Following this club of ours, and watching the media with interest, all kinds of bizarre ideas and bizarre theories come across my field of vision. There are two of them happening right now which inspire the same hilarity, and I’ll tell you what they are.
The first is the Tory Party Conference which is happening down in Manchester.
The second is Ibrox’s search for a new boss.
To be actively involved with either, it seems to me, involves leaving reality at the door.
The Tories have apparently noticed the state the country is in. But that’s apparently the fault of the EU, immigrants, “wokeishness”, kids using mobile phones in school and speed limits. Those things and a rash of others. Not 13 years of their government of course, which of course is what actually is to blame for the calamitous state of the nation.
To be involved in the Ibrox manager hunt requires perhaps an even bigger separation from reality though.
The myths they cling to are incredible.
The first of them being that they are in their present state because in 2012 there was a vast Celtic-led conspiracy to put them out of the top flight for three years. (It turned into four; I guess we were to blame for that as well.) It all revolves around their size and status as a club … and the lies they believe about that.
I’ll write about some of those lies a little later on, but there’s one which directly relates to where we are right now, and the unreality which swirls around their manager hunt. Kenny Miller summed it up best on Radio Clyde yesterday with his own bizarre fantasy-land suggestion that they should attempt to bring Steven Gerrard back from Saudi Arabia.
Little things like his massive salary could be gotten around, Miller thinks, if the will was there. I mean dear God, where even to start with that lunacy? That guy couldn’t wait to get out of Ibrox, and this joker reckons he’s going to give up mega-bucks earnings and no pressure on him at all to come back here and go again? Miller really is a moron, eah?
But there is some logic to this, if you subscribe to the underlying theory in it; that Gerrard has the measure of Celtic and that he has the magic spell which can wrestle back the title. The only trouble is that’s it’s garbage. Utter rot, which somehow has not been wholly stamped on and held up to the contempt and the ridicule that it deserves.
Gerrard was an utter failure at Ibrox, managing a single trophy in a three and a half year spell. He would have been sacked had the COVID shut-down in his second season not ended the title race early because we had already left him flailing in the dust.
I am at a complete loss as to how Ibrox fans somehow convinced themselves that winning the title the following year meant more than it did. Even the most optimistic Celtic fan, under similar circumstances, would have held off from getting carried away until we saw whether or not the guy could hold up under a return to normality.
Gerrard and his former assistant place great store in having been ahead when he left. But the slide had already begun and everyone knows it full well. They had dropped enough points in the league that we were still in contention. We were on the rise, and everyone watching could see it a mile off. They were on the slide and it was obvious to all but the most deluded.
We would have caught Gerrard’s team, and Gerrard knew it himself which is why he left the way he did. After our initial bad run as Ange got his team together we didn’t lose again all season in the league. Gerrard’s team looked like it could lost every game it played. In the end, we won a double and followed it up with a treble.
We proved – we’ve conclusively proved – that the COVID Campaign was a freak event.
We clearly demonstrated our ability to pick up right where we left off in the four preceding years, and we’ve been moving ahead since. We are the biggest club in Scotland and we were caught that year not by a brilliant management team but by a bizarre confluence of circumstances which our management team, and our club itself, handled spectacularly badly.
But when we gave ourselves a shake and got back rolling again, there was only ever going to be one outcome.
The Greatness Of Gerrard is a myth.
He had already crashed out of the Champions League, at home, to a ten man team, when he left and they were on course for losing at Hampden in the League Cup which they duly did after he’d gone, but the writing was on the wall for that result.
He went to Villa and did nothing but get sacked early. No club in England wanted to touch him which is why he’s in the football backwater, where he went for money and nothing else. Because what else is there?
Let me tell you, as a Celtic fan I’d love it if they got Gerrard back, if for no other reason than we’d smash that mad fantasy about his having our number into tiny shards before the season was out.
I would equally love it if they went for the guy they’re currently talking about, their next “bling name”, Frank Lampard, whose already been sacked twice in a five year career.
A bling appointment of that sort would be perfect.
For Celtic.
And it would lay the table for a crisis the likes of which even their club has never seen.
If Gerrard comes back, he will hopefully bring the brains of the organisation with him.
