A new domestic campaign is upon us! Hoorah!
Typically, it begins with a win against Hearts, and quite a breezy one. 4-1 at home on the opening day is never to be sneezed at, and especially not when the performance was as fine as this. Two from Griffiths, one from Sinclair and a fine strike from Callum had us four goals to the good before Gordon let one squiggle under him.
There was not a lot wrong with that today, indeed all the news is good.
We’re doing what we finished the season doing; winning games, in style.
Honestly, that was excellent today. We played with purpose and drive and energy.
The new pitch looked fantastic, and the players did it justice. Leigh was everywhere, it seemed to me, Scott Sinclair dazzled with occasional moments of brilliance, Callum was outstanding and our new bhoy Ntcham looked as if he’s settling right in there.
So nothing different about the Champions … we remain Invincible under Brendan.
But some other things are the same too, of course.
Andy Walker is still unbearable.
That man makes you want to stick things in your ears. If he wasn’t questioning Brendan’s selection policy (who told he was so qualified?) he was spinning conspiracy theories about Stuart Armstrong being dropped and generally making statements so ludicrous it made you long for the return of Neil McCann.
On the park, Kyle Lafferty remains a thug, throwing elbows and barging people, arguing with the referee. I thought he ought to have walked, in the first half, because even after being rightly booked he behaved like a petulant child.
On top of that, he is still absolutely awful as a player.
A quick look at the internet shows that the same cloying reek of arrogance still pours of Ibrox, for reasons passing all understanding. The Daily Record’s Sevco blogger – I realise I should be more specific because that’s a label that could be easily applied to any of their writers, but I can’t be bothered trying to remember his actual name – has published a gushing piece that has to be read to be believed, not that I’m encouraging any of you to go and do that.
Quite the opposite in fact.
Suffice to say, it blows bubbles up the manager’s backside, slags former players and the ex-manager (a couple of whom had a pretty decent night last night in Nottingham) and slithers to the edge of predicting that they’ll challenge us but then bottles out of doing it.
I’ll make him a prediction; his manager will be gone or close by Christmas. And at least one of the new signings will be sold in January, and probably at a loss. (I could even predict which one it will be, but why spoil the surprise?)
Neil Doncaster also failed to turn up for the presentation of the league flag; he really is a spineless, yellow-bellied fraud of a man. His continued existence at the top of the SPFL is a mystery of epic proportions, one that I cannot understand at all.
On top of that, Jon Daly decided to have a go at Brendan in the aftermath of the press conference on Friday where our boss was asked a question about the sacking of Ian Cathro and gave his typically honest assessment on it.
He said what a lot of us know, what a lot of Hearts fans are well aware, that their “management structure” over there is a farce.
Daly wants the job, I do not know why.
There are other jobs, where a manager might even be allowed to do things his own way. It’s clear that Brendan has actually spoken to Cathro; he wasn’t pulling this stuff off the top of his head. Daly’s comments were quite ridiculous, suggesting Brendan has Billy Big Time syndrome. What garbage.
From the outside looking in, the Tynecastle operation is descending into the sort of shambles that makes the one at Ibrox look like smooth sailing. The stadium situation, wherein they have to play some of their games at Murrayfield and won’t, therefore, have a home game for the first four months of the season, is just ludicrous. The Walker situation reeks of weakness. They are out of the League Cup already and are desperately trying to find a boss before the entire season collapses underneath them. Hell mend them.
What residual sympathy I might have had went by the boards watching Ann Budge outside Hampden the other week.
It stinks to high heaven.
Scottish football … oh how I’ve missed it.
But really, some parts of it continue to stick in my throat, and that’s without even getting into the corruption …