Ferguson Thinks Celtic “Got Away With It.” He Refuses To Read The Writing On The Wall.

Football - Scotland v Iceland 2010 World Cup Qualifying European Zone - Group Nine - Hampden Park, Glasgow, Scotland - 1/4/09 Scotland's Barry Ferguson (L) on the substitutes bench Mandatory Credit: Action Images / Lee Smith Livepic

Barry Ferguson will never win a Nobel Prize.

He will never be a featured contestant on Mastermind.

You get the distinct impression when you read him or listen to him that there’s not a lot going on inside his head except sawdust lazily falling from dusty cobwebs.

Nevertheless, he is surely not as stupid as he sounds today when he talks about how we “got away with it” at Ibrox yesterday.

He is not the only one in the media who has slightly lost the plot over what we watched. You would think these people would know better than to get carried away, especially when there’s not a lot to be carried away about.

Let’s go over the fundamentals.

They were the home side. They are chasing us. They needed a victory. They had 50,000 fans behind them.

They were playing against a Celtic team with a debutant at right back and which lost its first choice left back early in the game. A Celtic team which we found out just before kick-off was racked by a mystery illness.

Those are the facts.

During the match they were the beneficiaries of at least one lamentable refereeing decision, and that depends on the officials getting the benefit of the doubt on the penalty the home side got and on another handball call during the game which is barely getting any attention at all.

In spite of all this, our keeper made only a handful of saves. We had 60% of the possession.

Tell me the last time, outside of Europe, that a team went to Ibrox and came away with the bulk of the ball. We didn’t use it as well as we could … but the idea that we were utterly dominated is a complete fantasy which no-one sensible should believe.

But then, this is Barry Ferguson we’re talking about here, a man about as dumb as the proverbial box of rocks and with a blue tinted bias to further weigh down his analysis.

If he was the only one you could shrug it off as one man’s daft opinion strained through all that strata of stupidity. But a lot of the media is singing the same song today and it’s barmy.

We were well off our best.

Yet we took our chances – you can’t do better than two shots on target and two goals from them – and I think deserved at least a point.

They got their second from a contentious penalty kick, so I didn’t feel that we witnessed a particularly effective attacking team. St Mirren’s performance against us was far better.

Clubs are going to get results against us, that’s just the fact of it.

They will not consider themselves potential title winners on the back of it, although I wish that more of them would and act accordingly in the follow-up matches. That’s one thing about the Ibrox club; they take themselves very seriously.

That’s what makes them dangerous.

But it’s also what makes them vulnerable to delusions like the one they are operating under right now, the delusion that something happened yesterday which has flipped the balance of power and given them momentum.

They drew, at home. Their momentum is broken.

They had won four in a row until yesterday, and they’ve now dropped points.

We had won twelve in a row before yesterday, not the four games which The Mooch and his media cheerleaders were raving about.

We are now thirteen unbeaten, after visiting Easter Road, Pittodrie, Livingston and Ibrox in a matter of weeks. We are eighteen wins from twenty matches in this title race and we have a rock solid lead.

So what did we “get away with”?

Even on an afternoon when we’ve not been nearly at our best, with reported illnesses in our team, when the full measure of officialdom was on hand to deliver them decisions and with their side the one desperately in need of a win … it was us who got away with something?

What madness is this?

The usual madness.

Pro-Ibrox moon-howling, the sort that has historically gotten them into bother.

This is why I enjoy them so much.

They cannot see the world as it is, only the one that they want it to be. They prefer to live in a comforting fantasy, never realising that it leaves them shockingly unprepared for the intrusion of reality.

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