Can you believe people over at Ibrox?
Man oh man, fresh from losing two on the bounce, they went into last night against a team so demoralised they didn’t manage a single shot on target the whole night. Their best player from the campaign is injured, and has played his last game for the club.
So Motherwell decided Ibrox was the place to leave their other best player on the bench.
Their entire approach to the game was summed up in that decision.
Some of the euphoria in the press today has been so OTT you’d think that was a European qualifier they’d won, instead of beating the league’s most off-form team – a team which still hasn’t recovered from feeling sorry for itself over losing to us in the cup final.
The one journalist who has written about the game last night with a dispassionate eye, and turned in a fine piece of work was – and I can scarcely believe I am writing this – Neil Cameron, who’s match-report was analytic and cold blooded and basically boiled down to “they won, but boy were they awful.” He rightly tells their fans not to get their hopes up.
But some will anyway, and some in the media clearly have already. But that’s nothing on the big talk coming out of their dressing room and the manager’s press conference. It’s normal, I’m sure, for a team to talk confidently about the match they are about to take part in, it’s another entirely to offer such hostages to fortune as they have here.
Murty claims to have worked out how we play; good for him. He claims he’s learned from what Hearts did to us. Aberdeen and Dundee made a similar claim. A couple of their players have been giving it similar mouth. Hearts caught us on an exceptional day; we were off the boil and they hit every right note. Sevco will not get that lucky. In front of a home crowd, on the final football day of the year, our players will be ready to rock and roll.
I can barely believe the arrogant nonsense flowing out of Ibrox. The press is backing it too, which is all the more incredible. But Murty and the players are digging themselves a huge hole here because all the big chat in the world isn’t going to help them when that whistle blows; quite the opposite in fact. And people should take no notice of Scott Brown’s obvious trolling when he says that Murty has made them better; better than what? Caixinha?
That remains to be seen; I’ll tell you what, he will last less time in the job.