Peter Martin Proves Again That He Should Keep His Mouth Shut About Celtic.

Remember Peter Martin?

Would it help if I called him Peter McGuire?

He used to be a presenter. Now he’s a guy on an internet show pretending he still is. McGuire … sorry, Martin … was once considered a “friend” of our club.

Until, that is, he stumbled across the Great Secret, which is that you can get ahead in Scottish football punditry by pushing every negative story about us.

He was one of those journalists who so pissed off people inside Celtic Park that he was name-checked for It by Neil Lennon and, if memory serves me correctly, banned from the press box.

Now he makes a living on the margins, critiquing almost everything we do.

Yesterday, my good friend Paddy Sinat launched his new Twitter feed; you should follow him here – @PaddyTBR –  he’s a great guy and a passionate advocate for our club.

He’s writing for The Boot Room as their Celtic writer, and he’s good at what he does. His article on Martin is why I’m doing this one; this is a follow up to his piece. In it, he highlighted McGuire’s latest daft remarks.

Martin said that Celtic didn’t do enough to keep the winger Ben Doak.

That we let him go because we wouldn’t push out the boat to keep him.

This is nonsense. This is just anti-Celtic ranting for the sake of it.

Celtic did everything they could to keep Ben Doak at Parkhead, and that McGuire isn’t aware of that is just part of the problem with him. I’ll give him some insight if he wants it.

I knew for months before Doak committed himself to Liverpool that he wasn’t going to stay at Celtic.

People around the club told me that when I’d asked about who the most promising young players were.

I was told that they were really excited by this guy and that he’d been assured that he would soon be in the first team squad. They saw him as the next Kieran Tierney, a kid from the academy who could go straight into the team and make it better.

So, to claim that we didn’t offer him a pathway is ridiculous. We spelled out what that pathway was going to be. To say we didn’t make him a good, long-term offer is equally ridiculous.

We made him a great offer, an offer in excess of what a mere youth player would ever have got. Doak simply did not want to sign an extension to his contract; he had his eyes on England and there was not one thing we could do to prevent him exploring his options there.

At the moment Liverpool made their move any residual hope was eradicated, and this was in spite of Ange having not only made him a first team squad player but the manager giving him his debut into the bargain. We were not even at the races here.

Even if he’d been prepared to sign a deal on the basis of our changing his squad status, he was going to Anfield the minute they entered the race and told him how highly they rated him.

And Martin doesn’t know this? With his experience and with his contacts book, McGuire isn’t aware of how much Celtic did to keep Ben Doak at the club?

That’s pathetic.

Someone so ignorant should not be commenting on things he doesn’t understand.

It’s pure ignorance, and simply him attacking us because he hasn’t done that for a while and that’s what he built much of his name on. Martin is a joke. McGuire is a clown.

It is high time he took a self-imposed vow of silence when it comes to our club.