Was there a full moon last night? Because based on what’s in the papers today I think there must have been something. First there was Gannon’s demented article on why the Joey Barton affair was good for Sevco and Scottish football, and now there’s this.
Barrie McKay telling Celtic to watch out. Sevco are coming.
Is this guy a footballer or a stand-up comedian?
Second place might well be theirs to lose; I think it is probably is. I argued that yesterday. Aberdeen, under a gutless fraud who is either too spooked by the sight of a team masquerading as Rangers or simply with too many sympathies for that defunct club, have chucked it. Hearts are in a transitional period under a new boss. There will be pain for a while.
But whilst second has its own sort of glory, and European football if you qualify for a license, you know what else it brings? Nothing. It’s a footnote.
This season will be six titles in a row. If someone were to ask me who came second in the first five I’d say Aberdeen did last season because that’s fresh in the memory, and Inverness maybe the year before … beyond that, I don’t know and I care even less. Because as the great Bill Shankly once said, “If you are first you are first. If you are second you are nothing.”
And that’s the best Sevco can hope for; the best of the rest.
Or, if you want me to blunt, watching the rest this season, the best of the worst.
Lest he and his team-mates get delusions of grandeur by their “lofty” league position, this is a team that has dropped points in almost half of its games. We have dropped points in one.
The “threat” of their club isn’t keeping Brendan Rodgers up at night.
This is typical of McKay and his team-mates this season, and the contempt for the rest of the clubs that drips from every word should be rallying every team that plays them, every single week. But it has the opposite effect. Too many of them believe the hype that surrounds that club. Too many of them are frozen in sight of the blue jerseys. It doesn’t matter that those jerseys are now filled by English lower league players, has-beens and journeymen; teams get spooked by them for reasons I can’t even begin to comprehend.
This isn’t a side which would be challenging in any top flight in Europe. They would, as Robbie Savage might say, be a relegation battler in the English Championship. But here they can swagger like conquerors, having conquered nothing.
Say what you like about Sevco, but there’s no “loser thinking” problem at their club. A lot of other problems, including dangerous roofs, but not that one.
But all that means nothing, of course. All the hype in the world won’t make them a good team or McKay the kind of individual footballer he thinks he is. You don’t become title challengers telling the world, in the media, that you can be. You do it on the park. The league table doesn’t lie, no matter how much they wish it did.
An eight point lead. With three games in hand. And we go to Ibrox at the end of the month. Beating Hearts under a new manager and an Aberdeen side which needs one does not make them world beaters.
They are a long way from being able to see us far less catch us.