James Tavernier has been mouthing off about how their team is going to come after us next season.
He and others have been giving it big licks about how fit their team is going to be, how professional the management team is and he, in particular, is drooling about Steven Gerrard being the manager. Sounding more like a fan in the stands than a professional footballer, I am amazed how absolutely swept up in the nonsense he is.
But Tavernier has grossly contradicted all the noise Gerrard has been making since his appointment.
The right back has flatly, baldly, stated that the club will “not settle for being second best.”
This kind of bullish nonsense is exactly what Gerrard has tried to avoid.
It puts pressure on the whole club, which their manager has tried not to do.
It’s also scandalously disrespectful of the other clubs, something else Gerrard didn’t want to be guilty of.
It seems that Sevco players just can’t help themselves. Neither Celtic nor the other teams in the league needs extra motivating to beat this lot, but they offer up additional dollops of it anyway, all the time. It’s like they’re addicted to it.
Every close season since Tavernier signed, he’s done this.
He was one of the players who actually cheered drawing Celtic in the cup last season. The cheering was remembered. At Ibrox he and the rest of them were silenced. At Hampden they were routed. At Celtic Park they were destroyed. You’d think lessons that harsh would have stayed with them.
Instead, this.
It seems that more hard lessons are necessary.
It seems that they’ve not quite got the message yet.
Gerrard has pumped them up full of bravado.
This is a bubble just begging to be burst.