The Daily Record has come up with some more heart-warming content to cheer up their army of elderly readers.

Recently the ailing Glasgow publisher has been thinking more out of the box in order to avoid the reality of Celtic’s domination, you’ll do well to read any mention of the World’s Most Successful Club on their pages this year.

The Parrallel Universe stories have been popular with the Record where they lend credibility to the most far fetched rumours and share the details of how Phil Clement’s side is about to be boosted by three or four quality arrivals.

It is almost as if Paddy Stewart’s austerity warning from two weeks ago never happened. Raphael Fernandez was signed on loan last week, a player with less than 20 senior appearances is the only January signing for Clement’s exciting young side.

Connor Goldson recently shared the good times from his three trophy Ibrox haul, this week it is the turn of Antonio Colak to recreate warm memories from his 39 Ibrox appearances.

Micky Beale, the Brains Behind Gerrard, wasn’t impressed by Colak, quickly getting rid of the Croatian in order to bring in Sam Lammers, Cyriel Dessers and Danilo.

In time honoured fashion the Record slaps the gloss on thickly over Colak’s Ibrox contribution:

Even watching it on YouTube still sends a shiver down the spine of Antonio Colak.

His goals for Rangers against PSV Eindhoven helped earn the club around £20million in the summer of 2022. But the memories he’s got are priceless. Colak’s winner in Holland got the club back into Europe’s top tournament under Giovanni van Bronckhorst. Unfortunately, the Dutch coach was sacked later that season while Colak was sold a year on by his replacement, Michael Beale. But the 31-year-old striker – now at Italian side Spezia – will never forget that night in Eindhoven.

He said: “It was one of the highlights of my career. Rangers hadn’t played in the Champions League for 11 years and I was part of getting them back to where they belong. It was an incredible moment for me. We were suffering in that game but stayed together as a team. Getting the goal was a special moment for me. I also scored in the first-leg against PSV at Ibrox. When I watch the video now and hear the crowd, it still gives me goosebumps.

Some of us still get goosebumps over Colak’s first two goals at Ibrox, as 10 man Malmo killed off Steven Gerrard’s Champions League dream. Trailing 1-0 at half-time to level the aggregate scores, Colak scored twice for the Swedish champions, Gerrard walked out of Ibrox three months later as misery kicked in at the Record, it remains to this day.

Colak’s goal away to PSV Eindhoven set up another managerial sacking with Giovanni van Bronckhorst assured of his place in Champions League history as the worst ever manager, even worse than Walter Smith.

The priceless goal away to PSV set up six defeats to Liverpool, Napoli and Ajax alongside a goal difference of -20. That record would have been much worse if Mo Sallah hadn’t been kept on the bench at Ibrox until the 68th minute. The Egyptian scored in the 75th, 80th and 81st minute. van Bronckhorst never survived the World Cup break, getting replaced by Micky Beale isn’t a mark of distinction.

Colak is now at Spezia, his seventh club since lockdown as managers quickly realise his limitations and move him on. Another Ibrox manager is nearing the end of his cycle but that isn’t the sort of content that Record readers want reminded of.

Efforts are still on-going to get rid of Kieran Dowell, Tom Lawrence and Rabbi Matondo but there is no chance of their current wages being matched elsewhere, it is hard to see any circumstances where a manager looks at those players and thinks that they will improve their team. Even the creative minds at the Record can’t spin a way around that problem, Matondo and Dowell are under contract until May 2026 with Lawrence’s deal running out at the end of this season.

CLICK HERE for the frustrations of a BBC Scotland reporter.

Rodgers makes surprise striker call on Maeda

Brendan Rodgers isn’t planning to convert Daizen Maeda into a striker despite the expected sale of Kyogo Furuhashi to Rennes.

At club level Maeda puts in unique performances on the left wing. He isn’t quite a winger, a forward or midfielder but on form, as he usually is, he brings a fresh dimension to Celtic’s play.

Under Hajime Moriyasu on international duty he is used as a striker, selected for the 2022 World Cup Finals ahead of Kyogo he scored in the Round of 16 match against Croatia that was lost on penalties.

On that subject Maeda showed nerve and composure to net the decisive penalty in the League Cup Final, that came after he showed a real strikers instinct to cut through Phil Clement’s defence, draw Jack Butland and find the net.

That goal showed everything that you’d want from a striker but despite the evidence Rodgers feels that Maeda is primarily a wide player for emergency use only as a striker.

Asked about switching Maeda to playing as a striker the Celtic boss was fairly adamant it wasn’t his Plan A:

He can do that, but I would still want to bring in another striker. I think he can play there.

If you look at Daizen’s numbers, I’m not sure exactly what they are. But when he arrived here, he came in here with something like 23 goals in 30-odd games. So he’s a different profile of striker.

But the two games I’ve played him in as a striker, he’s scored five goals as a striker. At Yokohama, he scored a hat-trick, and then earlier in the season against Hibs when Kyogo didn’t play, he scored two goals and was a threat. 

So he will get goals. What’s been really nice is to see the numbers that he’s able to get off the side but I still think that we would need another striker in. Definitely we would want to bring in someone else.

Those League Cup goals came in the opening 15 minutes of the match against Hibs but that fixture was the last time that he played through the middle.

Regardless of who is involved in Recruitment it seems that succession planning is a long running problem at Celtic. At today’s media conference Rodgers claimed that Kyogo had expressed a wish to leave months ago.

If that was the case they are leaving things kind of late to bring in a replacement. Rennes have shown that they can force through a transfer at a time that suits them but Celtic seem unable to install the same level of urgency to their transfer activities.

Other than Mathias Kvistgaarden there is very little in the way of strikers being linked with Celtic, in the case of the Brondy striker this is the fourth successive window that he has been discussed as a Celtic target.

Whether there is substance to the speculation this time remains to be seen, reheating previous transfer stories is a stable part of the sports news industry.

Paul Tisdale has been working with Rodgers since the summer transfer window, in the autumn his role as Head of Football Operations was announced.

Strikers earn their reputations by delivering goals on the big occasions, having known of and sold Kyogo the spotlight is on Rodgers and Tisdale to come up with a striker superior to the Japanese hero with two Champions League ties coming up on 11/12 and 18/19 February.