Deranged Record Hack Launches Another Unhinged, Incoherent Attack On Celtic.

It’s Monday, and that can only mean the weekly ordeal. Dipping a toe into the swampy waters of The Daily Record and tackling Keith Jackson’s latest dirge. It’s a bad one, so brace yourselves. Bad writing, faulty logic, utter stupidity and stinking hypocrisy; this article has it all. So take a minute, get yourself a coffee and maybe some Valium, and we’ll start with the headline. You all set? Here goes.

“The inconvenient Celtic truth Brendan Rodgers is avoiding as furious ref rant is fooling no one – Keith Jackson”

Before we start, a gripe; I read brilliant articles every single day. I read a variety of publications from the UK and the US. There are writers I do not miss if I can help it because their prose is wonderful. Marina Hyde of The Guardian is one of the best in the business, a multi-award winning genius who has written about everything from women’s issues to sport … she is phenomenal. And at no time has she or her editors felt a need to draw attention to herself by sticking her name in the headline. That’s hackery. That’s ego.

The headline itself is ridiculous. If you accept that Rodgers is furious then you have to accept he’s speaking from the heart. So it’s not designed to “fool” anyone. If you want to see what trying to fool people looks like, check out Jackson’s name in the headline; that’s somebody who doesn’t know how pretending to be a journalist.

“It was a weekend where the title race lost the plot and you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to know what’s at stake now.”

A title race is not a living, breathing, thinking thing. Therefore it cannot “lose the plot.” And isn’t the league title at stake? Jackson is right; I’m not a rocket scientist and I knew that. Nor am I a professor of English studies, but I do know that one of them would hit him over the head with a dictionary for turning that particular sentence in to an editor. It gets worse too.

“Now that every man and his dog in the SPFL are busy writing their own stories perhaps they ought to remember the importance of a good plot.”

Good God, isn’t that awful? Let’s tackle the obvious bit; dogs don’t write stories. And not every story depends on a plot. Actual writers know this. There are, in fact, novels which don’t have a plot in any conventional sense. A couple of them – American Psycho and Trainspotting – are particular favourites of mine; they are made up of disjointed fragments which only very loosely fit together, but if you’re looking for a thread that runs all the way through them, forget it.

“And once they’ve found one they like the look of they should do as much as they can to stick to it. Because there’s a big difference between creating a plot and losing one. And, over the course of a perfectly chaotic weekend, that’s precisely what Rangers and Celtic took it in turns to do.”

Dreadful. A plot you like the look of. A difference between creating a plot and losing one. Oh man. It’s at a time like this that you start to hate not only Jackson but those who work alongside him in that big building. He has no proper education, so he can only be blamed up to a point. But is everyone in the Sports Department as thick as this guy is? Did none of them go to a good school?

“You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to know what’s at stake now that the finishing line is coming into sight in the race towards the title. Tempers are beginning to fray and nerves are being stretched but, as is always the case in these adrenaline-charged moments, clear heads and a strong constitution will be required between now and May. Rangers allowed their composure to escape them on Saturday when all they required was a run of the mill victory over Motherwell to open up a five point lead at the top of the table.”

So Saturday’s defeat was all about composure was it? Nothing to do with just not being good enough on the day? For months their club has had a free ride from a media which has focussed all its attention on Celtic and the perceived crisis there. But the Ibrox side has not been particularly good, and more than a few times got off the hook in league games, not to mention that they actually lost to Celtic, something Jackson and others have been determined not to acknowledge. More fool them. Reality hit them on Saturday, that’s the truth of it.

“And even though they will have celebrated Celtic’s defeat at Tynecastle yesterday afternoon, the challengers may yet have cause to look back on the events of the last 72 hours as the win that got away.”

The win that got away. Ugh. Can I borrow one of your Valium?

“By failing to stay calm in the heat of the moment a huge opportunity has passed them by. And yet, despite themselves, they made it out the other side of the fixture list, with no damage done and a two point lead intact.”

Only a moron believes what he just wrote there. No damage done? For weeks now the narrative they’ve been getting by on is that their manager is some sort of guru, some sort of world beater, and now a club in the bottom half of the league has beaten them, and at home no less, just when the pressure was at its zenith. Anyone who thinks that doesn’t inflict damage is trying not to see it.

Even if all it has done is wrecked their perception of themselves as some relentless football machine, that’s a big deal. That’s damaging. There’s no escaping that fact.

“For their part, the champions headed across the M8 knowing three points would be enough to get their noses back in front at a critical point in the campaign, with just the nine games remaining. That they failed spectacularly to get the job done was almost all of their own doing, even if manager Brendan Rodgers jabbed one accusatory finger in the direction of ref Don Robertson and another even more forcibly towards John Beaton in the VAR bunker.”

