Mark Wilson Joins The Idiot Brigade In Calling Out Celtic Over The Ibrox Ticket Standoff.

Does hanging out with stupid friends make you stupider?

Mine certainly don’t; my friends are super-smart, some of them one Hell of a lot smarter than I am. But it’s an age-old question as to whether prolonged exposure to utter idiots and their utter idiocy rubs off on you the way hanging out with smart people can actually improve your brain.

When you think about it, it makes sense.

Having smart people around you challenges your thinking. It stops you from sliding into various cognitive traps, and being limited by your own biases and prejudices.

So does the opposite apply? Does surrounding yourself with complete fools start to affect you as well? I can see how it might.

I look at Mark Wilson, and the evidence is all there.

He has either gotten stupider since he started sitting in a studio on a regular basis with the likes of Keevins, or he just pretends to be.

If he’s doing that then we’re all entitled to know the reason why.

If he’s stumbled into a realisation we’re all familiar with – that slamming Celtic keeps you in a job at some outlets – then that’s hardly a great shock. He might not ever have been the smartest kid in the class, but dumber people than he’ll ever be figured that one out long before him. I wouldn’t be wearing it as a badge of honour in his shoes.

Wilson’s comments on the Celtic-Ibrox ticket stand-off are as stupid as I’ve heard anywhere. What’s more, he knows the facts so either they’ve gotten tangled up in his brain or he’s chosen to very deliberately misinterpret them just to stay in good with the people who run that preposterous radio show he appears on most nights.

“Celtic and (Sevco) are hypocrites when it comes to this stuff, because they are the ones who are cutting each other’s allocations,” he said. “They started it between each other, to 750, 700, to now hearing no tickets may be offered to (Sevco) when they come to Celtic Park because it’s all about looking after your own fan base.”

There is one confirmed fact in that whole sentence, that we cut their allocation, but even it is framed around such a brazen lie that it renders it redundant.

“They started it between each other” is so evidently false that the club should ban him from the ground just for uttering that.

We did not, by any stretch of the imagination, “start” any of this.

We merely responded to what they had done in precisely the way we told them, in advance, that we would. They did what they did knowing full well how Celtic would react to it.

They kicked this off. They took the unilateral action to cut our tickets, we would never in a million years have cut theirs had it not been for that act. It was nowhere on our radar.

Still, idiots continue to accuse of being just as bad as they are, and it’s a suggestion that we should absolutely refute no matter who is making it.

If you’re out drinking and someone attacks you unprovoked and you defend yourself nobody anywhere would accuse you of having started that, it’s a moronic claim, and you wouldn’t accept it if someone did.

We are not “hypocrites” either, and nor are we prioritising our own fans over others.

I am one of a number of fans who has to pay an extra £50 to buy his own ticket when the Ibrox fans come to town; the seat I sit in is not “valid” for those games, in case there’s a day when this matter is resolved.

Celtic has not “prioritised” us over anybody.

As for the decision to withhold their tickets, Celtic hasn’t announced that publicly yet and so it remains nothing but speculation.

But I suspect it will happen, and if and when it does it will be nothing to do with hypocrisy but about sending a clear message to everyone in Scottish football who is wringing their hands here and doesn’t want a solution to the growing issues away fans face.

Wilson, in seeking to blame Celtic for that, has not advanced the cause one iota. He has, in fact, completely undermined it by sticking up for the rights of clubs to act selfishly.

Our club’s fans are not safe at Ibrox and their club has no interest in making us safe. Celtic has rejected their offer to send our supporters into harms way, but as a consequence of us being put in that position we have opted to withhold their own tickets for Celtic Park … that’s a measured and proportional response to their own appalling stance.

Everyone knows this matter could be resolved easily.

Wilson would rather hide in the Cowards Corner and pretend that it’s a “plague on both our houses” than call it out for whose fault it actually is.

His stand is objectionable because it is manifestly dishonest.

Wilson is not the witless idiot he is coming across making statements like this.

He knows exactly what has gone on here and why Celtic acts in the way they do.

He knows exactly what he’s doing in throwing around words like “hypocrites” and apportioning blame for this mess to the people at our club who are simply dealing with a situation created elsewhere.

He is attacking Celtic for his own gain, nothing more or less.

He is not the first to do it. In fact, as I said, there’s a list as long as Argyle Street who got there before him. But if he thinks he’s going to get away with basically lying about us he better think again.

I don’t know why Celtic fans still allow that radio station to patronise them by having them on and then sneering at their comments, but if the handful of them who still listen to it or even call in are out there and reading this, don’t let him get away with this stuff.

If you’re going on, go on and confront him with this and tell him what you think of it.

Because it’s high time we all did our bit to put a stop to this nonsense once and for all. Bad enough that we have Naismith’s comments to deal with … and I’ll deal with them shortly.