Owen Coyle, Alan McInally, Rab Douglas, Mark Burchill, Niall Quinn with A Celtic State of Mind // ACSOM // Exclusive Interviews

Paul John Dykes (0:00)

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A jump. A block.

John Gibbons (1:20)

It's only a serve.

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It's only a tackle. It's only for the fans.

Alan McInally (1:28)

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Paul John Dykes (2:07)

Bye Welcome to A Celtic State of Mind. I'm Paul John Dykes, and last week, our partners Fansbet invited us to the Glasgow Hydro to cover the Star Sixes Tournament. For those of a certain vintage, this tournament may have brought back fond memories of the Tennant Sixes, which ran for 10 years in the 1980s and 90s. One of our previous guests, JPMason, recalled our 1992 win as being a rare piece of silverware during the grim, barren years of the early 90s.

This fans-bet, Star Sixes tournament was certainly an upgrade on the Tennant Sixes variety, and Kevin Graham spent most of his time there trying to call our Vitor Bayer about his antics in a certain UEFA Cup final. We didn't manage to chat to the ex-Porto keeper, which was probably a good thing, but we did get eight others with a Celtic State of Mind.

Ex-Celts, Alan Rambo-McInally, Rab Douglas, Mark Burchill and Jackie McNamara are joined on this bill by Republic of Ireland internationalists Owen Coyle, Stephen Hunt and Niall Quinn, as well as John Gibbons of the Anfield Wrap. We speak about the January transfer window, the challenge at the top of the league and the fields of Athenrye. Some of these interviews have a bit of background noise which was unavoidable in the small space that we were given, but the content is definitely worth listening to. First up is Big Rambo, Alan McInally. Alan, welcome to A Celtic State of Mind. As someone who played with Celtic in Kilmarnock, what's your thoughts on the challenge this season that Steve Clarke has mounted?

Alan McInally (3:37)

Yeah, brilliant. I think it's coming from a bit of left field because I think Steve took the job in the first place.

I mean, there was a few eyebrows raised. You know, his CV is still pretty good, you know, working under Mourinho, et cetera, and maybe not having the greatest stuff down in England and then coming up to Scotland. A lot of people were like, well, I don't know, it's a great move for him, but he's proved how good a coach he is, how good he's done at Kilmarnock and galvanised the team into, you know, a serious challenge, not just like, oh, they're okay for three or four weeks, they've consistently had it good, and certainly they've given something for Celtic Rangers to think about.

Paul John Dykes (4:12)

I always remember Alex Ferguson saying that there's only so far a club like Aberdeen can go, they can never be a Celtic or a Rangers. Is Steve Clark going to face that dilemma at some stage?

Alan McInally (4:22)

Possibly. I mean, if Fergie said it, then we'll all have to agree with this. He said, what's that? He's the god, he's the guru.

But you can understand where Sir Alex is coming from because for the simple mathematics of the amount of fans you have, the size of the stadium you have, the worldwide watching of the likes of Rangers and Celtic are hard for other teams to compete with, and that's probably going to be the case.

The only thing is that, you know, for him to maintain any kind of challenge is to be incredibly cute in the transfer market, and somehow use his coaching skills to try and keep up the top end, you know, and try and turn Rangers and Celtic over. In terms of challenging for a long period of time, it would be pretty difficult considering, you know, they're not even in the same shop, shopping for players. Really, Arley, you know, one's shopping, and I won't mention some of the...