If Barry Ferguson Thinks Celtic Were “Rattled” On Saturday He Needs A Lie Down.

You have to laugh, don’t you?

We’ve all chatted to one another, I’m sure, about the nature of Ibrox’s melt-down since the weekend. I’ve got a piece to post later on the dark side of it, but for the moment let’s focus our attention on the funny. And it is funny. It is funny to listen to some of those in the media whose job seems to be defending that club from all comers.

It’s funny to read how completely, and utterly, deluded they actually are.

Barry Ferguson is a case in point. I thought that his article before the match was deranged. His comments on the game itself show that he’s lost the plot completely. He thinks that we were “rattled” by their team. I must have missed that.

How can these people have convinced themselves that but for a referee’s decision that they would have beaten us? Do they know how long it is since we lost at home? Do they ever watch this team? Do they know, or do they just not think it important, that we were very obviously capable of stepping up a gear or even two?

“The frustrating thing is that Celtic were there for the taking on Saturday,” he wrote. If he actually believes that then there’s a spot in the Hidden Hills asylum for him, a room with his name on the door and padded walls inside it.

“Honestly, the game plan worked. It was exactly how I wanted to see (Ibrox) set about their rivals, matching their energy levels and getting in a few faces,” he said.

How astonishing. It’s the first time I’ve ever read somebody whose team have just been beaten claim that everything went according to plan. Except for the result, presumably?

But it wasn’t just the result.

Let me say this again; we dominated possession, passes attempted, passes made, shots at goal, shots on target and we had the ball in the net four times. Now they had the ball in the net three times … but all of them involved a set play of some kind, and if you’re relying on that to get something from the match you’re not exactly playing brilliantly.

He knows this as well, because he admits it in the article!

“It’ll frustrate (Beale that his team) only really looked dangerous at set pieces because, with players like that, they should have created much more from open play.”

But they didn’t Barry, because they aren’t good enough to.

So where was this blinding success of theirs on the day?

They harried and harassed us and forced us to make mistakes. That’s his claim. But let me say it one last time; we put the ball in the net four times, so the plan wasn’t that great, or that successful was it?

And what about at the other end? Don’t our front players get credit for opening that defence of theirs up? No, because whilst he’s happy to praise a midfield which allowed us ample room to get the ball forward, he doesn’t give any credit to our forwards who themselves forced the opposition into errors, but in far more important positions.

Honest to God, the self-pitying whining out of that club is pathetic.

You get the feeling that if we beat this lot ten times in a row that they would still refuse to acknowledge our supremacy and the really incredible part of it is that none of this does them the least bit of good … failing to accept what’s in front of your eyes stops you learning any lessons from it.

And so they set themselves up for the next let-down, the next fall from a great height, the next humiliation, the next day of Celtic glory.

Coming soon, at Hampden.