Beware, Celtic.. Hampden’s Pitch Is Bigger, Softer And We Don’t Have Our Own Ball-Boys.

I wrote about Gordon Strachan earlier, and it seems mad to be writing about him again so soon afterwards.

Because in doing it here I’m not entirely convinced that he wasn’t taking the piss with his Tavernier and Lundstram comments, because they crest the summit of intellectual brilliance compared to the “three advantages” he thinks the Ibrox club have going into the weekend.

To be brutal, if he’s not joking about this stuff, if this isn’t him actually attempting to troll us, then he’s certainly trolling the hacks.

The Record is lapping this stuff up although it is basically ludicrous, as it offers their favourite team a crumb of hope … Good God man, is this how much we’ve rattled them that they are reduced to this?

Ibrox’s three so-called advantages are in the headline.

A bigger pitch and one that is softer. Softer than what? Has Strachan got out and measured the softness of the grass at Celtic Park and Ibrox and compared it with that at the National Stadium? What does that even mean?

And a bigger pitch advantages the team with the best natural width. That’s us.

The ball boy point is just absolutely barmy.

We joke about this, but in fact it is exactly that. We perhaps get a second or two more of the ball in play with our own ball-boys but to pretend that this will have any kind of notable effect on a game is laughable.

I get the general points Strachan is making, and I’m not blaming him for the coverage his comments are getting. That he had to pull three things like this out of thin air instead of talking about better players or more talented coaches is, in itself, telling.

No, as per usual it is the media clutching at any straws that it can find … and the coverage of this in The Record is particularly stupid and over the top. If they think any of these things is going to deprive us of the win … well they are stupider than we already think they are.