Yesterday we got the short-list for the Young Player Of The Year, and it is hilarious. So hilarious that Celtic fans are passing it around on social media and openly mocking it.
There is no place on the list for the excellent Stephen Welsh, one of the leading candidates to be our own player of the year, who emerged for the club during a truly dismal campaign and has played under considerable pressure, but there on the list is the hacks new hero, Nathan Patterson of Ibrox.
Welsh has played 12 league games for the club; that’s only a third of all the league matches we’ve been involved in so far, so perhaps that’s why they didn’t think to include him.
But Patterson has played a mere seven league games, although some of the hacks are claiming the full 14 appearances in all competitions … but this competition has traditionally been awarded for domestic football performances.
In what version of reality does somebody do enough in seven games to convince “sports writers” that he’s a player of the year contender?
Let’s be honest about this as well; Patterson shouldn’t be on that list because even putting him there is a gross insult to every person at every club who toed the line on the Scottish Government’s health regulations. Some of those seven games that he played he should have watched from the stand, and we all know this to be true.
If Scotland’s sports-writers actually confer that honour on him then they are a joke and their profession is a joke. His inclusion on the list, after that handful of matches, insults every other young player in the country who has worked hard and played a full season. It is not a decision based on anything other than Ibrox fan-boy gushing over a new pin-up.
(Law breaking; check. Rule breaking; check. Got off with it; check. Played in games he should have been ineligible for; check. Yep, that has Ibrox pin-up written all over it.)
I’m not saying that Welsh deserves it either, by the way, although if Patterson’s on the short-list there’s really no earthly reason Welsh isn’t there as well.
In my view, the award comes down to a straight race between Lewis Ferguson and David Turnbull, although Doig at Hibs has done well. Ferguson currently holds the award and Turnbull, who was then at Motherwell, won it the year before him.
It’s almost as if Patterson’s inclusion in there is a desperate attempt by Ibrox supporting hacks to sweep the boards at the all the award ceremonies; good luck with that, because it’s going to be exceptionally difficult to make a case for Gerrard as manager of the year instead of Callum Davidson, although some of the hacks are already trying to.
But I cast my mind back to Brendan Rodgers’ second season at Celtic; he won a domestic treble and the “sports writers” gave the award to Steve Clarke. The PFA award went to Jack Ross.
So if winning a domestic treble doesn’t get you it then nobody can make a case for giving it to a manager who only won the league.
Not when clubs with a fraction of his resources are making history at Hampden.