Scott Brown has won his disciplinary hearing at the SFA today, and so once again stands triumphant.
That so much time and commentary were devoted to the innocuous incident at Celtic Park which led to the meltdown amongst the Ibrox squad proves, as if there were any doubt, that Brown is the most influential footballer in the country.
If you still don’t believe that, watch for the reaction across cyberspace tonight and in the media over the course of the weekend.
There will be all sorts of foaming at the mouth over this verdict, a verdict that is entirely right and which the club never doubted for one second. The case against Brown was ridiculous. Neil was right to call it a “trumped up charge.”
He was equally correct to suggest that it was, in no small part, inspired by some in the media.
They can wail about this – and a certain club can wail about it – as much as they like, but the treatment Brown was subjected to that whole day was barbaric and that he didn’t respond to any of it shows who the true model professional is here.
The verdict will reverberate around Scottish football, and give license to the morons who already think Celtic “runs everything”; this is not to be confused with reality though. Our club knows what it is doing and fights these battles well.
If only it fought other battles with the same energy the whole game here might be in a better place, but that’s a complaint for another day.
We dug our heels in with this one because it was a scandal that we were ever brought before the beaks in the first place. It was impossible, right from the start of this, to shake the impression that Brown was being disciplined as some kind of leveller after the Ibrox players behaved so atrociously as to require the SFA to clamp down on them.
But it’s a joke to run the game in such a fashion, that innocent parties are dragged down along with the guilty.
The SFA has some brass neck even to attempt it, and it was never on the cards that Celtic would stand for it. The club promised to defend the player vigorously and that’s exactly what we did. Once we made that decision the outcome was never in doubt.
Let the moaners and the conspiracy theorists wail as they like; the obsession some of them have with our captain really is something to see.