The Celtic Boss Will Have An Eye On Ibrox Tonight, But Only Out Of Morbid Curiosity.

Whatever Ange is having for his dinner tonight, he will keep one eye on the game taking place at Ibrox. It’s live on Sky, so why not? Sometimes, even if your team isn’t involved, there’s a game on which you are simply compelled to pay attention to.

I watch games involving managers who are on the brink of the sack. I admit it. It’s a horrible thing to admit but I do. I feel a savage sense of … I don’t know what to call it, when their teams lose goals, and I always hope for a cut-to the dugout so I can see whatever look is on their face. Determination? Anger? Resigned acceptance? Maybe even relief.

I watch teams in crisis. Not consciously because I want to watch it grow to engulf them, but that has to be there at the back of my motivation somewhere because I’ve done it so often. Relegation battles are great, but I watch them – I think – as much to see if a floundering team can manage to save itself. I am usually pretty pleased when one does.

So at least part of my love of watching games is born out of morbid curiosity, and that’s what I imagine Ange will feel a bit like tonight. Morbidly curious.

The Mooch, of course, is a Dead Manager Walking, the end already contained in the beginning as it so often is. It’s like that thing I read once and have written about a couple of times; Tom Clancy’s whole chapter description of a nuclear bomb going off, as seen from inside the bomb-case over the course of three nanoseconds. In those “three shakes” is the unleashing of all the destruction that follows … all that actually happens does so in that fraction of time.

Everything else is the consequence of that reaction.

So what anyone who tunes in tonight will be watching is the slow unravelling of a manager and his already shredded reputation. When no-one believes you are honest, or genuine, or have the least compassion for other managers or loyalty to your employer you need to be good, you need to be really damned good as your job.

And if it turns out he’s not … well, that’s career ending. He will be lucky to get anything down south for a while, except back at the assistant level.

The vultures aren’t circling, and tomorrow night won’t bring them no matter what happens. And I do except that the new manager bounce will get his team through the game, that and whatever tactical shift he makes which Hibs haven’t seen and can’t plan for.

But morbid curiosity; that’s the reason for tuning in. The Mooch on the touchline for the first time, thinking he’s arrived where he wants to be without realising that he’s at the terminal (they call it that for a reason) waiting on The Last Train.