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Clickbait Site Runs Blatant Mistruth About Barkas And The Celtic Dressing Room.

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I can’t stand it when people basically invent stories about Celtic and I don’t care whether it’s done by a mainstream title or a clickbait website.

Tonight the site that laughably calls itself Football Insider – but which the rest of us know as Total Nonsense By Ex Players Pretending To Be In The Know – has run a story about the Celtic dressing room and Vasilis Barkas.

Entitled “Celtic have ‘dressing room’ issue after yet another Barkas ‘blunder’” it carries the name Noel Whelan as the writer, but in fact was ghost written to include quotes from Whelan which the real writer has twisted into the shape that he wanted.

Let me give you the first two paragraphs of this article, for the record;

“There is a lack of trust in Vasilis Barkas in the Celtic dressing room and that is a “massive worry” as they get their 2021-22 campaign underway.

So say ex-Scottish Premiership forward Noel Whelan, speaking exclusively to Football Insider about the Hoops goalkeeper’s recent performances.”

Now, if Whelan had actually said that it would be bad enough, because who are his sources in the Celtic dressing room which allow him to make such a sweeping, and damaging, statement?

What does Whelan know that nobody else does?

The answer you would surmise to be “very little” as the idea that someone in Celtic’s dressing room would have spoken to this guy on such a matter is ridiculous.

Let me repeat; his name is on the article, so why is it written as if it was penned by someone else?

The specific quote from Whelan in the piece makes it clear that he said no such thing, but with his name on the piece that ought not to save him.

If my name was going on an article I’d make damned sure that it reflected what I actually said and thought, and for Whelan to allow himself to be misrepresented in this way damns him as much as it does the individual who wrote the piece … unless Whelan was happy to have such a misleading, and inflammatory, headline slapped onto it for the sake of the hits.

One of those things would merely make him a mug.

The other makes him a charlatan.

Neither is good for the website, a purveyor of tittle-tattle and nonsense which somehow manages to still have an audience in spite of the sheer ignorance it produces.

Whelan’s piece is a classic example of this. This is what he actually said.

“(Barkas) positioning for most of the goals, he was so out of place. He left the goal wide open. That is something they need to correct very, very quickly. That dressing room needs someone they can trust at the back, and I don’t trust him from the goals he’s been giving away.”

Note the stark difference between what Whelan actually said and what that headline suggests that he said.

He has no confidence in Barkas. He doesn’t trust the Greek.

Not “the Celtic dressing room doesn’t trust the Celtic goalkeeper.”

That’s not a case of a simple error in reporting, it’s a wholescale fabrication, a blatant misrepresentation, an untruth.

It is a lie.

It is an attack on our club, and we must not ignore that.

Barkas is under siege. His every mistake is being analysed.

Barkas deserves better than this garbage.

One article on him – one – has actually tried to look at his work in a balanced and fair minded manner, the one published tonight by Celtic By Numbers.

If you want to read a proper analysis, read a proper writer and a proper analysit, like Alan Morrison.

Trash like Football Insider produced tonight (like it always produces) doesn’t qualify.

Celtic By Numbers piece on Barkas can be read here.

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