Tom English’s “Diminished Force” Talk Will Haunt Him When Celtic Hit Form Again.

Tom English thinks Celtic look like “a diminished force” without McGregor and Kyogo.

In a week where our hacks have fallen over themselves in a contest to sound the stupidest, he has to be in the running for a remark like that. He points to three matches – the defeat against St Mirren and the wins over Motherwell and St Johnstone – to highlight his point. Apparently he doesn’t know, or doesn’t care, that McGregor and Kyogo played in two of them.

Honestly, is there some new media award in Scottish sport for who can talk the most gibberish? Because that would at least explain the colossal outbreak of inanity which has swept through their ranks in the past few weeks.

Or is it just that the idea that Celtic might not be indestructible has got them all over excited?

It is mad for them to be writing us off in the way they are right now, particularly as we’ve had sticky spells before under a variety of managers, and in common with every other team on the planet. Do these people know how daft they are going to sound in a few weeks when Celtic is rolling at full throttle again and putting teams to the sword with ease?

“They were hanging on,” he said of Saturday’s game, “and looked a bit wasteful. They’ve been wasteful recently, not taking the chances.”

What a good job that earlier in the season we were putting those chances away. Or we might not have a two-point lead in the league and a goal difference column that still puts us no few than eight in front of the team at Ibrox.

Prior to the St Mirren game, we were swatting teams aside.

The beauty of a last minute winner when the odds look stacked against you is that it gives a team a renewed sense of belief. That can only help us get back onto the right track.

As I’ve been saying if this team wasn’t creating chances I would be more concerned. If the players weren’t getting in behind the defences we come up against I would be concerned.

Players will miss chances from time to time; scoring goals is what restores confidence and sets that right, and this team is going to give another side a real going over soon enough.

And then I hope English and others have the good grace to accept that they were wrong, and to put this down to a blip. Anything else will just be dishonest.