FORMER Rangers and Scotland captain Barry Ferguson says he’s enjoying football for the first time “in a long time” since leaving the SPL for Birmingham.

Yeah, no real story here, but it does remind me of the joke I heard the other day –

Q: What do you get when you rearrange the letters to BARRY FERGUSON?

A: The way he spells it.

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In other news,

Rangers 0
VfB Stuttgart 2

From BBC Sport, Rangers crashed out of Europe with a game to spare as Stuttgart consigned the Ibrox side to a third home defeat in Champions League Group G.

Again, no real story here, but it does remind me of the joke I heard the other day…

A recent article in The Daily Record – Steven Fletcher: Moving to England has made a man of me – now I want to prove it with Scotland.

Now this is the stuff dreams are made.

STEVEN FLETCHER felt like the boy who’d just had his Christmas stolen the day Hibs chairman Rod Petrie refused to sell him to Celtic… Less than a year on he looks back on that crushing disappointment as the decision that finally made a man of him.

Yes, Fletcher has been busy growing up. And he owes it all to Petrie’s stubborn refusal to let him go to Parkhead for a cut-price fee.

But Burnley snatched him up for £3million, and just look at him now!

“I got back to concentrating on my game and scoring goals and maybe it worked out better for me… Burnley must have seen enough to want to take me to the Premiership and you can’t play at a much higher level than that.”

“Since then we’ve been to places like Anfield, Stamford Bridge and White Hart Lane and even though the results haven’t been great the experience has and it’s all helping us adjust to life in the top flight.”

“We’re making progress bit by bit. People were putting pressure on us about our away record but now we’ve gone to a big club like Man City, drawn 3-3 and probably should have won.”

Maybe we should abandon this Celtic sinking ship and become Burnley supporters; they’re made of winners. And they’re in the Premier League.

All this while away from his main squeeze Celtic, “For me this is a nice change from the situation back home. We have been taking a bit of stick at Celtic … We’re looking forward to the game and it’s good to be away from Glasgow.”

The winger has yet to score in his 28 previous caps.

Of course, any mention of the King of Kings gives me a great excuse to put this video up. Ah, memories.

Speaking of Craig Thomson, the referee from Sunday’s loss has admitted that he missed the first penalty claim for Celtic and Shaun Maloney in the first half where David Weir’s tackle attempt got none of the ball and all of Maloney’s leg. Speaking through Head of Referees, Hugh Dallas (prick), Thomson was very sorry for his error and promised to do better in the future. As the title says, “Greeeeeeeeeeat.”

Apparently, this video missed him beating three defenders in the midfield as well. Still, that was some run!

In less angered inducing and more current news, for today’s match against Falkirk in the CIS cup, it seems Tony Mowbray has decided to find a middle ground about my question yesterday whether or not the CIS Cup mattered. Georgios Samaras is still recovering from going into the bench in the Hapoel Tel-Aviv game, so Chris Killen and Scott McDonald are likely to be paired up again today in the striker position. It is also believed that ToMo will rest some starters like Scott Brown, Shaun Maloney, and Andreas Hinkel, meaning possible starts for Paddy McCourt, Niall McGinn, and Paul Caddis.

Meanwhile Artur Boruc has remarked that he would enjoy nothing more than to finish his career at Celtic Park and has declared his love for Celtic. After a tumultuous season last year, Boruc has seen a return to form in the beginning of this season so far, after there were doubts if he would even earn the starting job when his friend and Polish teammate Lukasz Zaluksa from Dundee United. Bourc said, I’ve indicated I might want to try my luck in the English Premier League or somewhere else. But I have spent four fun years at Celtic. I love the club and if I play in Glasgow until the end of my career I won’t complain. This campaign has begun really well and I want to maintain that until the end. There are still a few good years of football left in me and I want to focus and make the most of it. I will concentrate in every match to ensure the mistakes of last season are not repeated. I worked hard at training last year but mentally I might have been somewhere else. This season I’ve decided to deal with all of that and I’m sorting out my life.” Don’t tease us like that, Artur!

Man, international weeks are BORING.

Defender Darren O’Dea has signed a new three-year deal with Celtic but joined Reading on loan until January. O’Dea has been starting and/or the first sub used recently with captain Stephen McManus injured. However, with McManus coming back from injury, O’Dea was loaned out to give him a chance to see first team action until January. However, the three year extension shows that O’Dea is very much a part of the future plans of Celtic. Also going out on loan is back up goal keeper Mark Brown to Kilmarnock. Brown has become the 4th choice keeper at Celtic after the acquisition of Lukasz Zaluska and Dominic Cervi to back up Artur Boruc.

Finally, Celtic have drawn Falkirk for their first round of the CIS Co-Op Cup. Celtic are the holders of the cup after defeating Rangers last year in extra time, 2-0.

UPDATE: Darren O’Dea has been loaned to Colaship side Reading. However, O’Dea has also signed a three year extension with Celtic to remain with the club until 2012. It seems Celtic have the option of calling O’Dea back in January, so maybe Tony Mowbray will be using the Stephen McManus, Gary Caldwell, and Glenn Loovens, but maybe trying to raise the value of one of those three (aka McManus) and sell them like he did with Massimo Donati. Or maybe we’re trying to get a signing in before the deadline in an hour and a half. We shall see.

UPDATE #2: Backup of the Backup of the Backup keeper Mark Brown is off to Kilmarnock on loan for the season after Hibs dropped their interest in the keeper.

UPDATE #3: Chiense midfielder Zheng Zhi will likely sign after taking a physical. Zhi is a member of the Chinese national team and was at Charlton, but his contract ended.