Shameless Record Hack Is Preparing A Ludicrous “Celtic Snubbed” Story After All.

Two subjects which I’ve written about today have come together once again; Mark Pirie and his dire writing at The Record and the way the media decided to ignore a positive Celtic transfer story because the player had once been linked to Ibrox.

Tonight Pirie is up to that ancient Scottish media trick; getting a “Celtic snubbed” story out of an Ibrox transfer rumour. The subject of this piece is Jose Cifuentes, and if you’re scratching your head and wondering who that is believe me that’s the appropriate response.

We were linked with this guy four years ago. Four years ago, when Lennon was in charge. The player made all kinds of big claims at the time about he had a choice to make between ourselves and Manchester City, so he could pursue his dream of playing in Europe. You won’t be wondering who he chose, since if he’d chosen either club you’d have heard of him.

No, he went to the MLS which shows how real the interest from Celtic and City actually was. There were also rumours of Porto taking an interest; they also passed. What seems clear is that football ability or not, this guy has very good PR people working for him, and the steady drumbeat of stories linking him with a move is reaching crescendo.

All of the stories of that time were clearly absolute nonsense. Was Celtic’s interest even real? No more real, I’d suggest, than that the English giants. A player we looked at, and whose people managed to hype the story to an unbelievable degree.

This guy is available on a cut-rate deal. Where are the interested parties? If Celtic were really that interested at the time, he’d still be on the scouting charts somewhere so where’s our interest? He’s been four years in the MLS; where’s the European interest been all this time? Where are the teams from Holland, Germany and elsewhere who watch that league?

Pirie is virtually wetting his pants over the prospect of this deal going through. We’re supposed to be banging on the doors of Celtic Park to demand answers as to why he’s not a Celtic player already. Let’s try this one; maybe we didn’t think he was good enough? Or maybe we were never interested in the first place, maybe it was a media confection like the Man City stories which almost all of our press were banging on about at the time.

Pirie is a pitifully poor writer who produces dreck day after day. If it’s not crap like this, he along with their other atrocious sports team are turning out guff like those multi-page clickbait pieces: advertisers should simply flat out refuse to pay for junk like that. Even blogs no longer resort to that cheap tactic, and I know it’s a cheap tactic because I’ve used it.

Pirie’s tactics here are a whole other thing.

This one is cheap but predictable.

He’s actually jumped the gun and written it before the deal is done but – aha! – that means that he got to do it whether the club actually got their man at all. If they were interested in the first place. Which you’ll know soon enough. If the backtracking starts, what do you bet it comes with one more dig at us? “The player Celtic couldn’t get wasn’t considered good enough for Ibrox.”

This is the level they operate on.