One of the things that annoys a lot of Celtic fans is that we appear to have no real friends in the media, people on whom we can rely to give a balanced viewpoint.
I would agree with that to a certain extent.
There are people in the media who do tell it like it is, but a lot of our fans don’t like to hear criticism and that can affect how they view those folk.
There are people in the press who are so pro-Celtic that they will, on occasion, be heavily critical of what’s going on at Parkhead. Many of us in the blogosphere do the same thing, so we recognise their concerns are genuine and motivated by the right ideals. You can spot them because when it’s time to hand out praise, they do it without hesitation. They bask in how happy they are to see Celtic succeed.
But there are others, as we all know, who’ve made a career as professional Celtic-baiters, and some of them once played for our club.
Some, like Murdo McLeod, have climbed right into bed with the enemy full-scale, working for PR firms which openly intend us harm because they are filled to the rafters with people whose football allegiances lie elsewhere.
There are also those who’ve made a career out of trying to be “controversial”.
They know that “Ex-Celtic player slams Celtic boss” is a guaranteed headline, and because they know that it’s all they ever do. You can tell these people by the way in which they’re never there to shower us in praise; they only ever pop up when they have something negative to say.
Some of them have hated Ronny Deila from the first, for reasons only they can know. They’ve been waiting to dance on his grave for a long time. That he’s on course to win a double baffles and aggravates them. They’d hoped to brand him a failure; instead the best they’re going to get is that he’s probably unsuited to a job as big as ours so early in his career.
But failure? Not a word you can associate with a title winning boss.
These people tell themselves, and others, that their criticism is valid anyway, that what they are doing is somehow principled; that it’s “telling truth to power”, that it’s challenging an orthodoxy that says Celtic, as the biggest club in the land, sometimes thinks it ought to be immune to scrutiny and therefore what they do is somehow important.
That’s a nonsense, as we all know, and there’s nothing principled about criticising just to get your name in the paper; it’s pathetic, especially when these people have no history in management themselves. Playing the game isn’t the same as sitting in the dugout; they either never bothered to find that out or tried to and were simply overmatched by the experience.
Either way, their view on it shouldn’t be taken seriously.
These people, more so even than the hacks, are responsible for lowering the level of debate within football to the present place where it’s often characterised by people screaming at one another. The hacks, at least, have to face the managers and players and even the directors who they publicly offer criticism of. They, at least, are somewhat accountable.
Even we, the bloggers, are held to account for the things we write; we’re held to account by you, our readers and even each other.
The “talking heads” and occasional columnists, those who think that because they actually played the game for a couple of years that their opinions on everything in it matter more than those of the ordinary fans, they aren’t accountable to anyone, not really.
This makes their “criticism” nothing more than that old childhood game of ring and run.
The fact that so many of them do it to our club is nothing short of shameful; where are the “experts” from other clubs, offering their own running commentary on how disastrous every decision is, how awful every defeat is and how chaotic scenes, fan revolts and mass sackings are just around the corner?
I know this; Rangers never had ex players dissing the club. Sevco don’t either. Whether it’s that these guys are ultra-loyal or they simply understand that this doesn’t go over as well in the papers as ex-Celts putting the boot into us, I don’t know. A combination of both, maybe.
I’ve given up hoping for it, but that doesn’t mean those like Charlie Nicholas and Andy Walker should continue to piss all over us without having to take a little back.
It’s these people, more even than our intrepid hacks, who should be told they are no longer welcome inside Celtic Park.