Ibrox Struggles, So The Hacks Hope For A Weakened Celtic.

You can always tell when the club from Ibrox is having a wee bit of a torrid time of it in the media; a slew of stories appear in the papers about who might soon be leaving Celtic. And the thing of it is, this is just sheer laziness on the part of the media, and a transparent effort to unsettle people currently at the club, even those who are settled.

Hatate is the first of the players who this week has been at the centre of some speculation, but it’s easy for the press there because he’s not yet signed a new deal. Neither has Abada, but he has sat down with Brendan Rodgers and committed to staying for this season. That has not stopped the media speculation, which went into overdrive last night.

But of course, there’s media speculation about Kyogo too, including Pat Nevin throwing his two bobs worth into the mix yesterday with the lunatic suggestion that Ange Postecoglou might want to take him to Spurs as if there is the slightest chance of that.

Celtic fans are increasingly used to this stuff, and especially when things in the garden across the city are not as rosy as the early media hopes suggested they’d be. We are cursed to share our football landscape with them, and to having a press corps which bangs their drum whilst sounding the warning beats for us.

As long as this window is still open, of course anything could happen and a lot of folk are concerned that we will still lose a key player or two before it shuts.

But if you look at these stories, the thing they all have in common are a certain set of keywords; “could” “might” “may” and those like them, which means that it’s all speculative trash and no actual offers are on the table and nor are they likely to be.

Firm interest, real interest, isn’t necessary for the hacks here to write something and for some of our fans to share it … but the manager was asked outright about bids the other day and said that there are none, for anybody he wants to keep and to me that is as definitive as it gets.

If the Ibrox club drops points today two things will go into overdrive; the insanity of their supporters and the volume of stories linking our biggest players with moves. This is how the media operates.

A crisis at Ibrox can only be discussed in its full context if they can make trouble at Celtic and suggest that it presents their favourite team with a chance.

Thank God this window only has a couple of weeks left in it.

When it shuts that’s one less card for these people to play against us.