Our club does things at times which frustrate me and baffle me and even infuriate me.
There are times when our entire strategy seems to be lop-sided and contradictory.
When I heard yesterday that the Ibrox club had banned Andy Walker from their ground for pointing out – perfectly legitimately – that they are in a “precarious financial position” I thought it was appalling, the kind of bully-boy tactic which stops journalists asking legitimate questions.
Then I found out, along with everyone else, that Celtic have done the same, and banned Walker from Parkhead.
What was his sin on which they justify that?
Questioning the board’s behaviour over Dubai and saying that Celtic fans were entitled to answers over that.
Walker’s real crime, it seems to me, was in giving the board a proper lashing which every Celtic fan I know feels that they had coming and richly deserved. Indeed, as this long season draws to a close there is no sense of urgency at the club at all, just an embarrassing silence as we continue to wait on events out-with our control.
It is pathetic that the small men running our club can’t take a bit of justified stick.
Just wait until there are fans back in the grounds; they are going to hear it in stereo.
There are legitimate reasons why a club might want to ban a journalist from their stadium.
Indeed, there are legitimate reasons why we might want to ban entire publications and even newspaper organisations from it. If it was my decision no writer from The Daily Mail or The Sun would ever be allowed in the ground.
It speaks volumes about the mentality of our board of directors that instead of banning these notorious rags of the right that they are the favoured conduits of information when people at Parkhead want something leaked.
There are journalists more deserving of a ban from Celtic Park than Andy Walker; today we got an example of one of them, Michael Gannon from The Daily Record, who’s article about why Callum McGregor should leave Celtic this summer is nothing more than an attempt at stirring the soup, and trying to unsettle the best Scottish player in the country.
Scottish journalists, who are meant to promote the game in this country, never tire of telling Celtic players that they should leave for their own good.
Funny how none of them ever makes the same suggestion of footballers at Ibrox.
Gannon is a prize clown who barely, if ever, has a good thing to say about us. His article today fulfils no purpose other than to create a controversy where there is none.
Callum McGregor will be Celtic captain next season; the role of club ambassador and icon is there for the taking with this guy, and he would be an automatic pick for the next manager.
“Where would it leave the club and the team?
No doubt with an even tougher task when they already face a mammoth refurb this summer,” he writes, and indeed that’s the whole story right there, that’s his whole reason for writing the article in the first place.
It is a flagrantly dishonest piece, in which he tries to make the case for why the club itself should choose to let go of the one outstanding footballer who may still be committed to the cause.
At a time when we’re banning Andy Walker for telling the truth, we certainly do have weird standards when it comes to choosing who to let in our house.