A pair of ‘ Half wits’.
Davis & Rae already fit the bill.
‘Staunchness’ personified, with the earlier ‘ Liquidation’ blemishes overlooked.
Wait till they find out most of the new boys probably urnae ‘ Proddisdants’.
This whole process of the scum looking for a new saviour, is nothing more than a bluff, in trying to buy time imo.
Without trying to sound like Phil mac, the money situation can’t be ignored either.
There was nothing left to spend at the end of the transfer window.
Yet the costs have increased with the execution of the moleman, added to the failure of reaching CL riches.
So therefore the cupboards must remain fairly bear for the foreseeable?
Add in just how split a changing room must be currently?
How many openly refused to take part in the walk of disgrace at the weekend?
Sure that went down well, with the ones who were subjected to the verbal abuse, and the ones who went into hiding?
Scottish clubs can’t afford to get the recruitment badly wrong, and even ourselves know it, as it takes years to resolve the problems.
You put players on big contracts, you have to have the resources available, especially if they turn out to be a shite investment that still has to be paid, no matter what.
Add in such a toxic working environment that shit hole provides also.
So who within there right mind would really want to take such a job on, especially someone who has made a name for themselves within the game?
There well be some eejit out there who would take a chance upon it, yet under the current circumstances, I still believe they will be hard to find.
For a club built upon lies, then the lies will continue to keep the zombies at bay.
More chance of hoping that bill and Ben the flowerpot men, can get a couple of results this week, to buy even more time if needed.
The scum find themselves in a desperate position, with a board knowing that there own names remain upon a chopping block currently, so only really trying to replace there names with some other eejits one.
The distruction caused by the moleman will be felt for years in financial term’s, no matter how much bullshit is spouted
Gerrards only savin grace was that he had the measure of lennon in the season he won the league, nae denyin that. Fortunately for him, NL ran out of ideas long before gerrard did. Apart from that he’s been a managerial failure, end of. As usual, the facts and reality, get bent out of shape by the hype with that lot. Havin said that, would love tae see him back at ibrox. Expose him even further, as the completely over-rated, managerial dud he really is.
Gerrard used the rangers as a way station to commence his career but always the plan was to move on, ideally back home to Engerland. Selfishly only ever in it for himself he nearly bankrupted them to get a trophy; again only to advance his CV, hence nothing really for GVB to spend on players. He was given the time and money despite the failing years prior and unlike GBV. Honesty was never Gerrard’s focus nor their long term future. The Villa approach was in the making for sometime prior to the action. Coupled with an improved higher wage for himself and greater transfer spending to make him look like a kingmaker the Villa approach was expedient to say the least and part of his selfish plan.
He turned out to be a failure as in truth he was here in Scotland with only his name and Covid extending his stay until the offer, the better offer, became official.
He won’t be back here soon, not while the Saudis line his pockets anyway or the idiots in England or even in Europe still think his name is a legendary asset and worth a punt. Only complete and utter failure would make him available to come back.
Lampard is laughable too, he might come up but only because he’s unwanted down there and, well it’s pin money for him. He has been successful only in his failure. That board though will have to find massive resources to back him, something that again they failed to do with GVB and which could well set them back for years.
So that only leaves someone without a history of success or ambition to move on from them at the earliest opportunity.
It could be argued that first time around Brendan done the same. He may well have used Celtic as a way station to a better more financially rewarding move. He saw the lack of ambition and financial transfer support from his board as a reason to move on too. This time seems different with him I would argue that he has achieved his level elsewhere, knows where he’s at in his career and ambition as such is not not his motivation for being here now. I hope he is the Celtic supporter he says he is and he is here for that reason.
As for them and their search; Where’s Wally? HH
Brilliant post.
Hail Hail.
I really REALLY hope the appoint fat Frank, it would thrill the lunatic fans and the board would believe the hype surrounding that clown it would also guarantee us years of total superiority over that bunch of gobshites. Bring it on!
Gerrard couldn’t even win the EPL ‘sack race’ at Villa, far less the EPL! I too would be delighted to see him back – he was hopeless when he had some funding. Watching him to try to get a tune out of that dog’s breakfast of a squad would take schadenfreude to new heights.