Man oh man, Kris Boyd.
What can you say when you read this guy? It makes your eyes roll with disbelief at times. It inspires laughter where you are certain he would not have wanted it. It makes you despair of the whole profession which writes his cheques for the stuff he produces.
I thought he was at his very worst this week, which means that he didn’t even reach the standard of the average school newspaper. The guy writes as if he’s wearing a clown outfit and is trying to stay in character. I know he thinks it makes him “controversial”; his lack of formal journalism training shines through in that because no journalist worthy of the name ever seeks out that reputation. The handful who do are nothing more than egos out of control.
A lot of them have actual talent. Boyd has none.
He’s just an ego, a big, fat, swollen one like a balloon that’s about to burst. All that’s in there is hot air, and that’s the precise content of his latest article, an attack on Celtic so unrestrained that you wonder if he was literally foaming at the mouth as the words were going onto the page.
He opens up with the confident assertion that he would absolutely 100% support a referee’s strike.
He appears to believe this puts him at odds with all of us, as if this is something we would be afraid of. Perhaps he misses the subtext in all the articles on all the Celtic sites over the last two weeks. Even those where there was no reading between the lines required, such as the one I wrote the other day which was actually entitled “Scottish Referees Are Threatening To Strike? Good. Celtic Fans Can Only Hope They Mean It.”
Not much ambiguity in that one, right?
He followed up his segment on striking refs with this sterling example of bad writing and arrant stupidity; “It is also time for clubs to take more responsibility when putting out statements slating refs. Putting their name to it would be a start.”
Classic Boyd. Absolutely pig ignorant and thicker than freshly poured cement.
Does he mean that the clubs should put their names to the statements? Well, they do them on their own websites so I’m not terribly sure how much clearer that could be. Or does he think that club officials should do it instead? Which is absolutely ridiculous.
Most major organisations do things in the way the clubs have.
They release those statements on their sites as “official releases”. Nobody ever puts their name to them, although very occasionally, the CEO’s sign off on communique for market reasons or to make major announcements. Boyd’s demand is beyond dumb, and it might even be dangerous.
Because if the atmosphere is as fevered as he thinks it is – with people getting death threats and such like; he clearly believes that’s going on – then isn’t he asking that club officials put themselves in the crosshairs in the same way? What a joke.
It gets worse, of course, because he goes into full-on perma-rage mode next.
“Celtic’s criticism of John Beaton was embarrassing. This was classic diversionary tactics. (The Ibrox NewCo) also have previous this season when they went to town on Willie Collum … Interestingly Steven Gerrard was quick to distance himself from that particular club statement.”
Except that he didn’t. And nor has he ever backtracked on the scandalous and wholly paranoid comments he made earlier in the season – after the very first game – where he alleged a full-blown conspiracy against the club.
As for diversionary tactics … to divert from what? Celtic’s much parsed statement actually says, in plain language, that the referee had no impact on the result. It is there in simple terms, in actual words that can be understood by anyone over the reading age.
“As the fallout from the last game continues, I look forward to reading the Celtic statement slagging off the manager’s team selection and the players’ performances,” Boyd writes next. And at that point you feel your own head starting to leak brain fluid.
“Far too many clubs, managers and players use referees as a get-out following a bad result.”
Yeah, the Ibrox club does it all the time. Gerrard has used that excuse at least a half dozen times since the season started.
“They do it knowing fine well the fans will jump all over it and social media will go into meltdown. The bottom line is that (they) battered Celtic for the first time in 13 league meetings. Deal with it.”
Deal with it? Does he know how petty and shallow and stupid and childish and tantrum-like that sounds?
Deal with what?
We lost a game.
Every Celtic fan “dealt with it” on the day that it happened and moved past it.
We’re focused on the game happening next week, none of us is looking back with even the slightest concern any longer.
This is typical of a certain mind-set which has taken hold amongst those of the Ibrox persuasion; they really are convinced that one result has us pulling our hair out, wailing, gnashing our teeth, rending our garments, suffering all the pains of Hell. What an absurd fantasy world these people are living in.
What crazy ideas fill their heads.
“I’m sure in those previous 12 games then there were plenty of incidents missed by the officials. I don’t recall any statements about them.”
Oh really? Because I remember a lot of moaning and groaning and grumping and greeting and bed-peeing over the last one at Celtic Park, all of it emanating from Ibrox and from Steven Gerrard in person, over the alleged “foul” before the goal.
Honestly, this geezer is the living proof that the ability to string sentences together does not make you a writer, or even fit to hold a pen.
A good columnist should be able to write coherently, and if this is the kind of stuff published under his name after an editor has been through it you dread to think of what it must be like before it gets to that stage in the process.
If there is a more ridiculous person working in the sports media in the UK I do not know that person’s name.
Even Charlie Nicholas is more coherent, and the only writing gig he could get was at The Daily Star.
How standards have plummeted elsewhere.
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