No, Martin O’Neill Certainly Did Not “Urge” The Mooch To Beat Celtic On Sunday.

You see things in our media at times and you wonder just what the Hell is going on in the world.

I’ll tell you what I never believed was going on, although the media has suggested that it might be; I never believed that Martin O’Neill said that a cup win for Ibrox at the weekend would break Celtic’s lock on the game here, and I certainly did not believe that he “urged” The Mooch to beat us. Yet headlines suggest that he did both.

“Rangers boss Michael Beale can break ‘Celtic’s control of Scotland’ with cup win says Martin O’Neill” was the headline in Planet Sport, whatever the Hell that is. Except that he actually didn’t say that at all. He said that in order to set out to overtake Celtic they have to win something.

“Martin O’Neill urges Rangers boss Michael Beale to ignore Chris Sutton row and beat Celtic to trophy” is the headline that shrieks at you from Football Scotland, and if anyone thinks for one second that O’Neill actually did say that they need a lie down.

Another headline today suggests that Ronny Deila will be cheering the Ibrox club on because his buddy Raskin – who he relegated to Standard Liege’s reserve team – will be playing for them at Hampden, another piece of out-there lunacy which I was amazed to read.

Things always get crazy in a cup final week, and I understand that completely. But this crazy? And this is just Monday and we still have five days of it to go. Two ex-Celtic managers, both urging our rivals to victory? That’s mental even by our press’s standards.

Do you ever get the feeling that it’s going to be a long, long week folks?