McAvennie’s Crazed Rant Against Celtic’s Coaching Team Was Appalling.

Late last week, Frank McAvennie finally went full Hidden Hills on us as he lost the plot completely in an attack on the Celtic coaching team which was so over the top, un-necessary and unspooled from reason that even I, who rates him as our Kris Boyd, was amazed by it.

Criticising the group photo in what can only be described as a crazed rant, he suggested that it was a move forced on Ange by the club to reward people who have “done nothing.”

Those assertions are both utterly offensive and embarrassingly wrong.

All of us have criticised the Celtic coaching staff, but let’s not kid ourselves on here that Ange is a one-man band doing it all on his own.

Even if all these guys are doing is following his lead, even if they’ve contributed not one original thought to the process, they are executing his instructions well and making this a better team and this is blindingly obvious to all.

McAvennie wants to endlessly litigate ancient arguments, many of which are based on propositions which have been thoroughly debunked. One of those was to offer up the same hackneyed suggestion that Ange should have “been allowed to bring his own people.”

As has been pointed out over and over again, Ange wasn’t prevented from bringing his own coaches to the club, he chose not to because he never has. He prefers to work with the people who are in place, to enable as complete an understanding of the job he’s in as he can get. If additions are to be made, they will come much later.

McAvennie’s assertion that Ange should have selfishly excluded everyone else from their place of glory in collecting what was, in point of fact, an award with only his name on it is about as complete and fundamental a misunderstanding of the man as you could ever get. The gaffer is simply not that sort of man and it’s what makes him such an effective leader.

He understands that football is a team game; it sounds ridiculous to state that as if it’s a revolutionary concept, but it never ceases to amaze me how many people in the sport and on its periphery don’t seem to understand that, amongst them people like Rodgers who think that they are the sun around which the rest of the universe revolves.

Our manager is not one of those people.

He understands the psychology of football better than that, and indeed the psychology necessary for any collective endeavour.

It takes a strong personality to share the limelight; any arrogant fool can strut and preen and make himself the centre of attention. It takes a real inner confidence not to need to.

McAvennie has clearly never gotten over his need to be the central character in his own play.

That man is desperate for any affirmation he can get.

But increasingly, all he does is demonstrate why he’s unworthy of anything but scorn.

He could do himself a big favour by shutting up for a while.