Bobo Baldé was a player that you hated to love. Brought into the team during Martin O'Neill's tenure as manager in 2001, Celtic fans gazed with their jaws hitting the floor as a moving brick wall had basically just came into the Celtic defence ranks. He was a bit of a bomb-scare, creating some nervy moments and unforced errors, but made up for it by being such a huge presence in the 1st team line-up. He was even voted Celtic's player of the year in 2003, a vote in which 40,000 fans took part. Baldé experienced a series of health problems, including being diagnosed with malaria, and also suffered a couple of nasty injuries in a turbulent 2006-07 season. Baldé was a very expensive player to have stuck on the sidelines. When Baldé was close to full recovery in July 2007, everyone expected him to leave when Roy Keane, manager of Sunderland, was reported to have bid £1.5 million for the defender. Surprisingly Baldé exclaimed his wished to stay and see out his contract. It was then very strange to hear Celtic fans saying they'd seen him in the Gallowgate (a street of Celtic pubs and bars near Parkhead) watching the home matches! Baldé told the media that the manager said he was 6th choice centre back, but from an outsider looking in, it seemed to appear that Baldé had managed to engineer a way to get paid £35,000 a week and just sit back and relax until his contract was up. Whether he engineered it or not remains to be seen, but there was definitely something wrong going on. It's not clear what really happened here and who's to blame, but there's a bad decision in there somewhere, and the situation clearly wasn't handled very well by the club. If what Baldé said about being 6th choice defender was true, then I think most Celtic fans would class that as a huge mistake.
As a recent university graduate and a huge supporter of Celtic FC, what better way to use my inevitable free time to write about my favourite football team? I'll cover most things that the supporters are talking about at the moment, which includes things that directly and indirectly involve the club. At times I may also stray into matters concerning English clubs.
