The “McCoist Calls Celtic Traitors” Headlines Are Trying To Generate A Phony Controversy.

For the second week in a row I find myself in the curious position of defending Ally McCoist.

This week it’s about The Daily Record’s screeching headline that he is “furious” and has called Celtic “traitors” and said we’re trying to wreck the co-efficient after the “John Kennedy dossier” story.

Which, in itself, was a work of fiction as I wrote earlier in the week.

McCoist said everything the newspaper claims he did, but talk about taking a man’s words out of context and framing them in a wholly unpleasant manner.

The show on which he said this is the one he does with Sutton, and it was clear that he was joking and engaging in banter … that The Record has gotten a cheap headline and stirred the soup is lamentable.

The Record are the ones who started this in the first place, of course, with their “dossier” story, so it’s no wonder they want to continue to generate heat from it.

But there’s really nothing whatsoever to see here, it’s stoking anger and hate where none exists.

For openers, there was no “dossier.” Andreas Hinkel called Kennedy up and got a few pointers. That was it. Nothing he couldn’t have learned watching a video of the Celtic Park game.

It was the papers that made a tired effort to turn that into more than it was.

Now they are taking McCoist’s words completely out of context and insinuating that he meant them to be taken seriously.

I don’t like the guy, I’ve said this many times before, but I know the difference between somebody on a paranoid rant and someone taking the piss and most of us are smart enough that it’s clear which is which.

All The Record is doing here is trying to provoke a controversy where there isn’t one. This was two guys laughing and joking with each other, exaggerating a story which the Record itself had already massively blew up into something it wasn’t.

This is why the media has such a bad name here, with nonsense like this.