’ve been worse. An embarrassing defeat, or an equally embarrassing draw and a replay that would add to their fixture congestion. Nothing could change that anymore now though, and Take II would take place on Wednesday night.

Salthill 1 (Burke 1)
Celtic 1 (Malone 47)
Attendance: 1,458

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Wednesday 6 February 2013, FAI Cup, Third Round Replay, Belfast Celtic v Salthill Devon, Casement Park

In an attempt to get an increasingly critical press off Celtic’s back, manager Bruce Arena isolated his team from the outside world until the replay against Salthill. Come Wednesday night, it didn’t seem to have mattered one bit…

If Celtic were surprised by their Galway opponents’ lightning start on Sunday, they were truly shocked to see them do it again in Belfast. For most of the first half, the Non-League side were in control of proceedings, and Celtic were lucky to only be one goal down at the break.

Unlike the original game, the champions didn’t make amends early in the second half either. In the last 20 minutes, they finally threw caution in the wind, which led to Malone again drawing them level, but an unimpressed Salthill simply re-took the lead four minutes later!

Now, Celtic had 12 minutes plus stoppage time to save the day. It wasn’t until the third and last minute of time added on David Healy finally found space to head the ball past Deeney and set up extra time.

In those 30 minutes, Celtic’s superior physical condition (despite an already gruelling long season) shone through. The home side had two or three opportunities to break Salthill’s hearts, but somehow failed to convert them into glory. It would all come down to a penalty shootout.

Arena had a good look at his players, and took his sweet time to come up with a list of penalty takers. Malone was Celtic’s first taker, cancelling out O’Reilly’s opening spot kick.

When Chawla’s effort was parried by Milosevic, Fitzgerald put Celtic 2-1 up, and things seemed on course for a happy ending after all. O’Callaghan made it 2-2, but Keane could restore the hosts’ advantage… And blasted well wide! 2-2 after 3 each, and game on.

Burke, Healy and Boyle all scored, putting immense pressure on under-fire Barry Burns to convert Celtic’s last penalty of the original five, and take the shootout into sudden death…

A few people closed their eyes, many held their breath, and missed a heartbeat when they heard the sound of the ball striking the aluminium!

It still crossed the line off the inside of the post though, and the scores were level once more.

Lee Morgan restored Salthill’s lead, then Milosevic, who had already saved one penalty stepped up to take one himself. That was the moment his opposite number Saul Deeney became an FAI Cup legend… a brilliant save later, a small Connacht Senior League side had knocked out the biggest club in Ireland!

Celtic 2 (Malone 74, Healy 90)
Salthill 2 (J.Boyle 38, Morrow 78)
AET, Salthill win 5-4 on pens
Attendance: 19,022

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On the other side of the world, Frost kept in touch with everything that happened back home, and couldn’t believe those recent results. Despite his hate for the American trio in charge of the club, he still wanted Celtic to do well, certainly in Europe. But with League form faltering, and two clubs from lower divisions taking Celtic to replays in the Cup, before the favourites finally crashed out, what chance would the Irish champions stand among Europe’s elite?

Truth of the matter was that it wasn’t Frost’s business at the moment though, and he knew it. Rio Celtic had most of his attention now. The club had been founded too late to join the Rio State Championship, but then they didn’t have a team in the first place. They were in pretty much the same position Belfast Celtic had been in 12 years ago, only real difference being the amount of time they had to prepare for their first competitive match: about a year.

By then, Frost’s vision was that of having a solid structure in place, and a football academy. There wasn’t a lot of money available here, but who needed money with talent in such abundance? “All” the club had to do was convince promising kids not to join the established giants of Brazilian football, but Rio Celtic instead.

It’d take a good structure and some big name coaches to persuade youngsters to come to a club that was a few years away from the big time though. What if Celtic wouldn’t make it soon enough? Not that many South Americans were aware of the lower levels of European club football, but what if Rio Celtic would do an AFC Wimbledon, starting off well but ultimately chocking even before reaching the professional league, then being left without financial backing from it’s main sponsor? It would ruin the careers of the kids involved. It would take some really big names to make people believe this club was going places…

Of course, Ronaldo had already been appointed as player/manager, which helped, but managers come and go. A solid academy, led by nothing less than legends of Brazilian football, would do.

He was 59 now, 60 next month, had 89 caps, scoring 66 times for his country. For over a decade, he’d been Director of Football in Japan, at Kashima Antlers, but he wanted to return to his native shores. When Frost came calling, a few meetings followed. Eventually, he was convinced, Rio Celtic would be he last project in football, as head of the youth academy. Zico was going home.

On his advice, Sao Paulo legend Rai was also brought to the club, as a coach, initially working at the academy, and possibly helping out Ronaldo later on.

Frost’s agreement with Ronaldo was that they’d try to train some youngsters and sign some freebies in the first nine months of the year, and if by early October they still needed to add to the squad to ensure promotion in the Rio State Championship after the turn of the year, money would be made available. Signing sponsorship contracts now would be pointless, as they wouldn’t get anywhere near the deal they could get once things really kicked off.

With most of his work in Rio done, Frost wanted to return to Belfast. Not least because he had to agree with Katie: those private teachers were very good, admittedly, but their children needed to go back to their own school.

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Saturday 9 February 2013, Premier Division, Belfast Celtic v Kilkenny City, Casement Park

It was just as well the Frosts didn’t return in time to watch the home game against Kilkenny. Arena’s men were almost exhausted from recent fixtures, and with the European double-header against Club Brugge coming up next, he decided to sacrifice three League points for the chance of European glory. Against Kilkenny, Celtic’s starting XI contained six players from the Seconds, and First Team subs for the rest.

Given the fact half the team hadn’t played with the other half before, the scoreline was respectable enough, but Celtic never looked like keeping the points at Casement Park. Noel O’Neill scored either side of half time to give relegation-threatened Kilkenny three priceless points, and seriously pìss off Athlone in the process. They had worked very hard to take two points off Celtic in those back-to-back games just before Christmas, and saw all their hard work of recent weeks, where they’d closed the gap to safety to just two points, undone by Arena’s priorities… Even though in the unlikely event Athlone would ever be in this position, they’d do exactly the same, they felt very hard done by.

As for Celtic, the defeat saw them slip to fourth, three points behind leaders Linfield. In terms of form, though, the champions were second bottom, ahead only of Glentoran. Significantly, the defeat saw Celtic equal an unwanted club record: 8 games without a win, the same as in the early stages of the 2008/9 season. With their strongest opponents in months to visit Casement Park on Wednesday, the record could well be broken…

Celtic 0
Kilkenny 2 (N.O’Neill 34, 47)
Attendance: 17,396