Jesus wept. If there was one thing I could have predicted after the final whistle on Saturday it’s that Graeme Murty would be reborn anew, the manager Sevco had been looking for all along. What a lazy and dishonest narrative that is.
Only those who were braindead could believe such a thing. Only those who know their readers are braindead would write it.
First off, he appears not to know what almost everyone else in Scottish football knows when he writes that “making Murty the manager on a more permanent basis is not part of the plan.”
Who has he been talking to?
His sources inside Ibrox have completely dried up if he believes that. As this site and others were pointing out from almost the moment Caixinha was fired, there are some in the boardroom over there for whom this was exactly the plan.
They wanted Murty in there from the first. He is the cheap option. They can appoint him, hope for the best and if it doesn’t work out they can fire him without fanfare.
He’s a box checker, a guy who will be content to let the higher-ups do their thing and work around him. Jackson writes about a guy who the board sees as a temporary appointment; why then are they giving him money to spend? Isn’t that the summit of lunacy, when a new boss might be stuck with the rejects of three managerial regimes? Does that make sense in any way?
The basic thrust of the article is equally ridiculous; that one performance proves Murty can get the best out of this team. Everyone in the media accepts that Celtic have been off form for months – I still thought we’d win comfortably – and whilst it’s not unreasonable to say that Murty got the tactics right on the day, we’re not at our best.
Had we been Murty’s game plan wouldn’t have been enough. The game would have been one-way traffic.
This is the typical euphoria that has surrounded every good performance from the Ibrox club, going back to when McCall took over briefly from McCoist. Every single game they get a positive score line in is them “turning the corner” and starting a new era. Murty’s record, overall, is no better than that of the manager they sacked to give him the gig this time; his win ratio is roughly on a par with that of Caixinha. The games he has coming up at the end of January are all as much “must win” as the one at the weekend; he can raise their game for one off matches against the “big teams” but I’ve seen other managers do that this season too.
Neil Lennon at Hibs is a sterling example.
It doesn’t mean they can produce week in, week out. In fact, quite the opposite. Most of them burn themselves down on those games. If Sevco had a game this week coming, my money would be on them losing it, as they did after the wins against Aberdeen.
A team like that is not one we have to fear.
Sevco remains just talk. The glorious comeback which Bates was touting yesterday exists only as a figment of his imagination. But this happens when Sevco has a positive result; people get carried away. Including journalists.
The year is one day old. Jackson is already caught in the same net that made the last year of his career one of the low-points in Scottish journalism history.
What a start he’s off to.