Brendan Rodgers came to the defence of Celtic and Scottish football today when someone at his pre-match press conference, asked him to comment on Jason Cundy’s idiotic remarks of yesterday, about which I wrote earlier. Our manager, who values respect above all else, gave Cundy a firm slap.
Not a full-on one, not an open palm show stopper, but one that put him back in his box.
Brendan also accused him of being interested only in creating controversy.
“I know Jason, I worked with him at Chelsea so I know what he is like. He obviously has to create a programme which stimulates conversation,” Brendan said, essentially calling him a hack, in it for the ratings, trying to get noticed by squealing like a child.
He went on though;
“It is ignorance really, with all due respect. It’s a lack of knowledge of football. The footballing world is more than the Premier League. We all want to see and we all love the Premier League and I was involved in it and it is a fantastic league but football is global and of course a club like Celtic is one of the biggest in the world. But if your eyes are only on one league then of course you tend to ignore what is happening around that.”
Brendan’s comments are more proof (as if it were needed) that he is a tremendous asset not only to Celtic but to the game here overall.
He values it. He respects it.
“He is a good boy Jason, I know him well but I probably understand what he is trying to do with his comments,” he went on to say. “He will always be welcome to Celtic Park and he would be surprised I am sure.”
That’s putting a nice face on it, but make no mistake; this was a public shaming, a pants down spanking in full view of our press corps that Brendan gave him here. The offer to come to Celtic Park is his way of saying “get yourself an education.” When he says Cundy would be surprised he means it; I think, if he possesses an ounce of integrity at all, Cundy would leave Parkhead singing a very different tune than the one he tried on last night.
Our manager isn’t going to take this, and his comments were echoed by Nir Bitton, who had a go at a couple of players in particular, who thought Scottish football would be a holiday.
“A lot of people will look at the Scottish table and think Celtic have no competition in this league but it is far from being true. I think you can see players who have played in Premier League like Joey Barton or Niko Kranjcar, who came to Scotland, and they thought it was going to be easy. No. It is not easy. It is a very competitive league, it is a very difficult league, very tough. The games are not easy.”
He then took a shot at those who’ve tried to talk down our achievements.
“We made it (Inverness) easy but there are no easy games in the Scottish league and the thing that the gaffer works with this season is keep pushing yourself to the end and we will see what happens.”
These comments are, on the face of it, a response to Cundy’s stupidity, but I would suggest they go deeper than that.
A lot of people at Celtic Park are becoming seriously irked by this rancid suggestion that our success is somehow about the quality of the opposition and not a reflection of how our squad has progressed over the course of the season.
This attitude is widespread amongst the hacks up here, and at certain football clubs who’s owners and directors seem to find a lot of time to mouth off about us instead of fixing some of the problems inside their own houses.
And whilst it’s not affecting our displays – unless it’s being used as a motivating tool – this is starting to severely aggravate Brendan and his team.
It should.
Because with no team looking like it can stop us all that’s left for these people, to bemoan the overall standard of the opposition, in an effort to limit the scope of our accomplishments and our record breaking run.
It won’t work.
It’s lazy and its detrimental to the other clubs.
It’s offensive to them and to their fans.
Our media has spent so long talking our game down that this comes naturally to them now though.
The toxic stench of envy coming off some of them is ridiculous.
These people are incapable of giving us praise.
I can’t be alone in thinking what a genuine pleasure it is to see so many of them choking on our success.