Celtic Fans Should Fiercely Resist Any Effort To Paint Us As Deserving Suckers.

There is a narrative in our media that we should all be big boys and girls and suck up and take what’s hit us right between the eyes this weekend.

Our media is good at this stuff, at sneering at its customers, at sneering as those who the hacks, in their ivory towers, view as the unenlightened scruff.

It’s one of the reasons I despise almost all of them.

We are forever being lectured by these people – people who make their living on the fringes of the game, people who haven’t paid a penny to watch a football match in years – on how we are supposed to feel about our teams, our players and now our managers.

We are treated as though we deserve a good using, that it should wake us up to how “the real world works” as though we were all utterly incapable of understanding it.

And I’ve long been sick of this, but today I’m particularly pissed off and wholly unwilling to suffer it in silence.

Kicking football fans when they are feeling down is the stock in trade of an industry so far removed from the people in the stands that it can barely see them as its members look down. The arrogance of it, especially when so many of them are woefully inadequate in their own understanding of the sport and the issues around it, is hard to credit.

This idea that our fans have played the role of “wilful idiots” for daring to believe that a man who spoke of integrity and loyalty actually embodied those ideas is garbage.

We are well aware that there is little loyalty in the game; this is why we so readily embrace that handful of people who seem to be cut from a different cloth.

We did nothing wrong here, except put our faith in someone who seemed to exemplify an attitude which is uncommon in our sport.

That’s why he was embraced in the first place, because he did appear to be different. I will not apologise for that, and I will not accept that somehow I am an idiot because somebody else chose to act dishonourably.

Some of the same journalists who are sniggering at us today will call Postecoglou a man of principle, a straight shooter, a man of character … even as they criticise us for having dared to believe those self-same things. That he has turned out to be much less than he claimed does not make the average Celtic fan a moron who deserves to be cast as one.

We, like all football fans, are entitled not to be treated as such, and if we feel pissed off today I’m betting that’s nothing compared to how people inside the club feel … and they too are entitled to think that our club was owed a modicum of respect.

This is the only industry where its customers are actually scorned for their loyalty, and the people doing it are those who have a responsibility to promote the game.

In Scotland it’s made worse because these same people do nothing but slavishly praise the league down the road, and you can tell some of them would love to be working in its environs instead of up here.

Hey, if they had a modicum of talent then they would be.

But I’m really sick and tired of these condescending tossers having a pop at our supporters because we occasionally fall prey to the idea that there might be more to some people in football than greed and naked ambition.

When someone promotes himself on the basis of integrity then aren’t we entitled to expect it? When someone sits in front of you and pledges to be around for a while longer why are we treated as if we’re arseholes for believing that?

The media ought to save its contempt for the people who play these sorts of games, but of course that would involve telling a little bit of truth to power and nothing scares them more.

Fans are easy targets, and they view us as unimportant anyway.

But let me repeat; this is not our fault.

We did nothing except put our faith in someone who said all the right things.

I am not going to apologise for that, I’m not going to pretend to feel embarrassed by it.

I’m pissed off because somebody lied to me.

I’m not asking for understanding or compassion, but I’m damned sure I’m not going to let some idiot hack take the piss out of me either.