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Scottish Football Hasn’t Done Anything To Clement. If He’s Changed, Only One Club Did It.

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In the aftermath of today’s game, I find it hilarious to ponder Hugh Keevins and others.

I haven’t read Hugh Keevins today. I don’t intend to read Hugh Keevins today.

There is one part of his article that I am aware of and I can pretty much base this on that section of it. I’m told that his article is a denunciation of Philippe Clement … does Keevins sense a change in the mood music?

Keevins is not the first of the hacks to take him to task for some of the rubbish he’s talked this past week; I’m only surprised that there hasn’t been more criticism of him considering how ridiculous his comments were.

Keevins’ comments are no less absurd, however.

“What have we done to him in the space of six months?” he asks. “Clement came here as a man of sophistication with multiple title wins in Belgium and a spell at Monaco in France adding to his continental lustre. Now he’s babbling on about people having different coloured glasses. Or telling us he has it on good authority that Sky Sports’ referee in residence Dermot Gallagher is more of a Celtic supporter than he is a neutral observer.”

So much of that is sycophantic claptrap that you could easily skip right over the truly objectionable bit. A man of sophistication? Continental lustre? Says who?

I didn’t twig this, but someone told me earlier that he has won two in his last seven games … two in the last seven. Imagine that was Rodgers. Would someone non-media related have had to tell me that? The hacks wouldn’t have stopped talking about it in the last week going into this game.

Clement has won a handful of titles in a small league and his time in Monaco was an unmitigated disaster ending in the sack.

Keevins thought all the same stuff about Van Bronckhorst; it’s almost embarrassing how impressed he is by a well-tailored suit and a foreign accent.

I am not convinced this was ever a “nice guy”: he just doesn’t exude any warmth. He is clearly narcissistic, and that’s fine, but all the media does is continue to feed his ego.

Clement’s instinct after the game today was to walk straight past the manager who had just beat him and up the tunnel; I have no doubt that he was told that he couldn’t do that and reversed himself when he realised how stinking it would look.

But that this was his initial impulse is telling and it says nothing good about him at all.

But Keevins assertion that Scottish football has “done something” to him; it’s cobblers.

Whatever he didn’t bring with him to this country already – and there is much evidence to suggest that he is an abrasive guy who rubs people the wrong way – was done to him by the same folk who turned Van Bronckhorst into a parody of himself, and he really did arrive at Ibrox with a lot of refinement and class, and with a vastly better CV than Clement.

This isn’t Scottish football, it’s that club over there, the one he manages. It gets inside people’s heads. We’ve all talked about this enough times to recognise it.

The second you arrive at Ibrox you have the “cultural types” hovering around you, cooing in your ear. That’s what turns reasonable, sensible people into narrow minded, paranoid loons.

His comments in midweek stunk of the Ibrox mindset. It’s just like Keevins to identify the problem but instead of pointing the finger where it belongs – which might upset them somewhat – he suggests that all of us have some hand in it; we don’t.

It’s the people who work in the environs of Ibrox who did this, people like Alex Rae, who he brought onto his coaching team to provide the “local knowledge.”

Yeah, we know what that means alright.

Someone sent me a brilliant screenshot from a Celtic forum today which identified this as “Phase Two” of the Ibrox “managerial cycle.” The honeymoon is over, and now the mitigation is being offered; “This isn’t his team.” We all know what Phase Three is. The moment when they turn on him and the venom starts to pour in his direction.

We may not be as far away from that as some people think.

From the moment they went top of the league, we’ve been moving towards a day like this. He would have survived, easily, without any rancour, had they just come up short when we were seven points clear. That was someone else’s screw up, after all.

But the second they went top this went from being The Mooch’s disaster to something that could be hung around his own neck … and I don’t think he’s fully grasped how quickly his fan-base, or the media, could turn on him.

He probably wouldn’t believe that if you told him. He probably still thinks the media would continue loving him no matter what, but they care about their club and when they think he’s an obstacle to their “success” they will turn on him too.

Has Keevins caught the change in the wind? I suspect not. He wouldn’t catch that until it reached hurricane force proportions and was uprooting trees in Glasgow Green.

But Keevins, who predicted last weekend that we would get turned over at Ibrox, feels like a mug and realised before today that the victory many of them just assumed is not going to come as easily as they imagined, if it comes at all, and that’s why we’re starting to see the questions being asked.

But Clement’s general attitude, and the stench of paranoia that wafts off him right now, is Made In Ibrox itself. Leave the rest of us out of this, Keevins.

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  • Fun time frankie says:

    If the old hanker shug I every admitted to a home ,I’d love to piss in his cornflakes and have the skids on his dinner, then tell him to enjoy his mince,cause this olð fullwit is already full of shit so giving him another plateful wouldn’t make any difference.

  • Nick66 says:

    James, I listen to SSB on game day just to hear that old PRIK sully his non rep by predicting the nuclear scenario, re Celtic 5 minutes into the second half of the game. So, Celtic duly delivered the result that mattered to us,and, negated his downbeat comments. I truly don’t know what kind of parody he is, so many to choose from.
    The Scream,?, was absolutely brilliant in his end of match tunnel dive.

  • Stevie65 says:

    Big Phil, indoctrinated into the ibrox culture from day one. SFA against us, all the other teams, the fixtures ….the pitchees ( big Phil voice) The media against us etc,etc,etc.
    Excuse after excuse, moaned last week about Goldsons hand ball, not a bloody word today on the penalty against RC.
    The pressure is bloody brilliant and the title will be all the sweeter, as they had it won weeks ago.
    Hail Hail

  • Steven Thomson says:

    I’ve said all along that managers have to follow the pr regime at ibrox and just talk pish to the media because it’s the rangers way and narrative as in self righteousness and the we are the peepul mentality they have to follow. It’s pathetic as do these guys who take charge actually do there homework and find out exactly what they are all about ?? OBVIOUSLY NOT .

