There are things I will do for this job and there are things I won’t. I will sift through endless written nonsense, reading every newspaper and blog every day, but I cannot and will not listen to Radio Clyde no matter what else I have to do. A show which broadcasts its own ignorance in the “quality” of the panel every other day is too hard to tolerate.
One of my guys sent me the audio of Friday’s show this morning and asked me to listen to the opening segment.
Amidst the feeling that brain fluid was actually leaking out of my ears, and having to tolerate Keevins’ condescending to the first caller in a way that would have infuriated me knowing his long history of getting absolutely damn all right, he offered his view on our financial situation.
For one thing, Keevins thinks Celtic are virtually pushing the player out the door.
What nonsense. We offered him a new deal, so that’s garbage right there.
He also mistakenly referred to the country Jota is going to as the United Arab Emirates … what kind of idiot makes a mistake like that?
Next he talked about Ibrox having “cottoned on” to the idea of selling players for profit, as though this was some momentous discovery which had been hitherto unknown.
He and the panel also made a fundamental mistake over the sell-on clause; those are only good on the profit on a player.
(More on that subject later on.)
So if we get £30 million Benfica don’t get a third of that, they get 30% of the profit we post.
£8 million on a £30 million deal which sounds a lot but which still leave us with nearly three times what we paid for Jota … £22 million for the team, more money than we netted for Moussa Dembele, and comfortably ahead of the game.
All this in the first six minutes by the way … incredible.
But it’s when he expressed his view that “Dermot Desmond is bankrolling the Rodgers revolution” that I felt my hackles rise.
Because that is bigger nonsense than all the rest of that put together and a gross insult to the people who actually do fund Celtic and all in it … ourselves, the fans, the supporters, as the club echoed today in the announcement that we’ve sold out the season tickets again.
Maybe he’s mistaken us for the club across the city, built on shady financing, equity confetti and director’s loans … but Celtic was built by us.
Difficult to grasp for these people, I know, but true nonetheless.
It is why many of us take such full satisfaction from every victory, from every triumph, from every trophy … because no matter who is in the dugout or who is on the pitch it’s the fans who make everything at Celtic really happen.
Keevins doesn’t know that because in keeping with so many in his profession it’s those very fans, of every club by the way, for whom they reserve their greatest derision and contempt, as he proves in the way he talks to people on that dire show.