You would not believe it, but we actually had a title race in Scotland this season at one point.
A real one too, not a fake one, not a manufactured one, made in Govan at a handy PR repository.
No, we had a stand-up fight between a Celtic side struggling to find the form of last season and an Aberdeen team that was rolling like a well-oiled machine.
And it was the media who ruined it. It was the media who worked day and night to undermine Aberdeen’s title run.
For two reasons.
First, because Sevco was in freefall and the Pittodrie club was threatening to pull decisively away from them and secondly, that resulted in the dismissal of their hapless Portuguese nutcase … and they wanted McInnes to succeed him.
The campaign they launched had a dual purpose; to destabilise the Pittodrie club and to convince McInnes he had taken them as far as he could and that Sevco was where he needed to be to realise his career goals. It was, and it is, absolute bollocks.
But the first part of that campaign, at least, was successful. Aberdeen collapsed at just the moment when their challenge could have become real. Sevco were able to claw their way past them, like something crawling out of a grave.
Mission accomplished. I think it’s as near certain as it can be that Sevco will finish the season in second spot. Aberdeen could have been decisively in front of them, and we would be in a shakier spot right now. It would have given Scotland the title race these people claim to crave … but it wasn’t the one they wanted or the circumstances they wanted it in.
Because the truth, as we’re all well aware, is that the only title race they want, and the only one they will recognise, is one that involves the Ibrox club. Aberdeen have been our consistent challenger all season long; if they had won yesterday they would have been within six points of us too, but the media was not interested in that salient detail in the least.
Aberdeen’s title challenge would have barely factored in to their thinking, and that’s ridiculous when you consider that a win for all three teams this midweek and it would have been the Dons who were in pole position to take advantage of whoever loses at Ibrox.
Did you ever read that analysis in the media? Of course you didn’t, because that was the furthest thing from the minds of the desperate hacks we have here. They barely acknowledge Aberdeen at the best of times and the other clubs in the league not at all. The implicit assumption in all of the coverage in the past week is that Sevco would simply show up and beat every team they played between now and the end of the campaign, save for us.
It is beyond arrogance. It is so biased it makes you sick.
Sevco’s second spot has been secured by the most dubious means imaginable; the source of the funds they have used to assemble this team of theirs is murky at best. It is clearly unsustainable but that’s not the point; if that club holds together for three years or so and manages to stop us winning the tenth title on the bounce no-one will care if they collapse into the hole in the ground that swallowed up Rangers … it’ll be “job done”.
No other club matters in the grubby battle that’s to come; the media has made it clear that nobody else’s challenge to us will be entertained or acknowledged, no matter how solid the foundations it is built on. And Aberdeen, Hearts and Hibs are all run very well.
Sevco will be allowed to cheat if that’s what it takes. Fair play? Not in Scotland. Operation: Stop Celtic will succeed if someone other than us wins the league, of course, but the central thrust behind it is very much Ibrox-centric.
No wonder we view the press here as beneath contempt.
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