| Match Pictures | Matches: 1997 – 1998 | 1997-1998 Pictures |
Trivia
- The chances of signing Marc Rieper increased when West Ham signed David Unsworth from Everton.
- The game was moved to Tynecastle.
- Annoni was injured, Hannah, McKinlay and Marshall were dropped.
- The Berwick goalkeeper Darren Collier was struggling with an injury but played. Berwick had made an attempt to sign Pat Bonner before the game but he had turned them down saying that he wasn’t fit and that it would be wrong to play against Celtic.
- Jonathon Gould, Stephane Mahe and Regi Blinker's competitive debuts. Larsson and Blinker’s first competitive goals for the club, how their careers were to diverge.
Review
An easy win against Third Division opposition – but a banana skin avoided and the team playing better with each outing.
Teams
Berwick Rangers (5-4-1):
Collier (Burgess 46); Cunningham, Fraser, Clark, McNicoll, Finlayson; Smith (Laidler 78), Irvine, Sloan, Walton (Rafferty, 70); Forrester.
Bookings: Clark (Berwick)
Celtic (4-4-2):
Gould; Boyd, MacKay, Stubbs, Mahe (McNamara 46); Burley, Wieghorst; Blinker, Jackson, Larsson (O'Donnell 77), Thom (Donnelly, 69).
Scorers: Jackson (16), Larsson (21), Blinker (28), Wieghorst (38), Thom (41), Donnelly (70), Donnelly (84).
Referee: J Fleming (Glasgow)
Attendance: 6,267
Articles
- Match Report (see below)
Pictures
Stats
| Berwick Rangers | Celtic | |
| Bookings | 1 | 0 |
| Fouls | 9 | 8 |
| Shots on Target | 1 | 11 |
| Corners | 0 | 10 |
| Offside | 1 | 4 |
Dashing Blinker catches the eye
Scotland on Sunday 10/08/1997
Berwick Rangers 0 Celtic 7
SUCH a verdant pasture at Tynecastle, and such a scything victory for Celtic. Not a lot, surely, can be gleaned from these vacuous early rounds of the Coca-Cola Cup, but Wim Jansen, Celtic's new coach, won't quibble about that. In the subtle weaving and knitting of a team he faces in the months ahead, little moments like these won't do any harm.
After the tedious rankles of Paolo di Canio, here was his replacement, Regi Blinker, impressive if untroubled on his debut, dancing in dinky little hops down Celtic's left flank. The hunch already is that this player will prove a worthwhile investment. He scored a poacher's goal – although his low goal-scoring record at previous clubs would suggests that this will not be his remit – but, more importantly, he had bursts of pace and plenty of bright ideas. "He's skilful, quick and hard-working," said Jansen approvingly afterwards.
Blinker himself was courteous but cautious after his first 90 minutes for his new club. "I felt okay: I liked the variation we showed in our play," he said. "On these occasions, you always ask yourself how fit and ready you are, and maybe I've a little bit to go. But it was nice to score. I wanted to make a good impression on my first outing for the club."
As for Berwick, they won't be surprised, although they might be a little embarrassed. Their manager clearly wasn't embarking upon foraging upfield football; a modest observation was that this side played with a nine-man defence. Celtic, as old scribes used to say, managed to pick holes in it.
It is in these games against the lower-league teams that you always glimpse some clapped-out old codgers. Professional footballers don't wander into sunsets, they totter down divisions. Big John Clark, once of Dundee United, Falkirk and Dunfermline, has always been a fantastic sight, a big bruiser of a hay-stacker who eclipses the sun in the penalty box. He was the barn door here in a very accessible Berwick defence.
Jimmy Thomson, the Berwick manager, has also lured Paul Smith to these parts. As his name suggests, Smith has never been part of the glamorous chorus-line of Scottish football, more a scuffler and chaser in a lot of doomed causes. Smith was born to play for teams like Motherwell, Dunfermline and Falkirk, and here he was trying to stem the tide of all sorts of import-inspired Celtic attacks.
Thomson had told Smith to help keep things tight. By half-time, a Swede, a Dutchman, a Dane and a German had all scored against him. So had a squeaky Scotsman, a lad named Darren Jackson. In a slightly less prolific second-half it was left to another home-grown talent, Simon Donnelly, to score twice and complete the scoreline.
We're always duty-bound to say something nice and rather patronising about the supporters of the small clubs – their humour, their lyricism, even a bit about their rude chants – but there appeared to be one or two cretins among this bunch of Berwick followers.
One chanted throughout that Celtic would win bugger-all, which was a rich piece of abuse given that his own team were on the receiving end of a right pasting. Another was giving his manager, Thomson, some fearful flak as if it was his fault that green-and-white vests were filled with all sorts of exotic foreigners.
One clean forgot watching this that Berwick Rangers are synonymous with giant-killing in cups. They were so torn and mauled in this game that even their old hero, Jock Wallace, in cahoots with a battalion from the Burma jungle couldn't have spared them this. Poor Thomson had blabbed on television about perhaps keeping Celtic fans subdued "for 20 or 25 minutes" and then "maybe seeing what we can do".
They were a goal down after a quarter-hour. They were three down within 27 minutes. At half-time, by which the margin was five, any hope of Berwick managing anything was an extremely abstract concept.
Of all the changes to Celtic, the most intriguing is surely this new-fangled attack of theirs. To spend 1.25m on Jackson, who will soon be 31, left more than a few of us stunned, and certainly some Hibs fans. Beside him Henrik Larsson looks energetic, if not always sure of his passage, but he is certainly doomed to unfavourable comparison with the more natural goalscorer, but stricken, Jorge Cadete.
Nonetheless, these two began this rout. Jackson first headed and then stabbed the ball home after Darren Collier had saved, followed by Larsson scoring from close-range after a right fankle in Berwick's defence. We then made the brave assertion: we thought the game was up for Berwick. Blinker, on a fine, if comfortable, debut, made it three, followed by Morten Wieghorst, Andreas Thom – a strafing volley – and Donnelly's pair in the second-half.
It was all the prettiest footwork in the world were it not that this was no tension-filled midweek evening in February with critical Premier Division points at stake.
- Manager Interview
Wim Jansen, post match:
“In the first half we made a very good concentrated effort and scored some good goals.
“You could see that the concentration level slipped a little oin the second half, but we still had a good number of chances and I think we played very well in this game.
“Regi Blinker did well. He is a skilful, quick player who wants to work and the goal will be good for his confidence.
“Mahe also played very well and was only taken off as a precaution.
“We put in some very good crosses and the finishing was direct which pleased me.”