Almost all our own doing? Again, nobody believes that for a minute. I said in my piece yesterday that we got the injustice we deserved, and we did, but that’s because we allowed a situation where a potentially defining game in this title race was in the hands of officials we cannot trust.

We haven’t done enough, as a club, to challenge the way games are officiated. We have a lazy arrogant board of directors which wants its free seats for life but doesn’t actually want to fight for them or what they represent. The officials decided that game yesterday, pure and simple. A scandalous red card and a late first half penalty kick which should never have been awarded are what produced the result, and anyone blaming the manager or the players is only kidding themselves on.

“By naming Beaton on more than one occasion in his post match media duties, Rodgers was deliberately fanning the flames of a dangerous fire. Yes, between them, Beaton and Robertson may have reached a number of fairly unfathomable decisions. And, true, the calls they collaborated on had a material impact on the match.”

Exactly what “dangerous fire” was Rodgers fanning? If Jackson doesn’t have the bottle to explain that statement, he ought not to have made it. The Ibrox club demanded that Collum not referee their games which is a flat-out accusation that he’s a cheat. They then made sure that their fan media outlets knew that conversation had taken place behind closed doors. They actually painted a target on his back and Jackson and others in his trade barely uttered a word of condemnation about it. Rodgers critiqued these guys for what they did on the day and he is quite right to do so.

I can just about stomach the hypocrisy, because that’s what you expect from a raging hypocrite … it’s the next bit, the admission that the decisions were “unfathomable” which annoys me.

Unfathomable. That’s a big word he’s thrown in there but he clearly isn’t familiar with it. So let me introduce him to the word properly. “Incapable of being fully explored or understood.” And yet, that is to suggest that there are no explanations.

It is perfectly easy, in fact, to understand this and there are explanations available to hand. One is that these decisions are a result of basic incompetence. The other is that they are corrupt. Rodgers is not alleging corruption, indeed, he’s used the word “incompetent.” So unless Jackson reckons its okay to know this stuff but not to say it out loud, he wants to think this through better.

Lastly, look at the bit that comes at the end; “the calls they collaborated on had a material impact on the match.” Which flatly contradicts his assertion that we lost because of self-inflicted wounds. He’s said it right there; these decisions are what decided the game. He’s reversed himself in less than 100 words. Why do people at that paper still think this joker is worth his salary?

“But, by pinning the blame for this latest slip up solely on the officials, Celtic are distracting themselves from an inconvenient truth. Because as soon as Rodgers released his team sheet at Tynecastle it did feel as if his side might be in for a long and uncomfortable afternoon, regardless of any contributory factors from the outside.”

Nonsense. Rodgers picked a good side, and that side was well on top of the game until the moment Yang was sent off. I think we’d still have won had the penalty not been given when it was.

“With skipper Callum McGregor injured and watching from a seat in the main stand, there was always a high risk that Celtic’s midfield might malfunction at one of the most notoriously tricky to negotiate venues in the top flight. Quite simply, Celtic struggle to cope without having their captain pulling the strings from the centre of the pitch and neither Tomoki Iwata nor Paulo Bernardo are adequately equipped to take on McGregor’s responsibilities.”

That whole sentence is garbage. Perhaps he missed the Sky commentator yesterday imparting the information that Celtic has won every single game Callum McGregor has missed this season, until that one yesterday. I’m not saying he’s not crucial to the team, I’m saying that Jackson is talking out of his backside in saying we “struggle to cope” when he’s not in the team. That’s just not true at all, and shame on a sports writer for not knowing that. Isn’t it amazing, too, to see him slate Iwata after banging the drum for him after he was subbed at Motherwell, and after he had confidently predicted that Rodgers would not select him again for ages? Remember what I said to him when he made that prediction? “If you want to bet on it I’ll happy take your money.”

“On top of this glaring deficiency, Rodgers opted to leave talisman Kyogo Furuhashi warming the bench for a match which had to be won.”

Kyogo is barely kicking his own backside right now. Idah is the guy on form. A manager is doing a grave injustice to the club if he’s not selecting the guy on form.

“The very idea of going into a game of such huge significance without either of these players in the starting XI would have brought about a state of blind panic at the start of the season. And yet this is where Celtic find themselves now that the business end is upon them. Of course, Rodgers was struggling to contain his sense of outrage over the decision to upgrade Hyun-jun Yang’s yellow card to a red, after Beaton had got his hands on the remote control.”

At the start of the season we went to Tynecastle without key players and won. We’ve gone to Ibrox with a defence put together on Scotch Tape and a prayer this season and won. Blind panic would not have come into it, not anywhere, not against anybody. And like I said, Kyogo is so far off form that the manager is doing the right thing leaving him out. McGregor’s loss was just one of those things, in a season where injuries have haunted us at every step. The manager picked his best eleven, based on form. That’s it, simple as that. And then Beaton intervened.

