No Website Whose “Celtic Source” Is Frank McAvennie Can Be Trusted On “Insider Info.”

The grotesque gossip site which blithely calls itself Football Insider is at it again today with its latest “exclusive”, saying that people inside Celtic fear that Ange Postecoglou has already decided to leave the club this summer.

They claim they have heard this from people close to the club.

I’m not going to say that Football Insider publishes lies, but it does not publish facts.

I am not going to say that it overeggs its access to the thinking of those who run clubs, but The Daily Record has better sources and ones much closer to the action.

I am not going to say that it has bad writers doing bad writing, but I wouldn’t let them publish their stuff on here and there are anonymous bloggers charging for their wisdom who are more credible.

Oh what the Hell.

Why bother to deny it?

If they are saying sources inside Celtic, or credible people with anything like access to our club believe that Ange Postecoglou is leaving in the summer then, yes, I believe they … what’s the vernacular?

They are taking liberties with the facts. That’s a nice way to put it.

Another way to put it is to say that they use “anonymous sources” to camouflage their lack of real information and their inability to write real news. Even of the clickbait sort which they churn out every day.

This must have been a particularly slow one on that front.

This trick is as old as journalism itself, and just as dishonest as it ever was.

One would think that’s a fairly large story, and with our media constantly on the look-out for stories like that I would have thought they’d have it before some blog, which is all Football Insider is. A gossip factory. A repository of absolute tosh.

Look, for their sins the media had the story right on Juranovic. They had the story right on Giakoumakis.

I mocked those stories because they implied that Celtic had no choice but to sell these guys. But the basic fact of them – that the players had turned down contracts and the club was willing to sell them – was, in essence, on the money.

In fact, I worried not so much about the truth of the stories – because I had, and have, faith that Ange would have replacements sourced and sounded out before we even considered letting them go – but of the idea that such critical information might have been leaked to the media from people within Celtic Park … and that was a concern and still is.

This is a vastly bigger story – a vastly bigger claim – than any story about players.

And the writer of that story has a responsibility to his craft to at least stand it up.

That story stands up about as well as a one legged bar stool. I am not in the least bit concerned by this, because if the mainstream press isn’t touching this with radioactive gloves on then the whole story is cobblers.

This is the publication which gets most of its “Celtic stories” from Frank McAvennie.

Taking media stories about our club with a pinch of salt is one thing.

You couldn’t make this palatable, or credible, if you swallowed the Bonneville Salt Flats basin.

Ange Postecoglou will be at Celtic Park next season.

Anyone still reading that site … what in God’s name are you doing?

Block it on Newsnow, you’ll be happier for it … and probably better informed.