Martindale’s Negative Nonsense Against Celtic Gets The Beating That It Deserved.

The media’s narrative is so, so, so tiresome.

Certain individuals in it will praise anyone who is about to face Celtic, no matter who they are.

Reading Keevins this morning, drooling over Martindale, was appalling.

A guy like this shouldn’t be allowed near our game yet he was being lauded.

But even if you ignore his list of offences, which Keevins was actually joking about – as if drug dealing and the harm it brings to our communities was funny – there’s no real reason to praise his turgid, one-note brand of football either. It is unimaginably awful.

The whole purpose behind his tactics today was to play spoiler football.

Spoiling, that is, for anyone who has to watch it on a regular basis. I would rather gouge my own eyes out.

He is not some tactical genius; it does not take a tactical genius to keep every man behind the ball and hope for a lucky break. Managers have been doing that as long as football has existed. There is no talent involved in it at all.

Occasionally it has worked against us. But not lately.

We’re just too damned good, and when we scored the early goal the plan fell apart because, really, that’s all there is to the plan.

Try not to concede. Once you do then it’s already over.

Plan B then comes into play, which is simply “don’t get beaten by too many.”

Why does this get praise?

Looking back over the course of a season, people will say that these are the games which win titles, and in a sense they are correct.

Horrible plastic pitches against managers whose team try to kick you off the ball and sit deep and make no effort to attack, even though they are playing at home. I know a lot of hacks – Keevins for one – thought we would struggle today.

I never did for one second. I thought we would win comfortably because we’ve cracked the code now about these grounds and these games. Some thought this was our cursed ground; that’s over.

Individual performances wise, I think Mooy was great again, I thought Kyogo looked sharp. Jota did too when he came on, and of course he scored again. But the back line and midfield were brilliant, and Taylor got forward and scored an excellent goal. Giakoumakis should have scored but missed the penalty; I’ll talk more about the penalty kick later.

Overall, that was the sort of win you want at a ground like that on a day like this.

Good football, an early goal, the steadying of the nerves and the shredding of the opposition game plan, such as it is.

This team is sauntering towards the title, and no amount of media bollocks is going to change that. We have gone through a bumpy spell and come out of it with a four point lead and the heads are all up and the feel-good factor is back.

As for Martindale, he might well go in front of the media today and do the “I told you Celtic were the benchmark” crap as he did before the game. But he really did think he would get something today, and so don’t be surprised if instead of giving us credit – as he did before the match – he does a bit of moaning about his own team and bad luck.

To the hacks who salivated over the prospect of us dropping something, I can only say GIRFUY. More fool you for believing something so dumb. For all Martindale’s positive headlines his team is eighth today.

Eighth. In the bottom half.

Which is where his dire, negative, public park football style belongs.

I would not watch that regularly if I was being paid to.