Brian Viner: Fair play to Celtic but please leave Moyes alone

Keeping Mr Blatter away from a microphone is like trying to keep George Best away from alcohol

The cab driver who collected me from my hotel in Glasgow's red-light district at 5.45 on Friday morning asked me how I was. I'd managed about an hour's sleep thanks to the combined effect of a late night, an early start, a couple in the adjoining room who seemed to be rehearsing with impressive vigour their role as a pushme-pullyou in a forthcoming production of Dr Doolittle, and a blanket so old and flimsy that it had likely started to get threadbare during the Jacobite Rebellion.

But I said I was fine, and asked him how he was. "All the better fair seeing you, pal," he growled, in a tone more suited to threatening to cut off a man's nose.

We got chatting. He told me he was a Rangers fan. I said I'd been at the other place the night before. "It's no' your fault, pal," he said, menacingly. He said he'd watched the Uefa Cup match - Celtic against FK Teplice of the Czech Republic - on the telly, and ranted for a while about what he considered to be the histrionics of the Celtic No 19, and indeed man of the match, Stilian Petrov.

"He went up fair an easy heeder and came doon leek a sack o'tatties," he said, darkly. I debated my options; whether to suggest that there must also be players at Ibrox who ham it up a bit, or whether to see my children again. I chose the latter.

"Jim Craig wor one o' the comm'nteetors," the cab driver continued. "He used t'plee fair Celtic. And he said that uff a player gets carried aff fair treatment, the guy who fooled him should go aff as weel. Ah thought, uff they'd done that when Jim Craig wor pleeying, he'd never've been on the **** un' putch!"

I climbed out at Glasgow Central station and tipped him a pound for his insights. "See y'geen, pal," he said, and drove off, possibly in the hope of running over a guy in a hooped shirt still weaving his way home after celebrating his team's 3-0 win, not to mention the Fifa Fair Play Award, given to the Celtic fans by Sepp Blatter, the Fifa president, on the pitch before kick-off.

"Mr Blatter, we're chuffed to bits," the master of ceremonies had declared. Even from my seat I could see that Mr Blatter was slightly puzzled by this colloquialism, but having deduced that being chuffed to bits is not as uncomfortable as it sounds, he beamed happily. He then took the microphone himself. Trying to keep Mr Blatter away from a microphone is like trying to keep George Best away from alcohol.

"Celtic fans, you are great, you are marvellous," he bellowed. Mr Blatter did not get where he is today without knowing how to dish out some painful home truths to 48,927 people.

He was accompanied on to the pitch by Brian Quinn, the Celtic chairman, with whom it had been my pleasure to hobnob some 30 minutes earlier. I had been invited to the match by Peter Lawwell, the club's executive director in charge of operations, whatever that means. Actually, what it means, among other things, is that I got a peppered lamb cutlet at half-time.

Now, it is admittedly some years since I used to stand on unwelcoming terraces at football matches, my view of most of one touchline obscured by a stanchion, my nose far too close to the armpit of a man with personal hygiene problems, but still I get excited when I am invited to view in comfort.

And what comfort. You might think that a sports columnist cannot make any pretence at impartiality when he is invited into a football club boardroom, introduced to the chairman and given a peppered lamb cutlet at half-time, and you might be right. Like Mr Blatter, I think Celtic is not only great, but also marvellous.

But there was a spectre at the half-time feast, the spectre of the indubitably great and marvellous Martin O'Neill returning next season to the English Premiership. When the evening's Uefa Cup results flashed up on screen, I discerned a collective relief that Liverpool had managed to beat Levski Sofia at Anfield. Had they drawn or lost it would have been easy to picture Mrs O'Neill spending Friday morning on the phone to estate agents in Formby or Southport; it might be an astute move on the part of those agents to send some property details anyway.

Brian Quinn, however, was sanguine. He is one of O'Neill's most fervent admirers - "an evening spent with him, whether you're discussing football or anything else, is one of life's great pleasures," he told me - but pointed out that O'Neill had scarcely unpacked his bags before the rumours started about him leaving.

"I think there are only two clubs that he hasn't been linked with, Hartlepool United and Kidderminster Harriers," said the chairman. "I've developed a thick skin."

He then changed the subject, and asked me which club I support. Everton, I told him. "Ah, I have a soft spot for Everton," he said. And a soft spot too, I don't doubt, for former Celtic player David Moyes. It was a rueful thought, after a happy evening, for me not to sleep on.

b.viner@independent.co.uk