Articles

Chas Newkey-Burden with A Celtic State of Mind – How I fell in love with the Hoops

I fell in love with Celtic because of a song. I was 14 when The Pogues’ third album If I Should Fall from Grace with God hit the shelves. I bought it on the day of release and ran home to give it a spin. One song

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Martin Donaldson with A Celtic State of Mind – Another Champions League exit. Will we ever learn?

The dust has settled on another Champions League qualifying campaign. The annual inquest of our failure to qualify for the world’s premier club competition can be as easily predicted as a leaked team sheet from the Celtic Park dressing room. As with Cluj last season, big money

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Kevin McCluskie with A Celtic State of Mind – Where do Celtic go next if 10-in-a-row is achieved?

Throughout the lockdown, A Celtic State of Mind has continued to produce daily podcasts of the highest quality with some of Celtic and Scottish football’s most interesting characters invited to take part. One such podcast that has resonated a lot with me, and one that I’ve listened

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Kevin Graham with A Celtic State of Mind – James McCarthy & Andrew Robertson were the ones that got away… Or were they?

I still get asked a question: what do I want to do with my life? And I still give the same answer that you would have got if you had asked the six or seven-year-old me. I want to play for Celtic. Maybe that just shows a

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Kevin Graham with A Celtic State of Mind – Pat Bonner’s Testimonial: A Gerry Creaney hat-trick, Liam Brady cameo, and Billy McNeill & Jack Charlton in the dug-outs

A recent episode of the Strip Down Memory Lane podcast featured a match-worn jersey that was used in the Pat Bonner Testimonial. The game was between Celtic and a Republic of Ireland select and was played at Celtic Park on the 12 May 1991. The kit in

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“I have the utmost admiration for Big Billy… He had been a colossus of a centre-back… A marvellous man!” – Paul Elliott on Billy McNeill

In this ACSOM podcast with Paul John Dykes the former Celtic centre-half Paul Elliott comes across as a very positive character (despite suffering vicious racial abuse throughout his football career in England, Italy and Scotland). He was unstinting in his praise for Celtic supporters, midfielder Paul McStay

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Martin Donaldson with A Celtic State of Mind – Celtic and Adidas: A match made in Paradise

For anyone who sat pressing F5 on their computer or pulled the screen down on their mobile device to refresh the page every couple of minutes on Friday morning, the wait was almost over. In scenes similar to Cup final tickets being released, Celtic fans across the

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Kevin Graham with A Celtic State of Mind – Fergus McCann’s Homecoming

If you happened to be looking through the results of Celtic’s 1994/95 season, this 1-0 home defeat against Motherwell would hardly jump out as one of the most momentous results of modern-day Celtic. More likely it would appear to be yet another dismal defeat in a dismal

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Tom Campbell with A Celtic State of Mind – A Very Different Paradise (Part 2)

During the six years of World War II organised football in Scotland was ‘unofficial’. Most clubs utilised the services of guest players, usually footballers in Scotland on military service. One such man was Matt Busby, a Scottish internationalist and a Liverpool player; born in Lanarkshire, he volunteered

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Kevin Graham with A Celtic State of Mind – The Story Of The Jersey: Bobby Lennox v Fiorentina 1970

On Monday 16th March 1970, Celtic flew from Prestwick to historic Pisa with the aim of reaching their second European Cup semi-final within three years. To do so they would need to become the first British side to beat an Italian side over two legs in European

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