Today the Goon Squad is out in force over on The Record hotline.
Ponder, for a second, the intellectual deficit it requires to phone The Daily Record’s hotline, at your own expense, to be lumped in with the stupidest people alive.
If you are one of the sensible people – and if you were you wouldn’t be doing it – imagine knowing your point, any point you might have, will almost certainly be lost completely amidst the click-bait headlines and the sub-par level of the average featured call.
Think about that for a second and then try to imagine why anyone does it.
Today’s “hot topic” is Moussa Dembele, and how “over-rated” he is. One caller of particularly low IQ seems to think the big man will get “found out” in the EPL.
I disagree, but what do I care anyway?
He’s at Celtic right now and after we get the mega-bucks deal for him that’s as good as certain I won’t give a toss whether he gets found out or not; we’ll already have the money.
Really, is this the best these muppets can do for a straw to clutch? It’s poor fare.
They cannot believe what is happening to us right now, with the hotel announcement, the march towards a treble, the Brendan Revolution and Moussa becoming one of the most wanted players in Europe.
On their forums tonight they are highlighting a story about a Police Scotland probe into corruption at Glasgow City Council and openly praying that it “leads somewhere” and unravels everything we have done. We’re not mentioned in that story; we’re nothing to do with it whatsoever, but that hasn’t stopped them.
The idea that all this might be legit has never crossed their minds. Because that means it can be sustained. That means it might never end.
I simply can’t believe how febrile they’ve become in recent years. Celtic hasn’t had planning permission for this stuff yet – we’ve applied for it – but already they have the council, the Scottish Government and any number of other organisations involved in a conspiracy to give us another advantage.
Forget that this is infrastructure for the whole area, and jobs, and economic benefits; those reasons are unimportant. This will be “green lit” because it’s Celtic.
Bonkers. This is the new State Aid case, in a nutshell.
They will spend months investigating the various elements of this, they will file Freedom of Information requests and they will convince themselves that this is going forward with no merit. Before the first brick is even laid they will have worked themselves up over it Insanity is rampant over there.
As I said in the earlier piece on these plans, I know what happened when the casino deal was being mooted for Ibrox. The people involved in it were taking a speculative punt and nothing more. They never convinced councillors that it was a serious project.
Some on the Sevco sites believe that was a conspiracy, but it was Tony Blair’s Labour government who had proposed the idea in the first place. They had decided that a number of “super-casinos” could revitalise the UK economy; they were going to give the go-ahead to one, initially.
Glasgow was earmarked as a potential location. Numerous sites around the city made applications, with various consortia involved. Only one got huge publicity and it was by far the least realistic of the proposals. Ibrox never stood a chance; in the end, Glasgow didn’t either.
It was awarded to Manchester until Gordon Brown pulled the plug altogether.
Into this mix of febrile abandon stumbled Craig Burley this week, with his assertion that Dembele would be gone in the summer. Whilst he was at it he took a sideways swipe at the standard of the SPL in a rant of such self-righteous ignorance it stunned me to momentary fury when I read it.
Then I realised how little I care; the last I heard of Burley he was being investigated by his employers for appearing drunk on BT Sport over a year ago.
I don’t know what he does now and care less. I don’t even know if he was drunk on the night in question; any time I’ve tripped over his media exploits I’ve harboured the half-suspicion that he was out of his face whilst doing it anyway; drunk on duty? So what? When was he ever sober?
The newspaper column that destroyed his “career” in journalism up here is one of the most scandalous things I’ve ever read, and you have to wonder how bad you have to be to be told by that corner of the industry that you’ve run out your string.
Hey, either his “informed source” at Chelsea was lying or Burley himself just made that up to make one of his own ignorant opinions sound more valid; either way, it didn’t justify the half day of media treatment it received, before Moussa’s agent repeated – again – what he has umpteen times before; his player is happy in Scotland and he’ll be here next season.
I can’t believe one player has caused this frenzy of speculation and angst. Sevco fans are particularly torn over what they want to see happen here; they simultaneously decry the player and say he’s not worth the money and yet they’d clearly love to see the back of him already, and they should because he has already scored five times against them this season, which is more goals than Joe Garner has managed to put away in their own club colours.
And they gave that useless sod a chart song and everything.
For fans so fond of accusing us of being obsessed they sure do spend a lot of time worrying about what happens at Celtic Park. Everything we do is scrutinised, and not just our behaviour but that of every organisation that is involved with us. Celtic fans believe – with good cause – that the SFA has pandered to the Ibrox operation in previous years, but I’ve argued that it’s not helped them; quite the opposite in fact. The media is too scared to offend them and has long been a slave to the PR people.
But wider conspiracies? It’s for the birds.
The establishment they toady to – and which we never have – didn’t lift a finger to save Rangers in 2012. It won’t lift a finger to help the NewCo when their own time comes. That establishment certainly has no love for us, or for football in the main.
Celtic’s strong position is doing strange things to a lot of people. Many of them were already hovering on the edge of sanity, but it’s tipped them into fully fledged madness with a speed that has surprised me.
And this season is merely six in a row. Can you imagine how foaming at the mouth this lot are going to be as we make it seven … then eight … then nine … God help them!