In Focussing Only On Celtic Beale Has Set Himself A Trap From Which There Is No Escape.

It was Paul Weller who wrote “the more I see, the more I know. The more I know the less I understand.” I sometimes feel like that watching The Mooch as he stumbles and mumbles and fumbles his way through his Ibrox pressers.

Just the other day, he offered a withering critique of his team, when he told the hacks that the current squad of players has probably “taken (us) as far as they can.” Quite the statement considering they have a massive game against us coming up and I think it’s most definitely the last thing that squad of theirs needed to hear.

He has set his sights on a rebuild. But what’s he planning this for? He has won every game he has managed against every other club; it’s not to be sneezed at, that accomplishment. Where he comes up short is against us, and unfortunately we’re just a bit too good.

But how much is it worth risking the club just to beat Celtic once in a while, if he can even manage to do that? And what good is it beating Celtic every once in a while if they still aren’t good enough to win the title over the course of a long campaign?

Here’s what’s obvious to me, but is clearly not obvious to this joker; if he rebuilds the team and they drop points early in the next campaign, everyone in their support is going to say that this guy has taken them backwards. That his new look squad isn’t even as good as the one he currently has, and that’s going to turn the pressure up right across the club.

He focusses on nothing but Celtic. We are the be all and end all of his job, but it’s not results against Celtic that are going to cost this guy in the end; it’ll be results against everyone else, and all he’s succeeding in doing right now is making sure that when the reversals come that the volume of the criticism is much, much higher than it has to be.

We all know that the form they are on over there cannot be maintained indefinitely. A smart manager would do three things, in his position.

First, they would praise their rivals to the hills and back. They would label them the best team in the country by miles. They would not put our success down to luck. They would not claim that we bought it. A smart management team would acknowledge our superiority, nothing more.

Secondly, and as a corollary to the first, they would give respect to every other team in the league. That sort of comes naturally when you give your rivals credit for winning against them every week. You would paint Celtic’s form as exceptional. Know why? Because then you could say that your own form was also exceptional but that Celtic right now just have a better team.

Thirdly, you would praise the players. You would tell the fans that since you came in they have done everything you asked and you would make the point that they have performed far better than they did for the previous manager.

And in doing so you would also tell the fans how hard it is going to be to rebuild this team when key footballers like Kent, McGregor and Morelos are no longer there.

You would make the rebuild sound as hard as it’s going to be.

He has done none of that. He is a Grade One moron.

Instead he has done the polar opposite of all these things, and so when the first defeat to a team outside Celtic Park comes it really will provoke a crisis and a hard look at this guy … and if his new team takes time to bed in – and we lost three of our first seven games and drew another when Ange was getting his team in place – this guy will have given himself no hiding place at all.

He’s trapped already. Trapped by his own stupidity.

What else was it Weller said in that song? “I’m the changingman, waiting for the bang as I light a bitter fuse.” Amen brother, amen.