Cryptic Teases Are The Media’s Way Of Telling Celtic Fans “We Have Nothing To Report.”

Yesterday was a day of “cryptic teases.” Don’t’ you hate those?

Celtic fans are used to this stuff now, to hacks with nothing better to do with their time scouring for anything they can pull a thread on.

It’s awful.

But the “cryptic teases” are the absolute pits, amongst the worst stories the media can write except for the kind of pro-Ibrox cloud-pleaser fluff I wrote about earlier.

They, too, get a lot of “cryptic tease” stories.

They got one yesterday, as Steven Gerrard’s latest comments were pored over for some hint, however small, however minor, which might suggest that there was some truth to the fantastical rubbish about his Saudi club being ready to bail out Ibrox with big money moves for the players it no longer wants. Gerrard did nothing of the sort, of course, but the mere mention of his being ready to sit down with his board to discuss targets got a lot of them excited.

One of their fan media outlets – I won’t embarrass them with a name – suggested that this might be Gerrard’s way of “making it up to them” for “walking out” when he and how he did. They really do believe that this is the way football people operate. Gerrard has his current job to worry about and his own paymasters to serve. He is not in the business of doing favours to former employers and his current ones wouldn’t let him even if he wanted to.

Still, The Record seemed to think that there was something newsworthy in his comments, and that this was another “hint” – another “cryptic tease” – that these deals might still be in the offing, in spite of writers over there dismissing this weeks ago as sheer fantasy.

For Celtic fans, the “cryptic hints” came first from Idah, who “liked” an Instagram post from a fan who was asking him to come back next season, and secondly in a statement from the Bronby chief executive about the future of Mathias Kvistgaarden.

Except, that he never actually mentions that player, or us, in his comments.

He was, in fact, talking about how their club operates a development model similar to ours.

“That would be a good step on the way,” he said, about the prospect of selling some players, and how this enables them to progress by letting them re-invest the cash. “We must have a competitive squad. As a starting point, it’s not because too many people have to go out, but there will be turnover over a summer. There was some interest previously and we expect more. It’s also nice to have some new blood and so on.”

Not one word of that concerns us. Not one word.

But The Record’s writers are so desperate for content that this has been turned into a Celtic story via the “cryptic tease.” That’s dreadful journalism. There is no “tease” in that, cryptic or otherwise. There is nothing cryptic about it either, it’s a straightforward statement about their club policy.

What Mark Pirie has done here is take a throwaway statement and basically manufactured news.

In the absence of having something concrete to report he has simply made something up, which is really low-order stuff. So too are the hacks who are trying to make more of an Instagram like than can possibly be justified by it.

As I wrote yesterday, Celtic and Idah are being very careful and very diplomatic because they have to be.

I am sure we’d like to sign him and he’d like to sign, but until we’re a lot further down the line than right now it’s stupid for either party to stick their neck out too far, and so there will be no real news on this until real talks have progressed to a positive outcome.

When our sports media is writing about “cryptic teases” and “cryptic hints” or whatever other language they are using, file it under Fiction because that’s what it is. It’s them trying to dredge up a story where none exists.

It’s their way of saying “we don’t know what’s going on but we have to fill column inches.”

No wonder nobody trusts them any longer.