Frank McAvennie has joined the chorus of clowns who thinks that Sevco has a “massive advantage” over Celtic at the weekend because we’re playing in front of no fans.
None of the people who have made this bizarre claim have explained how both sides playing in front of no supporters gives one an advantage over the other, but still this persists.
I wrote about this bizarre theory the other day in connection with Keith Jackson, who of course goes much further even than McAvennie with his suggestion that Sevco benefits from having no fans whilst Celtic loses out.
Our former striker doesn’t go that far, but this idea that our lack of support hands them some kind of advantage is in its own way even stupider.
If you accept that the fans give us an advantage at home – which they do – then all not having them does is removes that in the worst case scenario.
How that translates into offering an advantage to Sevco nobody has been able to explain.
Yet there is more to home advantage at Celtic Park than just the fans, of course; one of our biggest advantages at home is the pitch itself, which is larger and wider than most others in the league.
By its very nature, it stretches teams, making it tougher for them to put eleven men behind the ball or cramming them into the penalty area.
There is also a familiarity with the surroundings that accrues to being the home side, and yes that’s purely a psychological thing, but then so is the idea that we play better in front of the supporters. It doesn’t matter in the end that our players are in front of empty stands; those are still the stands of Celtic Park and the team knows what that means.
I have no doubts that the players will be focussed on this game … and I’ll tell you something else; if I was playing in that side I would be chomping at the bit for this one to kick off, because the avalanche of this garbage that we’ve had to put up with for weeks now must be driving them up the wall.
Our players will be keen to get out there and shut a right few people up.
In their own way, they – McAvennie included – might have given us a diffrent kind of advantage; that extra little bit of dig and motivation to ram it all back down their throats.
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