Nobody At Celtic Will Be Surprised At The Pro-Ibrox Media’s Latest Pitiful Reversal.

The League Cup Final is still several days away, but already the moaning has started, the excuses are being made … and The Mooch’s abysmal strategy of playing the old “half my team is out injured” trick has already collapsed.

In The Daily Record and its sister rag, Football Scotland, the drumbeat had begun yesterday. According to them, the Ibrox side might have taken the field against us with an entire starting eleven out injured.

Oh woe to them, and how unfair that we should benefit from having built a strong squad.

And is it our fault that they have on the books some of the most injury prone players in Britain?

Not at all.

Helander has barely been fit since he signed. Souttar had numerous issues with his fitness before he came to Ibrox, so it’s not a shock that he’s always out. Lawrence seems to me to be made of glass; he can’t take a single hit without something shattering.

Kemar Roofe is another one, a fan hero for some reason but no good to the club whatsoever on the treatment table where he’s spent a lot of his time.

Amazingly, their own absurd story collapsed late last night when the worst kept secret in football was revealed; Tillman will have a chance to “prove his fitness” whilst Lundstram and Roofe are almost certain to get the nod.

I said right from the start, even when he sat there the other day and talked about how they were all doubts that the “injured players” would almost certainly be fit and available.

It’s quite pathetic of them to try one of the most discredited tricks there is … even more so that they have revealed their hand so early.

Anyway, The Mooch did a poor job of trying to cover it when he all but admitted that he wanted them on the pitch even if in order to get them there they have to be patched up and injected with everything in the medical arsenal.

His comments about people “kidding themselves” that sides take to the field with everyone fully fit are shocking and shows his total disregard for the wellbeing of his players.

He doesn’t care what happens to them later in life, his own career as a player was a bust.

What have I been saying about that?

Watch this space, that will come back to haunt him.

This Ibrox XI who were reputedly out injured was, itself, hilariously bad; it starts with their third choice keeper.

Which is so ridiculous that most people didn’t even bother continuing with the piece when they read that.

At least six of the players in it stood some chance of making the game and we know now that three of them at least are going to … which makes the whole exercise seem pretty ridiculous and leaves whoever wrote that garbage looking like a fool.

Souttar, Helander, Matondo, Davis and Lawrence won’t … but are any of them necessarily game-changers?

I think not.

The whole article reeked of getting your excuses in early, not that any of it would have made a difference to Ange or the players in our team, who probably knew at the moment we all did what was really going on here.

Yet marvel at how bad The Mooch and his backroom team are that they can’t even get this stuff right.

And marvel at the media which was all too happy to help them along the way until last night someone at Ibrox briefed them that the joke had been on them all the time, and that the Celtic sites had called it right again.