Yesterday we talked about BS Spin,
While we all agree that the spin, which still spews from Ibrox, is now laughable that is because it centers around them and their club, but we should not forget that there has been a darker edge to it in the past, and as such we need to continue to be vigilant.
That’s why sites like this have to keep calling attention to it, over and over again.
The issue is spin directed against us, the club and the fans.
The most recent evidence of this forces us to go back to the day of reckoning, that fateful day, which in binary would be day 0000. I refer to the day that Sevco entered the Scottish league as a new club, for the 2012/13 season. For us it was just another day. For them it was The Beginning.
Yes the beginning of a campaign of spin against Celtic, which might have started with the trolls that follow Sevco, but was soon taken up by professionals in PR and the football press. In one way or another it has run over a term of 4 years while Sevco were working their way through the divisions.
This began while Neil Lennon was the boss.
Even as their own financial mis-management was still being discussed (mostly online) it was announced that, of course, we had used EBT’s – Juninho – and that we had not paid the correct tax ….
“Wahhhhhhhhhhhhh” came the cry, “They did it as well … punish them! Punish them!”
Dark spin this. Mixing truth and fiction.
When the facts of the story were released, it turned out that we did use an EBT with Juninho but we realised that we had not used this correctly, after Brian Quin had taken a look at it. As a result, we backed away from any such schemes and we came to an agreement with HMRC and paid it.
In full. No leftovers. We even declared it all to the SFA contracts department. No side letters here.
Their efforts to stir up trouble for us by that route ended in Epic Fail.
We then had state aid, and let’s not forget this didn’t stop with an internet goon who had too much time on his hands. There was an extraordinary attempt by a North of Ireland MP, Gregory Campbell, to “prove” that Celtic received state aid in their dealings with Glasgow City Council and via the Commonwealth Games.
We were then reported to the EU, who were duty bound to investigate this, and for a while it was hanging over the club like a bad smell. The press reported the “ongoing EU investigation” without ever once exploring those behind the complaint or their sordid agenda.
However most people knew that this was utterly ridiculous and was finally dismissed in November 2014.
Two attempts to link us to financial crisis and scandal had failed.
“What to do? How can we get a crisis around them?” these folk must have thought. Easy. They tried to do it on the pitch. Now if you remember there was “talk” that Sevco could go 3 seasons, on their way up (although it took 4), without losing a game. They blew that in short order, but for a while there it seemed like every bad result Celtic had resulted in some kind of crisis headline in the papers.
“Celtic are so far ahead of the rest …” ran this train of thought. Trebles should have been secured by Neil Lennon’s team every year. Seasons should have passed unbeaten. Anything less was failure. Even our successes were downplayed. There was, if you believe these people, no opposition at all …
No thought was given to the fact that we were playing professional footballers, not plumbers and postmen. But that was ignored by the press and this notion of our achievements meaning nothing was hammered into Celtic, as disrespectful as it was to other professional teams.
And of course, anything Sevco was treated like a major European title.
Then in 2014 Ronny Deila took charge, unknown and untried, a bit of an experiment.
Did he get leeway? A settling in period? Of course not.
Now it turns out Ronny wasn’t up to it, but by their standards he never stood a chance in the first place because before his first game he was pounced on and told, immediately, that he must win a treble,
Must win it, from the same media telling us how bad an appointment it was, what a risk we were taking. Not onlyt that, he was put under pressure to get Celtic into the Champions League, because beating professional teams in Scotland was too easy …
Even when it became clear that Celtic were not willing to back Ronny with serious money didn’t buy him out of the doghouse after his European displays, but that’s probably for the best when you consider that had he been allowed to spend more his achievements would have been even more devalued …
No wonder this man was having anxiety attacks.
Again, this was all being pushed by the press, and some of it was vitriolic, Keevins actually said he wasn’t up to it before his first game.
We all know these things happened but we must see them for what they were, an attempt to put Celtic in a crisis, an extension of the spin that is used to keep them, whatever incantation they are in, in the most positive light. Even Brendan had to endure it with this talk that he had never won a trophy … neither had Warburton, but his appointment was greeted like a royal wedding,
These people haven’t gone away. We remain only one defeat away from headlines screaming “crisis.” The media needs it, and Sevco needs. Otherwise they might have to face Celtic as they are
The best team in the country, by far.
David Campbell is a writer and blogger from Glasgow. He strongly dislikes the MSM and their anti-Celtic bias.