Two Good Games Is All It Took For Celtic’s Midfielder To Be Linked With Moves Again.

When Matt O’Riley was not playing particularly well there was near total radio silence on his future. If you want a shining example of how certain people have made their reputations on following trends instead of with hard information, look at the sudden rash of stories about our player which have popped up in the last 24 hours.

Where was this alleged interest a fortnight or so ago? There was nothing anywhere to suggest that there was serious interest in O’Riley. All it took was a couple of good matches and there is a torrent of nonsense.

This is one of the reasons I don’t believe a word of it.

The tactics of the rumour mongers are showing here in these stories. Tag any player in the Celtic team who is on form and you can bet that there are all sorts of transfer rumours popping up.

The second someone goes off the boil for a while silence falls.

Is that credible? Scouts know when a player is quality, even if he’s having a tricky spell. There is no doubt in my mind that O’Riley is a fine player and is drawing attention; it’s the coincidence of these stories appearing just after he scores a couple again.

There are people out there who make a living putting this stuff into the public domain, and it doesn’t matter how tenuous the reports are or how soft the information is. It’s better to shut it all out, as the team does, as the manager does.

It’s not even the internet rumours that bother me; they are par for the course, you expect them. But when a so-called mainstream title writes the kind of guff I’ve be talking about in the next piece it all gets a bit tiresome. Matt O’Riley doesn’t need this nonsense. The guy is just getting back to his best and all this crap does is put unnecessary pressure on him.

There are people with worse motives than those just trying to make a living.

The “writers” at Football Scotland are amongst them.