Keevins Latest Effort Shows How Puny The Media’s Attacks On Celtic Have Become.

If you want a pre-cup final laugh today, read Hugh Keevins, predicting that the Celtic fans will turn aggressively on Ange Postecoglou if we lose. I struggled for a few minutes to come up with an analogy for it; here’s what I have settled for.

It’s akin to watching a pub blowhard and bully, who a fed-up patron has just annihilated in the car-park, struggling to get to his feet; not to dish out punishment but to put on one last hard-man show for those stood watching. Nothing but what’s left of his self-respect labouring to get up off the gravel. Clawing at the pebbles, then falling face first.

The media used to have clout. They were The Big I Am, able to steer the direction of Scottish football any which way they liked. Now this is what they are; eating dirt behind a dingy boozer, feebly trying to recover their tattered reputations.

They might as well chuck it now.

If Keevins believes there will be a significant backlash against this manager for losing a single game, whatever that game might be, then that only shows how complete his disconnect from our supporters is.

If he thinks he can push fan opinion in that direction he’s stupider than I think he is, and I already think there are more intelligent things under rocks.

Today will be our day. I firmly believe it. I think even a wounded version of this Celtic side will be too strong for Hibs, and I wholly expect to watch Ange and his players parade that trophy around Hampden.

Keevins’ piece is pathetic in that it is gutless apart from anything else.

He says the injuries have reduced our options; I guess he wants a Press Award for that insight. Yet he doesn’t think our fans will make allowances for those injuries and that we’ll simply blame Ange himself should we not have enough about us.

Amazingly, Keevins doesn’t pick a winner. He gives us “no more and no less” than a 50-50 chance. Pathetic. I thought he was paid for his opinion? This is him writing an entire column based on not having one.

No wonder he fills so much of it with nonsense about having once visited Japan and getting lost on the subway. He should have stayed lost, and his readers – however many dozens of them that is – would be spared this godawful output.

It’s cup final day, and this is what he turned in; a warning to our manager and some inane babble about Japan and something about our fans being seismologists, the meaning of which utterly escapes me although I’ve read the piece a couple of times.

This new, vibrant, attack-minded Celtic is winning hearts and minds everywhere, just not in the newsrooms of The Daily Record and Sunday Mail, where let’s be honest, most of the hearts belong to Ibrox and the minds don’t come up to orang-utan level anyway.

I never expected to check the newswires this morning and read about how great it was for Scottish football that two of the best attacking teams in the country are about to contest a final, and what a breath of fresh air our manager has been since he took over … no, Keevins’ witless effort was pretty much what I did expect.

What surprised me was how feeble it is.

Ange is building something at Celtic. The work is not yet complete.

I think he’s already achieved an awful lot in a short time.

A cup final appearance this early is beyond my expectations, and that we’re going into the game as overwhelming favourites is a measure of what that man has been able to do. This day belongs to us, this hack’s efforts notwithstanding.