James writes on here often about the number of people in our support who lambast certain players constantly and seem to pick one every now and again to bury under abuse.
The current target of all this is the big keeper, Barkas.
This is to be expected; the big lad is having an unsteady start to say the least.
But he’s not the only target, of course.
There’s Ajeti. There’s Brown. There’s Elyounoussi. Taylor. Duffy. I could go on but you get the general point.
Almost all our players get this.
There is a lot of debate amongst our supporters about whether the amount of online scrutiny is good for the players at a time like this.
To be honest, I wonder how much of it they read.
If they are smart they don’t read any of it.
Yet even with the best will in the world, some of that stuff will get through.
In every dressing room I bet there’s at least one player who takes a perverse satisfaction in trolling his mates with their bad online “reviews.”
As difficult as it is to drown out the views of the fans, I’m willing to bet it’s nearly impossible to drown out the views of the pundits, and especially those “Celtic minded” ones who are ever ready to slam the boot into our footballers every chance they get.
Here’s a thought; if Celtic wants things to return to normal we should be telling these guys to lay off.
People like Sutton having a go at our strikers. People like Bonner having a go at our keepers.
He was at it again the other day, laying into Barkas.
“Ex-Celtic keeper rips into current Celtic keeper” … that’s obviously not going to make many headlines, right?
You wonder who’s benefit that serves? You wonder why they do it.
The fans are not the problem here. In the echo chamber of social media, the fans will always have their say.
But someone like Bonner, someone like Sutton, someone like Walker or Provan … these guys should know how tough it is in the pressure cooker of our club … and they know too that anything they say is like shouting through a megaphone.
Perhaps it’s time they did their part and stopped with the savaging of certain stars, and especially those who for one reason or another haven’t had much time to settle and in this most difficult of all seasons with its crazy, unique circumstances perhaps these guys should be cut a like slack by our ex-pros in the press box?
Just a thought.
The Rumour Guy is a Celtic fan and blogger from Glasgow.
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