Stupidity does not have a universal standard.
I used to enjoy stories about people who had shown epic stupidity.
Like the Florida couple who drank a compound which they had lying around the house for cleaning the fish tank because it contained the substance Donald Trump claimed was working miracles in curing the virus.
It didn’t end well.
Another story I have always liked was the one about the bank-robber who didn’t have a mask and so covered his face with shaving foam. And then, with it dripping all over the place, and in no way made him look unobtrusive, he patiently waited in the queue before making his demands, by which time the police were already on their way.
There was a great story too, from Belgium, about the robbers who went to a store and made their demands only to be told there was no money on the premises. The owner had a helpful suggestion; why didn’t they come back later, when there would be something for them to steal? Which they discussed amongst themselves and agreed to do.
That didn’t end particularly well either.
I felt a little bit as if I was watching one of those instances unfold tonight when I heard that Lennon was going with Ryan Christie up front tonight and Scott Brown back in the team.
A mish-mash, hodge-podge of a formation nobody understood.
And of course we also got the obligatory substitutions which instead of clearing things up made them even more confusing.
He seemed alarmed when Christie missed one of many chances that fell his way late in the game; I don’t know why.
After all, wasn’t this just a bad night in an otherwise reasonable season?
The guy who just last night assured us all that this hasn’t been the disaster we all think should surely just shrug this one and off and move onto the next one, right?
What does it matter, after all, that he made decisions tonight which every one of us knew were major errors?
We were playing the team rooted to the bottom of the league, so of course it made perfect sense to go with one up front.
We’re been notoriously bad at conceding from set-pieces, so of course it made no sense to mark people better or do something different, and it was just a coincidence that we’ve conceded from one yet again, right?
Does he ever learn? Does he even care to learn?
If stupidity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result he’s no better than a trailer park Trump voter who doesn’t even think to read a warning label, or a guy who’d walk up to a bank clerk with shaving foam down one side of face and try to commit armed robbery with the sirens wailing in the background.
Watching Lennon and his fellow coaches stand there and plot like-for-like changes tonight made me feel a little like the shopkeeper must have felt watching the men who came to rob him fall for a strategy only slightly more sophisticated than “Look! Your shoelace is untied!”
A feeling of “Are they really going to be that stupid? Oh yes, they certainly are!”
In a sane world, at a club run well, this would be curtains for Lennon but in a sane world and a club run well he’d never have been allowed this epic clown-car-crash of a night in the first place. Because he should have been dispatched to the Sky Sports Scotland studio, retirement home for failed managers and tabloid sneering idiots.
You think to yourself after every one of these “surely this is the last?” and it never is, and so I don’t really believe that it will be this time except we’ve just lost to the bottom team in the league.
We’ve just virtually assured that the swaggering Gerrard will bring his team to Celtic Park as champions before the split, to inflict further humiliation on us in our own back yard.
In the meantime, Lennon gets to play around with building next year’s team out of the one he’s wrecked and the board plays pathetic little games as the clock ticks down.
This club is a shambles and I fear we’re not done with this farce yet.