Remember last week when I said that Barry Ferguson, for all we slag him, isn’t even the stupidest member of the Ferguson family? That this accolade would forever belong to his brother Derek? Well today Bazza has gone out of his way to take back the crown.
Later on I’m going to talk about Mark Wilson and his player of the year shortlist. That’s a story I’ve been meaning to cover for a couple of days. But Barry Ferguson has his own short-list and it’s just as daft. He thinks that there are four contenders.
Which is why he’s named five players. Two of whom play for us.
Oh yes. When you cannot even get the basics right you are in trouble.
The four he has selected are Kyogo, Callum McGregor, Van Der Veen at Motherwell, Duk at Aberdeen … and Mark O’Hara at St Mirren. For a total of five.
“My four, I’m going Kyogo and McGregor and I think there could be a couple of surprises from other teams. You’ve got to look at Duk, Kevin van Veen and even the boy [Mark] O’Hara at St Mirren. I’ve seen O’Hara a number of times and he’s gone up a level or two recently – he might be one St Mirren struggle to hold onto. But it’s going to come down to Kyogo or Callum McGregor.”
It’s all too easy to say that you blame the schools. But that’s just terrible, isn’t it? And where is Reo Hatate in that list? Where is the guy everyone thinks will be on the shortlist?
That’s the trouble here though; there are just so many Celtic players who could make it onto that list, and rather than acknowledge that these guys are going to nominate every non-Celtic player that they can think of so as not just to fill it up with ours.
Peter Grant, doing a very passable Mark Wilson impersonation, albeit without nominating anyone from Ibrox, has listed Kyogo, Hatate, McGregor, Duk, Nisbet and O’Hara. Which is six names, although at no point is he claiming to be picking four.
At least – in theory anyway – Ange is out in front as manager of the year. Because they cannot now make any case for any other boss in the top flight. Which doesn’t mean they won’t drop a division rather than give him the nod.
Still, you can already see which way the Player of the Year thing is trending … it’s going to come down, as it often does, to Anyone But Celtic. Mark Wilson, who I’ll talk about later, thinks it may even go to Ibrox …
At least his 4 didn’t contain 6 Sevco Players.
James you can write an article like this while getting Van Veen’s name wrong lol.
Mark Wilson trying to cling on to his job at a pro Ibrox radio show before they replace him with Alex Rae or Kenny Miller
I reckon Ferguson meant perm any 2 from the other 3 he mentioned, and give him his due for once he did not attempt to nominate any of the Ibrox contingent.
For me only 4 Celtic players should be getting considered for their contributions and consistency throughout the season. In no particular order they are CCV, Calum, Rio and Kyogo, but as things stand and, as long as he keeps up his brilliant finishing, it has got to be Kyogo.
We have also all got to appreciate his leading off of the terracing celebrations on a weekly basis, he really is a funny wee fkr. He makes me laugh. 🙂
FGS James – he isn’t picking 5 players and claiming it to be 4 – his exact wording was “My four, I’m going Kyogo and McGregor and I think there could be a couple of surprises from other teams.” That’s two named Celtic players and “a couple” of others – a couple is by definition TWO! 2 + 2 = 4. He then names who he thinks are vying for those two other positions which of course could be any number of possibilities – he just happens to mention three. I personally can think of five players outside of Celtic who may be in the running to get nominated including, I hate to admit, one Sevco player!
The reality is that the Celtic players votes will get split as some people will vote for Reo, some for Jota, some for CCV, some for Callum, some for Kyogo, some will even vote for Maeda or Taylor so there’s no way all the nominees will be Celtic players. So there probably will be a surprise or two in the nominees purely as a result of the voting process even though undoubtedly the top four players this year are all Celts.
Barry F is one the biggest hun pr**ks of all time but that doesn’t mean you have to look for a flaw in EVERY single word he says – in this case what he said was perfectly reasonable and surprisingly NOT pro-Rangers as he didn’t even mention say TavPen as a possibility! If John Hartson or Chris Sutton et al others had said (and I bet you they have in the past said something) similar then you wouldn’t be questioning their IQ and writing an article criticising.
The whole process is nothing but a nonsense.
Has any player been able to make any form of impact against ourselves this season?
The answer remains No.
So how can anyone else be worthy of a nomination outside of Celtic players?
Bleary eyed Ferguson needs a good shake or mibbies that’s what he was up to at 3 in the morning counting his 4 beer bottles hoping it’s 5. He probably thinks it’s Kyogo too ’cause he’s kept GG out of the 1st team.
It’s very easy to pick Kyogo and if he gets it well fair play to the man he’s put more away with great service, it has to be said, than he’s missed but then so did GG when he was Celtic’s front man, right Bleary.
It’s Hatate for me, the fuel in the engine room that never misfires. HH
I blame the schools myself.
See how easy that was ?