Ange Deserved To Be Manager Of The Year Whether Celtic Won The Title Or Not

One of the things the wailing bitches down in Sevco social media are pumping out today is the idea that the Ange won the manager of the year award before he had won the league.

Ergo, the whole thing is daft and the awards should be scrapped.

Amazingly, they also believe that Van Bronckhorst should have been at least a candidate because of what he still has a chance of winning.

Some Orwellian doublethink right there.

Oh dear God, the things these Peepul believe …

Here’s what hasn’t been said but should be; Ange deserved to be manager of the year.

He would have earned it even if this team somehow failed to get over the line and win the title.

The job that man has done has been beyond belief … look at their forums for the proof.

None of them can believe it for starters.

They are stunned that this has happened.

See, we were supposed to lay down and die after last season, and that’s point one.

We were supposed to be so psychologically shattered from failing to win ten in a row that we simply ceased to function as a football club. Dave King predicted it after all. He said those words, so they must be true, eah?

The logic of the Sevconut summed up perfectly.

The reason we didn’t collapse was the manager.

He brought the club together after the disastrous Howe debacle and made sure that everyone looked forward instead of back. He picked the players, he gelled the team, he inspired confidence again.

The second thing is that the rebuild job was unprecedented.

No Celtic boss in my lifetime has ever had to do a bigger job of getting together a new squad having lost crucial footballers including the club’s influential captain. Ange went about it with aplomb and did brilliantly.

The club is in a better place for letting him get on with that job without interference.

The third thing is our European run.

No-one ever talks about it so I will. We beat two good sides even to qualify for the Groups and then we got nine points. It wasn’t enough to qualify for the next round, but it was a great achievement for a manager making his first foray on that stage.

The Bodo result in the Conference League was disappointing but by then we had bigger fish to fry.

That we were even competitive this season is more than any of Ange’s critics in the media expected.

A lot of our own fans had put this one down to a “transitional season” and would have accepted simply being in the running.

Had someone told the hacks at the start that Ange would actually cut last season’s gap to something where we were in the race until the final day they would have proclaimed that a near-impossible task.

I cannot believe that they are lying to themselves that Ange only did “what was expected” here.

They didn’t expect any of this.

A first time manager from the other side of the world, masterminding a massive squad rebuild with the media pressuring him and our own fans very on edge after the summer we had … a new man operating under that spotlight and still being able to produce a challenge, and a cup win and a European run?

Even without the title that’s stunning.

And for unifying this club, completing that rebuild, putting that run of form together and doing it all whilst sceptics and critics sneered and second guessed him every step of the way, and for working under the pressure of being behind for most of the season only to get us six points clear by the time the award ceremony took place … yeah, that man deserved it alright.