Chris Jack’s latest piece starts out by saying that referees will not have cost Sevco the league title, but then goes on to make the case that, in fact, it will be entirely down to them when Scott Brown raises that big trophy for the ninth season in succession.
His article is a masterpiece of miserable, loser, wailing. It is really quite pathetic to read.
From his assertion that bad refereeing that cost them the cup final – instead of missing a penalty and failing to capitalise on playing against ten men – to his belief that bad decisions have cost them points at various times this season, the whole thing squeals “injustice!”
“(The) role that refereeing decisions have played cannot be overlooked. It is not an excuse, far from it, but the men in black have cost those in blue over the campaign,” he moans.
Well I can say only this; if he’s waiting for justice in Scottish football he’ll wait a while.
Anyway, as usual Jack can’t see straight through the blue tint. As with much of their support, he is looking in entirely the wrong place for answers as to how this happened. He might want to start with his team not being as good as he and others think it is, his manager being a one-dimensional joker who is being found out and a mentality that has the club held captive … one of the symptoms of it being that they believe in all this paranoid nonsense.
If he wants a more fulsome, and honest, answer then he’s better off not looking to Ibrox at all for it, and instead to focus on the unpalatable truth that few at Ibrox want to face, namely that the reason they aren’t going to win the title, and never were, is the absolutely incredible form of this Celtic team, one of the most consistent sides in the history of the game here.
I will do a more detailed piece on the form book over the last few years later, but we have a team here that rises to the challenge each and every time.
The form of the club at Ibrox this season was pretty damned impressive until New Year, but now it’s taken on a form which is exactly in line with what you might expect, even in a good campaign … I’ll elaborate on that point at another time, but draws and three defeats at this stage is broadly in line with what I’d have expected in any reasonably close title race.
There were three occasions where Rangers pipped us to titles, twice by a point and once by a single goal, where both sides had 90 plus points … and even in those campaigns the two teams dropped points in an average of seven matches.
The reason we’re going to win this one is that we don’t look as if we’re going to do that.
Because when this team has to do more it does it. It’s as simple as that.
When we need to find an extra gear we are capable of that and this is as true over the course of a league season as it is for individual games. We could, from this point, win this league with 100 points … it would take winning nine of the eleven games which are left, but it’s doable.
But what I don’t expect us to do in the eleven league games which are left is drop points in four matches, which is what it would take at the moment. Not when we’ve dropped points in only three in the 27 games we’ve played so far. It would take a remarkable collapse, and one that would have to coincide with Sevco’s best run of form this season … as exceptional as we keep hearing it is, they actually haven’t won more than five league games in a row.
Look, I don’t expect the hacks to give us the credit we’re due, but actually the more they deny us that credit the less they are able to pay to their favourite club, who by any standards have actually had a good season as far as their points total goes.
It’s just that we have had an exceptional season, and if Jack and others could pull their heads out of their backsides they might acknowledge that, and what it means. That’s the trouble though, because what it means is that we’re proving how far ahead of the rest we are.
Even in a really good season, they aren’t going to catch us.
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