Congratulations today to The Scotsman, for the most hilarious article headline of last night by a considerable distance;
Oh dear.
Talk about getting things spectacularly backward.
The truth is, they avoided us.
This draw gives them a chance to get to the final.
Had they been drawn against this rampaging team we could have, in a few weeks’ time, snuffed out their hope of a trophy like it was a birthday cake candle.
I said in my match report last night – shortly before the draw was made – that the “heated balls” would keep the two teams apart.
Which is a shame, as I really wanted us to get them.
The sighs of relief in Sevconia last night were louder than the sectarian singing.
They are not remotely ready to play us again, and especially not outside Ibrox where they’ve narrowed the pitch and banned all but 800 of our fans. And where we still went just a few weeks ago and gave them a doing.
On the wide open spaces of Hampden or Celtic Park, forget it.
Their players will leave more shell-shocked than the glass-eyed zombies Charlie Sheen sees when he gets off the plane in Vietnam at the start of Platoon.
If you’ve seen the highlights – a word I use with the deepest imaginable irony – of their game against Livingston last night you’ll have seen what they really are; long ball merchants playing public park level football, a comment I don’t want misconstrued as insulting public park players or games, many of which are better, by far, than that was.
Last season, when we were scoring last minute winners just to secure three points the media was scathing about our form.
So was I.
There is a talent involved in being able to grind out a win when required, but when you are grinding them out every week that’s a sign that something’s wrong, that you are riding your luck.
And luck runs out.
Had they drawn us instead of ending up with Hearts – guaranteed to roll over, a desperate outfit who were, somehow, still too good for Aberdeen – all their pretensions would have been put to the sword in a torrid 90 minutes their grandkids would have been petrified to think about.
We haven’t given them a real going over since Gerrard’s been there, but he’s not a good manager and he’s not built a good team, so it’s in the post.
The reckoning has merely been postponed.
Now we know there’ll be a chance to give it to them even before the league game at the turn of the year.
Hampden then, should we dispatch Hibs.
I’m looking forward to it already.
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