The media “campaign” to push this guard of honour nonsense is in full swing now as we inch ever close to the game.
Today The Evening Times has come up with the best take on this yet, far and away the moth pathetic attempt to swing the club in the direction of agreeing to this act of self-abasement and epic humiliation.
This is the one that finds the bottom of the barrel and gives it a good scraping.
Matthew Lindsay thinks that it will give Celtic fans “bragging rights.”
Yes, he actually wrote this. Celtic would have the bragging rights if we bowed and curtseyed to the Ibrox club as if we were mere supplicants.
Does he really believe the garbage he’s written today?
I heard these same arguments or variations on it when they cut our ticket allocation for Ibrox; Celtic should be the bigger club.
No, actually what it means is that Celtic should play the mugs role.
This is about respect, and their club singularly failed to pay us any.
“It’s fair to say whether (they) should be given a guard of honour by their city rivals on Sunday when they take to the field in the (weekend) game, their first domestic outing since winning the Scottish title, has sharply divided opinion in the game,” he said.
Actually it hasn’t.
There are a handful of people who think this is a good idea and a few who think it would be a right laugh to see us humbled like that. The rest think the whole debate is ludicrous and pointless as there’s no way Celtic will do it.
Lindsay went on. “Saluting opponents who have just be crowned champions before kick-off is a tradition in football.”
But that is a tradition that their club – their club – chose to break. It was an honour that they chose not to give to us, although people tend to forget that when Hearts beat them to the Championship a couple of years before the Ibrox club did applaud them onto the park. Gerrard blames the club “hierarchy” for not giving us one.
I blame everyone at Ibrox, and the whole mentality over there.
Lindsay then goes on to make the quite spurious claim that Lennon is in favour of this, basing it on his comments of 2019. Dragooning Lennon into his argument is quite appalling; I know for damned sure that Lennon wouldn’t be in favour of giving them a guard of honour after they snubbed us for the same. He believes in reciprocity.
Lindsay also mentions Rodgers and his comments of earlier in the week.
You know, those where one of the most arrogant men in the business decided to wax lyrical about humility.
Lindsay may have taken that preening halfwit seriously, the rest of us were rolling about laughing at the gall of it.
By the way, he wouldn’t have given them a guard of honour either no matter what picture he tries to paint of himself in the English media.
Even as I’m writing this piece, Gary Caldwell is the latest ex-Celtic player to pipe up that he thinks our club should do this. I’ll tell you right now; none of these guys would have willingly stood in that line and done this.
Not one of them.
It is easy to talk the talk when you know you’ll never ever have to walk the walk.
obody at Celtic Park will do this willingly.
Lindsay really does believe that this “moral high ground” argument will work here.
That’s not the issue and it never was. Morals don’t exist at Ibrox.
Does he really think if we do it for them this time around that they will honour us next season when we roll into Ibrox as champions? The bottom line is what it’s always been here; the tradition existed until they broke it.
This is the tradition now.
We already have the moral high ground having asked for this two years ago and been snubbed.
We don’t have to claim moral superiority; we already have it in this regard as they were the ones who broke with convention.
All we’re doing is adhering to the standard that they set.
Simple as that, and that’s all Kennedy has to say when he’s asked about it tomorrow.
There is no way in Hell that we will do this and there is no way in Hell that we should.
[snack-countdown title=”Celtic’s Countdown To Champions League Disaster” date=”06/20/2021″ time=”00:00:00″ colour=”#000″ textColour=”#FFF”]