Matthew Lindsay’s Anti-Celtic Dirge Is A Shameful Insult To Our Manager And Players.

The story of the day, beyond a shadow of a doubt, is the desperate dirge from Matthew Lindsay in The Herald and the Evening Times this morning, wherein he asserts that the club from Ibrox would be top of the league right now if the country had VAR.

This claim is absurd, idiotic and offensive.

It reeks of bitterness and bias. It pays no heed to Celtic’s exceptional form.

It is an abysmal regurgitation of one of the premier Ibrox conspiracy theories of this campaign, and it strips any credit from our club and in particular the manager and the players who are, without a doubt, the reason we are where we are.

Lindsay’s article stinks to high heaven not because the central thesis is as nutty as the proverbial fruitcake – though it certainly is – but because it ignores our spectacular run of form.

It ignores the ease with which we dispatched their club at home and the casual way we went to Ibrox and won three points in spite of being a goal down early on.

It ignores the vast array of talent at our disposal.

It is predicated on two separate myths; the first being that Ibrox’s collapse in form is why we’re top and taps into the idea that their “European form” proves they would be in front of us if only they got the decisions here that they’ve gotten in that forum.

Neither of those claims stands up.

For starters, their “European form” is illusory as I’ve said time and time again.

Six wins in sixteen games, which is the same number of matches we won in the same competition.

Their European form and their domestic form show a pattern of inconsistency which is not the mark of a title winning team; take a peek at our own form for what that looks like.

The idea that VAR at home would give them the same number of decisions as they’ve had in European games elevates hypothesising to a towering extreme. The games he highlights whose results would have been “different” had VAR been available … is he peering into a crystal ball to come up with that or what?

As many decisions would have gone against Ibrox this season as would have fallen for them.

VAR will not simply award them every decision that they want, which appears to be Lindsay’s delusional belief.

I have joked about this; they want VAR only until it gives a decision that they don’t like, and then the bitching and wailing will start anew.

The only people seriously pushing these two lines of lunacy are those who wish to deny the evidence of the league table.

It is ridiculous that a writer at a national title has put forth such complete tripe.

The claim has no foundation whatsoever and although its intent is to provide an alternative theory for why Celtic are top all it does is make the writer himself look like a fool too poisoned by own his own bias to see straight.

It is the worst piece of “journalism” this year, and that is saying something.