Alex McLeish Should Keep His Mouth Shut About The Happiness Of The Celtic Squad.

Remember the failed Scotland manager Alex McLeish? I only ask because I had clean forgotten he even existed until today, when he popped up in the headlines. And how did he do that?

Why, by pursuing the easiest and laziest strategy there is; saying something negative about Celtic, of course, a discovery which he is certainly not the first person to make.

He’s got his headlines today by suggesting that Tom Rogic and others who are now playing as part of a squad rotation system won’t like it, because players who do well in one game just expect to be playing in the next one.

That this is an ancient attitude so ridiculous that even The Daily Record hasn’t used it as a line of attack shows how desperate he is.

This Celtic manager has been talking about the benefits of squad rotation since the day he walked in the door, so apart from anything else there is not a single person at our club who would have been surprised, far less outraged, at the man now putting it into practice as he finally has the squad to do so. Rogic gets that.

O’Riley gets that. The strikers get that.

Even Tony Ralston, who has been exceptional this season, signed a new deal knowing that he would be rotated out and Juranovic rotated in on some occasions.

Players not only understand this, but they welcome it as the demands on them have never been higher due to the number of matches that they play.

McLeish should know this – most people in football do – but I suspect he’s simply grabbed a chance to seem relevant.

He’s not though, and especially not to Celtic or the fans.

This reeks of another piss-poor attempt at suggesting that there might be some friction behind the scenes at Lennoxtown, and there is nothing whatsoever to suggest that this is the case, not even a dribbling out of rumours from alleged “in the knows”, and that stuff was ripe all the way through last season.

Celtic is a happy place right now, due in no small part to this manager and the impact he is having on every aspect of life at Parkhead.

It was obvious that certain people would be trying to upset that balance, but although they can snipe from the side-lines and stir the pot a little, in reality that is all they are able to do, this joker included.