Someone drew my attention, this mornin g, to an almost mind-numbing piece of information; that Monster Munch Boy has a column in The Sun. I don’t know how long this has been the case – I wouldn’t pick that newspaper up with a full radiation suit on – but one day would be too long, and in particular when my one and only reading of him demonstrates the full range of utter stupidity and fookwittery I had been expecting.
The headline of this piece is enough to send you away for the barbiturates.
“Kris Boyd: SFA sent Rangers down.. and our Scotland teams are paying the price now” it screams at you, and already you can feel your IQ score start to slide, before you even read one word.
“I’m not saying it’s all down to the SFA …” he begins, contradicting the headline. Cause isn’t that exactly what he is trying to say? “You can hardly blame Stewart Regan for the fact that Grant Hanley can’t defend …” is the next line.
Jesus wept.
And we’re off to the Wacky Races.
The first one third of the article is just like this, before it becomes a meandering critique of the game at Wembley, and when I say meandering that’s exactly what I mean. It leaps from subject to subject like fleas in a massage parlour.
It barely gets above the primary school reading level at any point.
It doesn’t elaborate on the headline past that first third, which means that he started making that argument, realised early on that he lacked the intellectual prowess for the task – Stephen Hawking doesn’t have the brain power to pull that one off – and chucked it.
This stuff made me long for the soothing prose of Keith Jackson.
Yes, it’s that bad.
So let’s focus on that first third, that part where he says that the national team has suffered for what happened at Rangers. An argument so ridiculous it falls down before he gets to the halfway point of the page. What’s the basis of it?
“Scotland needed to have players at Rangers playing at the highest level.”
Eh? Apart from being a grammatical and syntaxical shambles that argument doesn’t hold water at all. If you can sort out that jumble of words in your head and make them into a proper sentence what he’s saying, badly, is that the Scottish internationals who were there needed to be playing at the highest level to be of benefit to the national team. I would agree with him, which is why nobody thought Lee Wallace should have been in a Scotland squad whilst he was playing in the lowest tier, an argument any number of people dismissed at the time when they were hollering for his inclusion. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out Boyd was one of them.
Besides, when Rangers died – a subject he ignores in favour of pushing the Survival and Victim Lies – the majority of its Scottish internationals all left on free transfers.
They went to good clubs, many of them playing in the English leagues.
Not a high enough level for Boyd?
Where did his own career take him again? Oh yes, he played for Middlesbrough briefly, scored a half dozen goals, went to Turkey, played less than 90 minutes there and then went to Portland Timbers, where he was such a big hit they let him leave for Kilmarnock after a year.
And who were these guys anyway?
John Fleck?
Who never lived up to any of the hype, never played for Scotland whilst at Ibrox and remains uncapped to this day.
Big loss, and so too is Rhys McCabe who didn’t once pull on the blue jersey for a full international before Ibrox or since. When you consider some of the dreck we’ve put in that shirt since it makes you wonder how bad these guys are.
Allan McGregor got himself a nice contract in Turkey before moving to England, but his international career was in ruins before Rangers detonated anyway. He was lucky to be selected again after what happened in 2009, and a series of high profile mistakes on his return had as good as doomed him.
Steven Naismith still plays for Scotland when fit; few would argue that he’s gone to top teams and played at the highest level. Not bad for a former Kilmarnock boy. Think Boyd feels a stab of jealousy about that? Of course not.
That leaves Steven Whittaker, who is still in and out of the Scotland setup, and plays for Norwich, a higher level the SPL by far, and Jamie Ness, another who fell into the hype machine, got chewed up and spat out the other side.
Maybe it’s me who fails to see where Scotland lost out here?
And perhaps he’d like to explain to us all why a Scotland side which had those players and others, like Barry Ferguson – another guy too stupid for real work who’s got himself a media berth – had failed to qualify for major tournaments time and time again?
It’s been twenty odd years now; who’s he blaming for that?
In short, Boyd’s article is little more than a puff piece which he tries to inject with some controversy by re-treading the old tired road of conspiracy theories which have sustained Sevco fans for the last few years.
He’s adamant that SFA “punished” Rangers unfairly; in fact, it was the clubs who took the decision to make the new club, Sevco, start in the bottom tier, as all new clubs must.
Regan and others – those Boyd blames – did everything they could to prevent that outcome; I am amazed he and others still haven’t let that one sink in yet.
I guess when you’re either so bitter than you’re blinded, or just too concrete thick to comprehend complexities such as that – Regan preached Armageddon; subtle stuff, I know – you do need it spelling out to you. This guy needs to consider adult education.
Instead he has a newspaper column.
Only in Scotland.