Was it George Bernard Shaw, in an era before the internet and the rise of the trolls, who got right to the heart of it? I rather think it was. “Never wrestle with a pig,” the saying sometimes attributed to him goes. “Because you get dirty whilst the pig enjoys it.”
Well there is enough squealing online these days to make you think that all of Scottish football is the world’s smelliest barnyard. I try not to get into it with some the crazier people, I really do, but we know it’s not as easy as just ignoring it.
Sevconia has its own rules of logic. We all know this.
No other club, certainly in the UK, has supporters who readily, and consistently, bend facts and reality to suit themselves.
It frequently has disastrous results for them and hilarious results for us.
Right now, in the bottomless pits of their fan forums, and occasionally leaking out into the media from the kind of people Scottish football should disown as an embarrassment, some are pushing an idea so absurd that it ought not to be debated or discussed by a single person possessing the smallest fraction of common sense.
It is this; Celtic wants the season ended early.
Nothing could be further from the truth, but this lie is insidious and it is brazen in what it attempts to do.
It’s intended to create the perception that we are somehow afraid of finishing this campaign. You see it in nonsense about how they have a game in hand and two matches against us to come … and then “the gap could be four points.”
The arrogance of this from a team that hasn’t strung a handful of wins together in the two years Gerrard has been in the door is unbelievable. The people still pointing to the New Year fixture at Celtic Park fall oddly silent when you mention that we’d already gone to Ibrox and won easily. They are equally quiet when you remind them their season was in freefall when the global health emergency called time on it.
I wanted the game at Ibrox to go ahead, but not under any circumstances. Putting the wellbeing of fans and players at risk was unacceptable. But had that game been played I think all this nonsense would already be academic, as we’d have won convincingly.
Here, on this site and on the other Celtic sites, we deal in reality and the reality is that the season is almost certainly finished. We will be lucky to see football in Scotland played until August, and even then I wonder if it might not be behind closed doors or under immense restrictions.
When we talk about the effects of, and options for, ending this season right now we are dealing with the simple truth that this is far and away the most likely scenario.
But none of that is to say that it is our preferred option.
Sevco has no hope in Hell of catching us, and I suspect in fact that they’d finish the campaign even further behind us if it were resumed right now. We are the club with the double digit lead, the club with the better footballers, the better manager, the one that had the momentum.
Why in God’s name should we have been afraid, and why should we be afraid, to take these jokers on?
We want this league won on the pitch, and we want our crack at the Scottish Cup as well.
All the rest is just white noise, but that’s what Sevco and its media toadies do best.
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