The Boyata saga looks as if it’s coming to a close, thank God, and the player is said to be in talks with two sides from Turkey. Brilliant news, even without a replacement having been sourced. Because every day he is at Celtic Park the anger around his behaviour grows.
He did not travel to Lithuania for last night’s game.
The chances are he will never see so much as a place on the bench at our club again. It’s over.
Reading the Lafferty apology yesterday was nauseating.
It was nauseating because he expressed regret for something about which he has no regrets at all, and those who read it and felt pleased to hear those meaningless platitudes must know it themselves. This happens a lot with players, they talk the worst sort of nonsense to fans as if we’re all thick.
Boyata tried the same last week, with a shameless piece of PR spinning about how he was trying to regain fitness so he could play in the team. I think it’s pretty clear that the vast majority of our fans didn’t buy it for a moment.
He is in hiding in that treatment room, whether on the advice of his agent or not, and effectively wasting all of our time.
We’ve gotten ourselves into some mess over this and there’s little doubt about it.
Whatever we’re up to, whoever we’re talking to, things are being dragged out in a quite unacceptable fashion. This smells like Lastminute.com stuff, a deadline day scramble to get uninspiring deals across the line whilst our season threatens to unravel in the meantime.
But the overall feeling when Boyata goes will be relief, even if there’s another hole in our squad when he does. What I hope for more than anything else is that he spares us any of the phony sentimentality Lafferty was spooning out yesterday.
Dedryck Boyata’s time at Celtic will end, when it does, in disgrace and shame, and no amount of professing love for the club he’s betrayed will fix it. He has already treated his manager and his fellow players with contempt, I wouldn’t put it past him to try and run one last game on the fans. He should save it and spare himself the backlash.
All that remains for him is an exit with a modicum of dignity, one where he goes without looking back and without adding further insult to injury.
One where he goes to his new club without a backwards glance.
One where he acknowledges what he is and what he isn’t … where he ceases pretending to be anything but a mercenary in it for himself.