  • RefMartin says:

    The October to April chapter ends. Now comes the April to August chapter (hope for the transfer window and the new signings). The August to October chapter is my favourite though, where the new signings disappoint and we move towards the inevitable manager change.

  • Clachnacuddin and the Hoops says:

    It definitely does do something to normally sane people that have anything to do with them…

    Yesterday one came into our company in the boozer, normally a really sane guy that is married and holds down a job – Just a normal guy till it comes to Sevco –

    So we get onto the subject of The Glasgow Derby and he states that Beaton gave Celtic ‘everything’ on the day and that it was ‘never’ a penalty to Celtic but was to Sevco…

    Well I soon put him to rights on the facts and figures on that one for sure, he then resorted to the historical cases which I pointed out to him that he was weaponising as he was more worried about the amounts that Celtic would need to pay rather than how the alleged victims wellbeing was.
    He didn’t want to or simply couldn’t or more likely wouldn’t take ma return points in…

    The best thing was as The Celtic Goals rained in, in the second half and his utter disappointment…

    But yep – That place (Liebrox) and that club that are only 11 years and 260 days as of today (Sevco) certainly leave a helluva lot of utter negativity to be desired for sure !

    • Jim Duffy says:

      I’ve been there clachnacuddin,a Glasgow guy at my work in England was going on about sevco how great they were going to be , remember when mike Ashley was going to buy sevco and get Newcastle into Europe with sevco being the feeder club for greatness to happen for sevco,I suggested to him that he needs to stop taking deludomol,his reaction instead of taking about sevco and football was ,the celtic boys club abuse.No answer when questioned about sevco but there all like that ,the fuckin peepul,dirty bastards

    • William Melvin says:

      Clach,you should have told him Celtic FC will not be paying out a single penny(or as Fergus once famously said “not one thin dime”) because it will be down to the club’s insurers to award the compensation these poor guys deserve to help rebuild their shattered persona’s
      It is they,the insurers,who have caused the outrageous delays in reaching a settlement by virtue of their prevarication in these matters…..It’s what insurers do !!!
      Right enough,your chances of being served in your local after his brain exploded all over the pub would be similar to the Sevconian’s empathy towards the CA victims ……None,zilch,nada !!!
      It may, however,be too late to mention this fact to him as the result in Dingwall may already have done the trick.
      Ahhh well,not to worry,eh ?
      It’s not as if he had the cure for cancer lurking in his deranged cranium.

  • harold shand says:

    Keevins is a disaster , just like the guy Joe Pesci talks about in Casino and says

    ” This guy could f*ck up a cup of coffee “

  • Roonsa says:

    That anyone would ever think Keevins words worthy of comment is beyond me. And that is not a dig at the author of this piece. Keevins has been gifted a soapbox and he (aforementioned author) has to hold that to account. I get it.

    It just astonishes me that Keevins is given anything. What is his talent? It sure as fk aint being a wordsmith. His demented ramblings are, at best, incoherent. He surely can only be the relic of a bygone time when you could turn up at the wrong interview, still get the job and making a decent living out of it by just turning up every day.

    The quality of his output is so rank, I think he is an embarrassment to the trade. And he gets to spout his nonsense on the beautiful game! Can nobody get what a travesty that is? The man is a clown. And old one at that and he should have been kicked into touch at the end of the eighties where his patter belongs.

    Please please PLEASE. Can we stop giving this man an opportunity to speak? It’s long past being a joke. Seriously.

    • Jimmy says:

      Don’t care a jot what Keevins thinks. I will say it again, if Keevins or Jackson etc torments you then that is your issue.
      My team sits at the top of the league and that’s all that matters.

  • Johnny Green says:

    Listen everyone, if James stopped writing about these quacks, then none of us would be any the wiser regarding their bullshit comments. We can filter out the wood from the chaff and ignore certain idiotic punters, but it is still good to know sometimes just how far they venture into their own fantasy world with their depraved rants. Although I personally wouldn’t give them any air time, I still welcome James’s updates on them, it is nice to know the pain that they are experiencing and the resultant incoherent havering that pain produces.

    Keep on keeping on Jamesy Bhoy.

  • Johnny Green says:

    Oh my snarlin, oh my snarlin, oh my snarlin Clement whine
    Thou are at last a hun forever, dreadful sorry Clement swine

    • William Melvin says:

      OUTSTANDING, johnny Bhoy,pmsl.

    • Clachnacuddin and the Hoops says:

      Yep – Absolutely Brilliant indeed…

      Now – Lets get that on a slip of laminated paper on every seat for The Glasgow Derby match…

      And if we’re two up with say five to play…

      Then all 60,000 Hoops Fans –

      Give it FCUKIN LALDY Bhoys & Ghirls !!!

  • Daithi canning says:

    A club built on hate,of Irish,catholic, rooted in orange bigotry…..never a football club,a tribe of bigots…. And the Scottish press want the cult to succeed…….always remember they in their d.n.a.,believe ,,they are up to their knees in Fenian blood…..write the truth keevins.

  • John mcghee says:

    Keevins is nothing but a scared old scumbag to tell the truth on supersevcoboard to these scumhuns who go on itand tell more lies than jackanory he’s a dirty old ratbag and so is the rest of the RATS on that radio show full of punits who are all huns all they talk is utter shite and lie after lie but no wonder they’re terrified to tell the truth incase the threats follow them and their family’s dirty cowards on SUPERSEVCOBOARD THE RATS.

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