“The manager will argue – and perfectly correctly – that there was no malicious intent when Yang flicked a boot into the face of Hearts full-back Alex Cochrane. But just because he didn’t mean any harm by it doesn’t mean that he was not endangering an opponent by lifting a leg above head height. By the letter of the law, Yang doesn’t have a leg left to stand on.”

Jackson knows full well that’s not “the letter of the law.” If it was, you would get players sent off every week, because that’s not an uncommon thing to see on the pitch. Indeed, when it happened to a Celtic player earlier in the campaign the guy who did it didn’t even get booked. Intent has to be a factor in sending a guy off, otherwise the idea of football as a contact sport is farcical.

“Also, it was not Beaton who made the call. On the contrary, his role started and ended in advising Robertson to take another look for himself on the pitch side screen. If anything, moments earlier, had Beaton told Robertson to review the decision to award Celtic with a penalty then the whole furore could have been avoided.”

Hold the bus, what? The ref had made the on-field decision. Beaton called him over to draw his attention to a “clear and obvious error” which was neither clear nor obvious. And although Jackson claims above it was to “the letter of the law” Robertson didn’t agree. And Jackson doesn’t agree either! Didn’t he describe the decisions as “unfathomable” a moment ago in this piece? Jesus, this guy bounces about like a stag-do drunk on a pogo-stick. He’s the only journalist in the country whose articles can make you dizzy and put you at risk of whiplash.

“Just as it would have done had Adam Idah not fluffed his lines from the spot and found the back of Zander Clark’s net rather than the toe of the big keeper’s left boot.”

Agreed. And I answered this point yesterday. But so what? We missed a penalty so we should be okay with being cheated?

“That’s four penalties Celtic have failed to convert since the start of the season and Beaton hasn’t taken any of them. But Rodgers was probably sent over the edge when the man at Clydesdale House spotted a potential penalty at the other end – even though, in real time, no-one on the pitch or even inside the stadium had any inkling that the ball had hit Iwata’s arm inside Celtic’s box.”

Teams miss penalties. That happens at every club. To say “Beaton hasn’t taken any of them” is disingenuous bollocks. We’re very clear on what we hold Beaton accountable for here.

“Again, he instructed Robertson to take a look at the replays. Again, it was the referee who then decided to do something about it by pointing to the spot.”

First, nobody is leaving Robertson out of the criticism. He deserves it all and more, and Rodgers did not hesitate to name him, so what the Hell is this idiot rambling on about Beaton for as though he was the only person Rodgers called out? But in the interests of keeping this real, when a ref gets called over to the screen that’s someone in the VAR room telling him he’s wrong. That’s why he gets called across for another look. There aren’t many refs who don’t change their initial response based on getting that shout, and Jackson knows that.

“On reflection, it’s perhaps no wonder Rodgers lost the plot over that one because it almost defies belief that two of the country’s most experienced officials could study those pictures and both come to the same inconceivable conclusion.”

Which to me suggests not mere incompetence but something else. Because of course, that’s true. Except that it doesn’t defy belief at all, not when you know who John Beaton is.

“And yet, despite this latest VAR-ce, the truth is that Celtic’s ten men were struggling to contain Hearts at that stage in the match. The longer the first half went on the more it felt like the home side would eventually make the numbers count.”

And why did we have ten men on the pitch?

“And they would have gone inside at the break with a two goal lead had it not been for another intervention from Beaton and his helpers who correctly clocked Lawrence Shankland’s big toe in an offside position a split second before the striker stroked an expert finish into the back of Joe Hart’s net.”

Not even the most corrupt official would have given a goal when the VAR lines were as clear as that. These people aren’t stupid.

“That chance only came about because Iwata had been caught napping and dispossessed by Beni Baningime. And that brings us back to the crux of the matter where Celtic’s teetering title defence is concerned.”

Iwata’s mistake was silly. That does happen on the pitch from time to time. I’ve seen top players at world class teams make worse mistakes than that.

“If Rodgers is forced to do without the services of his skipper for any significant length of time then the manager may be reduced to crossing his fingers in the hope that Rangers are incapable of completing their own final chapter. Whoever manages best to stick to the plot over these next few manic weeks is likely to come away with a happy ending.”

Another shit “plot” joke. And another assertion that we don’t function without McGregor, which is disproved by the facts. What we don’t cope well with are obscene red card decisions and blatantly corrupt penalty calls. Any side, captain or not, would struggle to deal with that. None of this changes the central fact that we lost that game because of the officials.

Perversely, Jackson has looked for every means he can to deflect it … but he doesn’t actually deny it and has, in fact, as good as acknowledged it. So what in God’s name is the point of this piece? You might as well ask what the point in Keith Jackson is.