Last night, just before I chucked it for the evening to watch some TV, I had the distinct misfortune to read Matt Lindsay’s preview for the game in The Herald. It was ridiculous, and made me wonder if a line was being pushed out from somewhere.
Because it contained a highly suspect, assertion, which I’d already read twice that day on other outlets.
Lindsay’s article opened with this sterling piece of claptrap.
“The Ibrox club should certainly give a better account of themselves than they did the last time they travelled across the city to face their traditional rivals back in September. On that occasion, fielding Joey Barton, Niko Kranjcar and Philippe Senderos, three ageing signings whose distinct lack of match fitness meant they were unable to live up to their considerable reputations, proved utterly disastrous.”
Man oh man, where even to start?
Let’s start here; it was Celtic fans who called them “ageing signings” when the media was predicting that they’d be the driving force behind a Sevco title challenge. I love seeing how the media is now appropriating our analysis before the fact as their excuse after it.
There’s just one little problem with that as analysis; it’s total crap.
For one thing, only one of them had to play ninety minutes and he was the one who many hacks tipped as player of the year before a ball was kicked. Senderos was red carded and Kranjcar was taken off at half time, and the score was only 2-1 to Celtic when he was.
Whilst the former Arsenal man (chortle) might have lacked sharpness that’s an excuse that absolutely cannot be levelled at any of the other players. Barton was playing his 8th match of the season and Kranjcar was playing his 10th.
This line of reasoning is pathetic. Their team was well prepared for that game. On the day they were well beaten, by a vastly superior team and don’t let anyone kid you the gap was closed over the course either. At Hampden we had a goal disallowed and would have run up a cricket score had it stood. At Ibrox we hit the post and the crossbar and still won the match after coming back from a goal down and dominated thoroughly.
Only sheer bitterness could possibly offer an explanation for how little credit we’ve been given for the season we’re putting together, and this idea that we still have something to prove in these game is ridiculous and offensive, but I have no doubt we will demonstrate that superiority again when tomorrow comes. Because we didn’t luck into those wins or catch them on a bad day. We’re just better, in every department.
If it’s not the wishful thinking and trying to find excuses, it’s the denial of reality which astounds.
Players will “have to prove themselves to the new manager” is one that’s doing the rounds. Oh yeah? Why’s that? There are nine league games to go before the season ends, and they still have a cup tie to play. The manager won’t judge them on a single game, and if he does he’s a moron. And even if he did, and found players wanting, so what? He can’t do anything about it until the end of the campaign, and he can’t afford to have them sitting on the bench.
Besides, since when does having a point to prove make you a better footballer? It might make you push yourself harder but it won’t elevate Andy Halliday to the level of Scott Brown and it won’t make Clint Hill any quicker or Martyn Waghorn any more composed in front of goal. These are limited players, and their limitations can’t be glossed over because they are trying to impress the new guy in the stand.
You ever tried so hard to impress someone you made a gigantic arse of yourself?
We’ve all done it, right?
I once approached an absolutely gob-smacking girl in a bar, whilst she was sitting a table with her pal. I leaned on the post beside the table and asked her what her name was, trying on my best smile and turning the charm dial up to nine. And she was quite responsive. Until I shifted my weight, the pint I was holding slipped out of my hand, hit her on the head (I still replay that moment in my mind; I swear I saw the glass bounce although it’s impossible) and soaked her.
Players in such circumstances tend to make rash challenges, over-complicate simple things and generally make a mess of everything. If you’re good, and you know it, you don’t have to try. You only have to play your natural game and it’ll come.
Unless your natural game is as bad as mine as described above.
(I also once knocked over a table of drinks pulling another girl up for a dance.)
“The form book goes out the window,” is another one. No-one’s ever offered evidence of this, or why this spectacular phenomenon only tends to apply to Glasgow derbies. It’s transparent rubbish, but you hear it over and over again.
If the form book went out the window, how come they didn’t beat us at Hampden? Or at Ibrox?
We were on form. They weren’t playing particularly well. How come the world wasn’t upturned for them to get the result? People point to individual games during the Celtic – Rangers years and say “well that proves it.” All it proves is that one team turned up on the day whilst the other took a holiday. It’s utter garbage. One off freak results happen … it has nothing to do with galactic symmetry and the need for a universe in perfect harmony.
But of all the media’s bizarre tactics before this one is the continuing need to talk us down.
The new line is that next season will provide the challenge, that it will be Brendan and this team’s true test, with a new manager at Ibrox (and maybe a different one than the poor hapless sod who flew in today and who has “patsy” written on his napper already) and blah blah blah.
As if no-one turned up this season.
As if this was just the rest of the SPL giving Brendan and the bhoys a free run at it because it was his first one.
Tomorrow we will stamp all over some of this idiocy.
Some of it will endure beyond that game.
I have stopped expecting them to give us credit.
All that’s left it is to pour on the pain.
I fully expect us to do just that.