Celtic’s Manager Does Not Need Hugh Keevins For Advice On Players.

Once again I am grateful to my mate Paddy Sinat, of Vital Celtic, for going once again where I steadfastly refuse to go, dipping into Radio Clyde to bring us the pearls of wisdom from that show and those on it. Our favourite, of course, being Hugh Keevins.

Tonight he was pontificating on the squad, and giving his approval – ha! What a cheek he has! – to the manager’s plans to sign a central defender. And why? Because he personally is not convinced by either Starfelt or Jenz and thinks Ange’s body language suggests that the manager isn’t convinced that Stephen Welsh has anything to offer.

Aside from Starfelt being a convenient whipping boy and Jenz having more than Keevins thinks because he so often watches Celtic through a blue tint, his ability to tell what our manager is thinking always amazes me. It would amaze me more if he actually did know what the Celtic manager is thinking from time to time.

Alas, that skill alludes him along with many other talents he boasts of.

To be honest, it’s Keevins as a talent spotter which continues to astonish me. His ignorance in this area is not simply well known, it is legendry. He was, after all, the author of one of the most famous quotes in the history of Scottish football, directed at another manager he scorned and a signing which he didn’t rate, about whom he knew nothing.

“I don’t know what I find more laughable – the fact that Celtic cannot find £500,000 from their biscuit tin to sign a proven talent like John Spencer, or the fact that they then spent £300,000 on one of Dr Jo’s old pals, the unknown Lubomir Moravcik,” he famously wrote at the time, and I don’t which part of that is statement is worse, even now.

But I do know this; the guy who wrote that, amidst swirling ignorance, is not someone from whom Ange Postecoglou needs to get advice on signings. I am grateful as ever to Paddy for going off and listening to this stuff. I couldn’t bring myself to.