Kris Boyd Further Undermines The Ibrox Boss, But This Time He’s Got It Right.

You know that old saying that even a broken clock is right twice a day? Well I guess we’ve reached that moment, folks, because based on what he’s been saying about the Ibrox boss he is right on the money. Especially when it comes to signings.

One of the guys Celtic will face tomorrow night is Maryan Shved. I was excited about this guy when he signed for us, but less so as time went on. I remember a mate of mine doing a match report for a game in which he’d played half an hour giving him a 2 rating; I asked him if that could be wholly justified and he went into a rant about Shved being lazy.

I re-watched the footage. I couldn’t have agreed more.

Shved arrived at Celtic full of promise. But he also arrived unwanted, and this I believe is the crux of why he failed and why other players who were brought to our club failed. Some of these guys were simply not guys who the manager had identified and targeted.

Someone at Celtic Park thought he knew better than the man in the dugout. The problem with that is that the individual responsible was not a football professional but some bean-counter who had, perhaps, convinced himself that he knew the game.

Managers aren’t impressed by that. Rodgers was in charge when we signed Shved and immediately agreed to leave with his parent club and issued a withering response to our completing the deal. He was gone a few months later. Lennon wasn’t terribly impressed by the deal either, as was evidenced in how seldom Shved even appeared on the bench.

Managers do not want to have players foisted on them, and especially when they have ideas of their own and targets they’ve identified. It never ends well.

And that’s why Boyd is saying is going on at Ibrox, and when you look at their signings then that makes a weird kind of sense. There are clearly players being brought to that club who Van Bronckhorst did not sign off on, and he is showing his disdain the way so many managers throughout the game betray their anger over that; he’s not playing them.

They spent a lot of money on Davies and Yilmaz, and these guys have been left out of crucial games. He doesn’t seem keen on Matondo. The right back they brought from Poland last year played a handful of matches and then was shuttled out the door. You only have to look at last January and the two “marquee” signings, none of whom he really fancied.

This guy doesn’t have faith in those above him, and he isn’t willing to accept what he’s given. The implication in his “we can’t compete” statement the other day is obvious; the board isn’t giving him the tools to do so, although he’s professed to be happy with the squad.

Which is why, presumably, he plays the same players every week.

Boyd is right to point out that Wilson is imposing players on Van Bronckhorst; that’s been obvious since January and the manager himself has hinted at it in his team selections. Boyd has stumbled across something for once, and it is amusing to see him focussing his ire on Ibrox instead of sniping at us. His pain at having to do it is obvious.

And there is a whole lot more of that pain to come for him, and them, of course.