The Desperate Record Fails In Last Gasp Effort To Link Celtic Boss With Leeds Job.

There is something vaguely pitiful about The Last Gasp.

The last effort, the last try, the last attempt. It usually comes when you’re beaten already, in body and mind and spirt and just want to go home to your bed. If it occasionally succeeds that’s because of the law of averages, and because if you throw enough at any problem your odds of solving it nudge up a little … but usually not by enough to justify the weight of the effort that it takes.

This is why part of me wants to applaud the Daily Record for their attempt to squeeze one last drop of piss out of their awful series of stories about Ange going to Leeds, stories which have nothing to them but hot air, and the sort that fills a room after everyone’s had a curry. Those stories have been utterly destroyed in the last week.

So I like the brass neck of it. Even if it’s appalling, even if it reeks, and it is both appalling and reeking. Even the headline is shriekingly awful in a way that makes your teeth itch.

“Ange Postecoglou learns Leeds next manager timeline as Celtic boss’ betting odds see major hike.”

As if the big guy is even interested in what Leeds time-line for appointing their new manager will be. As if Ange Postecoglou – facing a cup final in just over a week – could possibly care less. Yet that headline makes it sound like he’s sitting by the phone, like a love-struck teenager, waiting for it to ring. That headline is just so, so bad.

“It looks increasingly unlikely Postecoglou will be taking the Leeds job as the Elland Road side take their time and consider their options,” reads the sub headline.

What? He’s not taking the Leeds job? Well god-damn, who would have thought that?

Oh wait, all of us did. And we all knew that before this big breaking story which Robbie Copeland turned out last night, which actually amounted to nothing more than a rehashing of the bookies latest odds, along with the news that Leeds are going to “take their time” with the appointment, and let their assistant take the next couple of games.

Leeds, actually, have no choice but to “take their time with the appointment” as every manager that they have approached so far – five that we know of, five – have all turned them down.

It’s like being the wildly optimistic kid at the school dance who asks lassie after lassie for a snog, not realising that even those who might have been interested won’t be by the time you get to them, number 20 on the list of possibles.

Leeds have really botched this.

Ange was never going to be interested in this job, but any remote possibility that he might be would have gone by the boards days ago, when Leeds decided they preferred to ask everyone else in football first. It doesn’t matter who they hire now, that person knows they were not first choice, second choice, third choice, fourth choice or even fifth choice.

The Daily Record would have you believe that Ange still occupies a corner of their minds.

I think it’s perfectly obvious that Leeds are suffering from the very English egotism I’m never done writing about. They would consider a manager in the Scottish league only at the very last knockings.

They would literally scour the rest of the planet first.

Ange won’t care either way. As he’s made perfectly clear he was not exactly sitting waiting for their call. Whatever The Record might write, or want you to believe, he’s not watching the odds checker with envy or resentment.

He literally could not care less.