Judge & Jury Jackson?

Keith Jackson wants to know if we should take Ronny Deila seriously.

The idea makes me laugh.

Ronny Deila is an accomplished man, a manager with a league title and a cup to his name from his time in Norway, and he won both at an unfancied club.

He has probably forgotten more about football than Jackson will ever know.

His Celtic team is top of the league, he’s in one cup final already and still in the Scottish Cup. He has led his team through a tough Europa League group and now faces Italian cracks Inter Milan.

Ronny Deila is doing well.

Still, Jackson wants to know if he’s the real thing.

Like I said, I find this amusing. I would find it amusing if it had come from a semi-credible journalist.

From a discredited hack, it’s just embarrassing.

I said in my last piece for On Fields of Green that I fully understand why Sevco banned Jackson’s rag. This newspaper is shamelessly partisan from front page to back, and firmly “establishment”. It’s also wholly untrustworthy, and most people realise this.

Its editorial policy, vis-à-vis Scottish football, is to deny reality, to support the Survival Myth and push the Victim Myth, and to campaign for the return of the Real Rangers Men.

As such, the poor sods on the current board don’t stand a chance. Even when they get stuff right, they get pilloried.

Jackson is one of the premier cheerleaders for the King group … and he has never written as much as a single critical word about them, although the South African is a convicted crook and one other member of his gang, Paul Murray, is an ineffectual joker who sat on two Rangers boards which drove the club to the wall.

Has Jackson asked if any of these people should be taken seriously?

Of course he hasn’t.

When Ally McCoist was building his expensive squad of flops, when he was presiding over cup defeats and struggling in the Championship, did Jackson write critically?

Of course not.

McCoist’s “accomplishments” at Ibrox amount to winning two lower league titles with a spending ratio close to 20/1.

He proved incapable even of winning the Challenge Cup, the one for the clubs outside the top flight. Three efforts at it, three failures.

Did Jackson ever once ask if perhaps McCoist wasn’t up to the job? If he should be taken seriously?

No, he absolutely didn’t.

So why is Ronny Deila being treated differently?

Can you guess? I can.

You have to love Jackson and his buddies at The Record, like Gary Ralston, who’s gleeful article about how he managed to get into Ibrox on the first night of his paper being banned was one of the most self-indulgent pieces of fluff masquerading as a news story I’ve ever read.

They’ve lost all sight of how they are viewed by the vast, vast majority of football fans.

The real question is, how can they take themselves so seriously?

Deep down these people know they’re not the real thing, that they’re not proper journalists and instead are little more than stenographers.

Let’s face it, none of them would get a job writing real stories, even sports ones.

I might not like Ewan Murray, but he’s a cut above these guys, and I might not agree with everything Graham Spiers writes, but you can’t listen to him on the radio surrounded by witless individuals like these and not know he’s slumming it.

Yes, Judge and Jury Jackson … it makes me grin from ear to ear.

I am sure that Ronny Deila has greater concerns than whether this man takes him seriously.

What was it Gordon Strachan once said, when asked about Agustin Delgado?

“I’ve got more important things to think about. I’ve got a yogurt to finish … the expiry date is today.”

Yeah, that just about sums it up.