All week long, through the media and even on social media, including on one Celtic site, there has been a steady promotion of this game tomorrow as some kind of grudge match and some kind of opportunity for Hearts to “settle the score.”
But what bloody score is it they are trying to settle? What exactly is the problem with Craig Levein and Ann Budge and a section of the Hearts fan-base?
When did we turn into the Big Bad Bogeyman and what exactly did we do to them to deserve that tag?
This is about their relegation, of course, but nobody can point out to me the role we played in that except as just another club casting a vote.
I don’t know how many times I have to repeat this, but once more just for the Hell of it; Celtic was publicly in favour of finishing the season if that was at all possible.
We didn’t want to win the league title after a truncated number of games.
We wanted it settled on the park.
But as far as it was possible to do so, it was. I am tired of those who keep on saying that the league was “unfinished”; it is nonsense.
The league season was officially declared as completed by a vote of the clubs, and when it was, Hearts were at the bottom.
Clubs voted to apply the rules. That is all they did. There was no big injustice here, and the constant suggestion that there was is tiresome.
There was certainly no big conspiracy with Celtic at the head of it. This talk of some grievance which exists between the two clubs is one-way traffic; Lennon said at his press conference yesterday that he thinks things should have happened another way with Hearts.
I disagree with him, completely and utterly, as I disagree with many Celtic fans who think the same, but enough of them are of the view that Hearts should have been “saved” that the whole idea we were behind some nefarious scheme to send them down is revealed for the lie that it is.
If Hearts need some extra juice before this game tomorrow, then fair enough; I’d have thought the opportunity to win a domestic cup competition would have been enough to inspire them. Clearly some of them need an extra incentive, which speaks volumes about their will to win.
But the stoking of conspiracy theories doesn’t help them in any way.
It only convinces me that Ann Budge spent too long this summer in the orbit of the Ibrox paranoid brigade.
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