Earlier in the week, Phil posted a storming piece about Sevco’s Spanish training camp shambles.
The story was, on the surface of it, fairly low-level … it was about a bus. But like many other pieces which have been posted on Celtic blogs since Gerrard’s circus rolled into town there was more to this simple tale than met the eye.
And at Ibrox they knew it, and this is why one of their media lackeys got out in front of it with a Twitter rant that will be generate repeat viewings for years to come.
Two things to say about that; first, did you notice how Jack’s response didn’t contradict, not even a little, the actual facts of the story?
Talk about confirming the premise of the article.
He gave it the green light.
His tacked on “explanation” was not enough to cover the fact that he was essentially standing up the piece itself.
Talk about an own goal.
Secondly, why the response in the first place?
That’s easy to explain. This one touched a nerve, and caused a stir.
This one hit the bullseye.
Phil has been writing for a couple of weeks now on how unimpressed Gerrard is with many elements of the Ibrox operation. I was astonished to see that their players were flying EasyJet out to Spain. The club itself never anticipated that information becoming a matter of public record; sadly for them the morose players trooping through the airport were spotted holding EasyJet boarding passes. What a PR catastrophe that could have been had the media highlighted it.
But of course they didn’t. That was left to the bloggers.
The interesting footnote to that story is that within days of those pictures being plastered all over the net the club itself made a wholly unheralded announcement that their “official travel partner” was to be Thomas Cook from therein.
I leave you to ponder that one.
The camp itself where Sevco is staying looks less than sophisticated, as a lot of the stunning photos of the place have shown. It looks to the untrained eye a lot like what the SFA infamously arranged for Scotland players in the 1978 World Cup. The photo that I saw this morning of a glum looking Sevco management team sitting on old cracked wooden benches in the middle of a barren landscape right out of a Sergio Leone movie sums it up.
And even as this is going on, Celtic is tweeting an endless series of photos of players relaxing and training in luxurious surroundings; from the plane over there to the coach which picked them up to the training grounds themselves, everything screams “huge club”.
And this, of course, is for our own fans so that they can keep track of the team.
But it also looks good in the papers, and in the PR war that’s undeclared but which is going on just the same. Celtic’s tweet to Southampton about how we “like a club that pays its dues” is one dig amongst many from our social media team which has grown exceptionally good at making their point with finesse.
There’s another target audience though.
It’s Gerrard and his people, of course.
The PR war is really being fought inside his head. He has, in the last week or so, became painfully aware of just what club he’s at now and what the limitations of the place are. His total transfer spend doesn’t equal what we’ve spent on infrastructure upgrades. He’s watched us break our own record for a single player and more is to come even as he mulls over who to sign out of a Roma reserve and Jason Cummings.
There has been no “game-changer” signing over there and he knows it. All this talk of making the team fitter sounds great in the media and putting these guys through their paces out in the Spanish sun might make them seem ready for anything but we’ve heard it before. The cull going on over there will probably result in them having a smaller squad … they won’t have to worry, for long, about European football but that will still take a toll.
And then we’ll find out what all the big talk is worth.
At Celtic Park you never hear this stuff. I read Callum McGregor’s extended media interview yesterday with a smile on my face. There was none of the bombast or arrogance pouring out of Ibrox; it was a good hearted kid talking like a pro.
“Football is my job,” he said at one point and whilst not a ground-breaking statement in itself it’s amazing to hear a young player talk that kind of good sense. It speaks to knuckling down, focus, drive, determination to succeed and be as good as he can be, and that kind of professionalism is why he’s become an integral cog in the big wheel of this double treble winning team.
Our club acts like a big club should. It treats its players like a big club should.
Not for our players budget travel, crap digs, spaghetti western surroundings or off the peg training gear from one of the lesser brands. It’s all quality, and it’s all tip-top and we want the world to know it, and Steven Gerrard most of all.
Sun-Tzu was right when he pointed out that every battle is won before it’s ever fought. Some are won in good tactics, some in surprise. Others are won in the toughest territory of all; inside the head of the enemy.
“To fight and conquer in all our battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting,” he wrote.
Long before this season gets underway, Gerrard’s perception of where he’s at will be eating away at him, filling him with doubts and anxieties.
And then the football, and the beatings, start.