Football Scotland Simply Had To Get An Ibrox Player Amongst Celtic’s POTY Contenders.

Marik Tillman, player of the year.

This is Football Scotland opening up the most preposterous debate of the period which ushers in the back end of the title campaign.

You knew there would be someone from Ibrox in there; I thought it might be their penalty king, continuing one of the most astonishing scoring records of any right back in Europe, which isn’t hard when your club gets so many penalty kicks and you are the guy who takes them.

But no, it’s Tillman, the £6 million man.

What a joke. He’s played a handful of good games, mostly since The Mooch came in, and these people want him on the player of the year list?

Why not their favourite, Kent, the most over-rated player in Scotland?

Wouldn’t that be interesting? But no, they wouldn’t want to boost the profile of a footballer they so plainly love and who might have options in the summer, who might actually have them right now.

Lawrence Shankland is in there, which I guess is fair enough.

He’s had a good campaign. Doubtless, the very fact that he does not play at Celtic Park will drive people to vote for him, or propose him as the figure who might challenge our boys for the award.

The three Celtic players are Hatate, Kyogo and Carter Vickers. But what about McGregor? What about Mooy? What about Daizen Maeda, who is as good as any player in the nation right now and has had a storming campaign?

The article bangs on about Tillman’s “seven league goals and four assists and hilariously suggests that the mantra around him is “Give him the ball and he’ll score.” Yeah, especially when the other side is supposed to have the ball back. Give him the ball and he’ll dive is another one that could be levelled at him, but the writer appears not to fancy that.

Liel Abada has nine goals and three assists. Jota has seven goals and eight assists. I spoke about Maeda; he has six goals and five assists. Where are they in the contention? It is pathetic the extremes they go to in order to give Ibrox a little light.

There are at least three players outside Ibrox who have a better claim that Tillman and who aren’t even mentioned.

There’s Kevin van Veen at Motherwell, with eleven goals and an assist. There’s Duk at Aberdeen with ten goals and two assists. And of course, at the same club there is Miovski, who is the third top scorer in the country behind Kyogo and Shankland, with 14.

But Tillman plays at Ibrox and as he’s the only possible candidate who they can claim has a shred of credibility on the shortlist, there he is. They nearly always put an Ibrox player on the shortlist, no matter how dire they are over there and this year was never going to be an exception.

Who actually is playing well in the country doesn’t seem to matter.