Last night, on BT Sport, a moment of surrealism which took your breath away; it was the sight of Scotland’s most famous amateur gardener, apparently in all seriousness, trying to lecture Brendan Rodgers, manager of the Invincibles, on how to set up a team.
No wonder Chris Sutton was scathing, both in the moment and in the aftermath.
It was one of those moments that makes you wonder if you’re hallucinating.
“Surely that can’t be real … what the Hell is in this coffee?”
It was that bad.
Putting McCoist on television as an analyst is ridiculous in and of itself.
This guy will never sit in a dugout for a top flight team again, and was a figure of ridicule in Scotland and remains one to this day. There is laughter in any company I’m in whenever he opens his mouth to pontificate on the game, but especially when he’s talking tactics.
Last night it was elevated to High Comedy when the man who could not keep Alloa at bay thought he could extrapolate on his football theories as to where Brendan went wrong in Paris against the best players in the world.
That night, in December 2014, McCoist turned up with a team roughly 30 or 40 times more expensive than their opponents. He had a two goal lead with 18 minutes to go. And his team lost that game in 90 minutes. One of their players that night was that other hilariously shit tactical genius, Kris Boyd, who this week thought that he could remind us all of the big games he played in and the masterful managers he worked under.
And no, he wasn’t amongst Sevco’s scorers.
On Wednesday Brendan went out against a team who had a financial advantage that was roughly 15 to 1. We had a single goal lead although it didn’t last long. But I still think on balance our achievement was pretty impressive even if, unlike Alloa, we didn’t snatch a result.
Now, had Barry Smith, who was their manager on that famous night, gone on the show and given Brendan some tips there might have been something worth listening to. Instead, we got the loser, the joke, the discredited, the guy who’s never had a manager’s job since. This is what passes for quality in the Scottish media.
And oh, how we laughed.