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Now The Gap “Doesn’t Matter.” Who Are The Media Trying To Kid?

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Wow. What a turnaround.

Now the gap – which some were denying existed at all; ask the writers at The Sun who took Sevco to win the SPL title this year – doesn’t matter, because nobody expected a challenge from Ibrox in the first place. Not even their manager, Mark Warburton, who “always knew “the talk amongst the fans of doing it was “unrealistic.”

Except, this is the part that confuses me. Because Warburton never said it was unrealistic at all. He said it could be – he said it would be – done. And the media didn’t think it was unrealistic either. Because they also – almost to a man – predicted that Sevco would run us close. Sevco fans have held their hands up and admitted how stupid that was … some have even looked back and said in hindsight it was a daft notion at the time.

But none is flat out denying they said it, or thought it.

This Goingfor55 crap was described by Gary Ralston as “pre-season marketing bluster.” Which is kind of amazing since his newspaper was laying it on even thicker than the official Sevco website for most of the summer. What a cheek he has to write that line from the office where he and his fellow writers gushed all through pre-season about how great this was going to be and about how they would hit the ground running and push us all the way.

Fans aren’t daft. Even Sevco fans.

They know this is frantic rewriting of history, the media making excuses for King and their pet manager. The supporters who spent big money on season tickets did so expecting that challenge, and nobody in the press and nobody at Ibrox said a single thing – not one thing – to suggest that it was unrealistic for them to do so.

If that’s how people really felt, and still pushed the line anyway, then they were willing parties in a con-job. That’s as bluntly as I can put it. And Warburton is a huge imposter on his own, because he really did believe signing some English lower league dross would enable him to easily sweep aside the rest of the clubs and sit, waiting, for us to slip.

I’ve written this before, now one last time; the arrogance of this guy is incredible. To have bought a bunch of English lower-league rejects and simply assumed that they would be up to the task … shocking. And the media lapped it up. If half these guys – the Windass’s, the Holt’s, the Hodson’s, the Crooks – had signed for Aberdeen or Hearts there would have been no fanfare, no hype. They’d have been forgotten about by the West Coast media in a day.

Ralston’s piece was especially ridiculous today in that not only did it attempt to suggest a 25 point gap in February was no big deal and irrelevant, but he repeated some of the most notorious nonsense over Sevco’s financial position and Dave King. One of his assertions that “contrary to popular belief money is available for the summer” is so outrageous that it deserves to be challenged on every Celtic and Sevco blog in the known universe.

There isn’t even enough in the coffers to get them through the season, and this eejit is talking about money for the summer?

If you were one of the Sevco directors who was paying the bills on the club’s behalf you’d be demanding to know where that glib and shameless assurance came from. And you’d be wanting a detailed breakdown on Ralston’s incomprehensible claim that “King and the Parks in particular have already committed the best part of £20m taking control of their club and restoring it to a position of stability.”

What is this “position of stability” in the first place? A club borrowing money from its own board members to pay bills is in a “position of stability”? Yeah? Is that what he’s asking us, and the Sevco fans, to accept? These are exactly the sort of weasel words that do more harm than good. This isn’t a stable club; it’s a basket case. It’s a shambles, whilst the absentee landlord who promised the Earth and delivered Joe Garner sits 9000 miles away.

Warburton’s press conference yesterday was that of a man who’s had a complete break with reality; no joke, it was unhinged. If you’re read one of the many transcripts of it which are doing the rounds you’ll know what I mean.

It’s an incredible performance of denial, deflection, factual inaccuracy, contradiction, arrogance and snark.

It’s comedy gold for the ages.

He invoked Leicester and other clubs as the proof that his team isn’t guaranteed to be second; clubs with smaller budgets can sometimes overhaul bigger ones. When the media suggested that perhaps the analogy would be better examined from the point of view of being 25 points behind us, and was that acceptable, he brushed that aside as if the point was stupid. But he’s the guy who brought it up in the first place, and not even yesterday … Warburton was making that same point at the start of the season in relation to the challenge he said he would muster.

His comments were asked about the size of the gap were incredible, just incredible, and the Sevco fans who listened to it would have cringed.

He talked about our unbeaten run and then, in a superb example of stating the bleeding obvious, said if we’d lost four games the gap would only have been 13 points. And if they had won one more then it would only be ten. Eah? Really? What? Honestly? That’s the answer he gave. That’s what he told the hacks, before going on to say that our team’s form isn’t driven by better players, it’s driven by having more experienced players … “a squad full of internationals.”

He then went on to “point out” that you don’t get less prize money for finishing second forty points behind as you do for finishing ten points behind.

Well! The fans will be relieved to hear that!

That probably doesn’t matter then!

The greater the gap becomes, the more unglued these people get.

Between the media, which is peddling back faster than a coked out paperboy whose missed a whole street, and Warburton’s stunning efforts to defend his abysmal team and their ghastly form, we’re watching one of the finest meltdowns ever to take place in professional sport.

And the fun hasn’t even started yet.

I thought that result and performance in midweek were indefensible, and incapable of being survived.

I was wrong.

So on it goes, into another wonderful chapter at the weekend, where the LOL factor might be very high indeed.

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