Ibrox Is Letting Its Peepul Down Gently On Tillman. No Wonder Celtic Fans Are Laughing.

I’ve worked hard today.

Two lengthy articles – one on Ange and why he could solve all of Scottish football’s problems and the other on Matt Lindsay’s piece on pyro – are already up and online along with a rant about Football Insider and its latest unsubstantiated “exclusive.”

Considering that I’m also suffering from a vomiting bug I think I’m doing okay.

If I were a sensible Ibrox fan I might be vomiting for a different reason than merely having caught something, unless what I had caught was a whiff of what’s emanating out of their club this weekend on the future of Malik Tillman.

All throughout the year, this has been hailed as their blue-chip summer signing.

That was back when The Mooch was still kidding himself, or at least kidding their fans, that he could get by with adding “one or two quality players” to the side.

With the collapse of that particular theory he’s facing a much bigger job.

And that’s been obvious to us all for a while.

We don’t pretend to be Cassandras, but one look at that squad tells you that he was living in La Land.

Two of its best players – and this folds in to the general point – are leaving for free. Their starting goalkeeper is leaving for free. One of the stalwarts of their midfield is leaving for free.

They have offered contracts – which will probably be accepted – to Arfield and Jack.

As a superb E-Tims podcast from not that long ago points out, we know we can beat an Ibrox team with Arfield and Jack in the squad. As long as they’re there we’ve nothing to fear.

The two alleged “top footballers” – Kent and Morelos – have been so underwhelming and ineffectual that Ange would have booted them down Kerrydale Street many months ago.

Look at how he did behave towards our players whose contracts were running down; he played Christie every week because Christie gave him everything. He played Edouard because Edouard was still the best striker we had at Celtic Park.

Until Kyogo was in.

But not Kris Ajer, who never started a minute under the boss … and you can make of that whatever you want.

Ange would not have let those guys last until the first transfer window shut.

He certainly would not have retained them past Christmas, and not only because their decision to run their contracts down dramatically telegraphs their lack of commitment to the cause.

Neither of those two would have gotten in our team. The quality just isn’t there, if it ever was, and a lot of us have long disputed it. The proof of our talent-spotting abilities is clear in the calibre of sides not lining up to take them on frees.

Morelos will huff his way across foreign fields next season.

Kent might well wind up in Turkey; it’s a shame really.

I’d have loved to have seen how long it took a seasoned EPL boss to figure out that he is crap.

Which is sort of to say that all of them have watched him and already know that he is.

The media down there would have subjected him to downright mockery after a while, as he lumbered about trying his little flicks and tricks and more often than not winding up standing there with that look on his face which I always picture when I imagine him pinning clothes to a washing line in the junk-yard trailer park where he buried his victims.

The departures of just those players alone leaves their squad looking threadbare and bereft.

They all had to be replaced, and as the club generated no money for their transfer fees they’d have to be replaced on the cheap.

I’ll come to one of the principal media lies over this in another piece.

But for now let’s concentrate on Tillman.

Yesterday I said that it’s no coincidence that he’s “back in Germany” with an “injury.” Maybe he is, but I know that it suits the club to have him over there.

Let me give you a wee pop culture reference for the sake of some context, okay?

Remember the moment in JFK when Mr X meets Garrison in the park and tells him of what else was going on in Washington at the time the President was killed?

Troops in the air. Cabinet on a trip to distant shores. The DC phone system going out for a solid hour.

All part of the jigsaw.

Phone lines were out to stop the wrong story from spreading. Troops were in the air for possible riot control. And what of the cabinet? They were abroad “to get their perceptions out of the way.”

Because those people might upset the plan some.

There’s a similar confluence of circumstances here.

Suddenly The Mooch is talking about needing a lot more than one or two players. Articles are popping up everywhere from the club’s nexus of Official Media Partners asking whether or not signing Tillman is worth the risk. Today there are headlines about him not actually wanting to come to Ibrox anyway … and all the while he’s over in Germany.

As X asks Garrison, “Does that sound like a bunch of coincidences to you?”

And he no more believes that those things are coincidental happenstance than we should believe that about this.

Tillman costs too much.

The manager wants him, but what he wants is not going to be the primary consideration of the people who have to pay for the rebuild he’s talking about. They all see the need for that rebuild … the blue chip signing idea is a goner.

If Tillman was here, some enterprising hack might ask him questions about this, such as “Has the manager discussed the future with you? Have the clubs agreed a transfer fee? Would you like to sign for this club and play here next season?”

And that’s the big one because what if he says “Yes, I’d love to”?

They’ll have a Hell of a job selling the fans on the idea that he’s the one who turned the move down … and that’s the card they’ll play. They’re test-running the lines right now to see which of their gullible fan media outlets run with it.

What they’re looking for are those outlets which will write the obvious; “He’s too expensive anyway and it’s best that we just move on.”

Except he was promised to the manager and the manager said, as recently as 21 April, that “Last week everyone that played – barring maybe Alfredo and Allan – will be an (Ibrox) player next season.”

Tillman started that game, so that’s not a mistake.

He knew what he was saying, knew what he was promising the supporters.

Would he have uttered those words without a clear signal from the player that he would, indeed, be at the club in the next campaign?

At some point, if the deal doesn’t go through – and he might dig in his heels and make a resignation issue out of it – this deeply humiliated man might get in front of the media with that moping face on and tell us that it was a “mutual decision” not to proceed with the deal … but again, that’s a trick this guy has played before, and only this week, with Kent and Morelos and we know that’s about as mutual as a guy whose missus has tossed his shit into the garden whilst he’s been at the pub and got someone round to change the locks.

I think the odds are against it.

I think their board has more sense than to spend the bulk of their money on one footballer, no matter what he has to say about it, and they are already trying to prepare the fans for the rug-pull.

Preparing him for it will be a harder thing to do, but he will eventually have to get in line behind it.

It’s stuff like this – obvious to all of us for many, many months and only now dawning on people over there, and merely because the club itself is getting its excuses in – that keeps Celtic fans interested in their calamitous fumbling about.

I worry that ice cream and jelly stocks are going to run low this summer.

If I have any advice for the readers of this blog, it’s this; get your supplies in early.