Mark Pirie’s Desperate Oh Story Is Symptomatic Of A Media With Nothing To Write About.

The desperate Daily Record is at it again today with another lamentable piece which reveals the difficulty a lot of its writers are having with finding content to fill their deplorable site during the summer, when there are no match reports to file.

This one is about is about Oh, and there were a lot of stories Mark Pirie could have written here.

So what was his angle into the story?

“Oh leaves some fans fuming with exit signal” screams part of his latest headline. I mean, really?

This is a reference to the player deleting some Celtic stuff from Instagram, and a handful of comments from fans. I’ll tell you, if you’re “fuming” about something as innocuous as this then I don’t think you have a whole lot going on in your life, and maybe you need to calm down.

The number of people who even care is vanishingly small, but these are the extremes our hacks go to now in order to try and generate stories, even when there is no story to be had.

This forms part of a wider article, called the “Celtic transfer bulletin” in which there is absolutely no news of any clear description to share. There’s a brief segment about the Atletico keeper, who will only be allowed to leave on loan or at an exorbitant price (he’s literally just signed for them and is about to play in the Euros) and a piece about Jota and how his price tag has dropped to £10 million, as if this somehow put him into our target bracket.

Neither of these guys is taking the wage cut that brings them to Celtic. That the story of the keeper surfaced yesterday at all was a classic case of the media linking us to a target because they had linked us to him last year or the year before … Celtic is probably working off a different transfer list, and the simple truth is that the hacks have no idea who is on it.

But what makes this piece particularly pathetic, of course, are those lines about Oh, and about a tiny number of people who aren’t happy with him because he’s no longer following Celtic on a social media platform. As if you would expect him to, with him halfway out the door.

“With a move inching closer, eagle-eyed Hoops fans have spotted that Oh has cleared any Celtic related images from his Instagram page. This comes after the fringe man posted a story of himself training, simply writing ‘Next one…’ – appearing to allude to the switch to Belgium,” Pirie writes.

“The social media clearout has split the Parkhead punters. Some have criticized the outgoing Celtic man, with one stating: “Oh deleting his Celtic posts. He’s one to forget.” Another asked: “Did he have any highlights to post?” he says, probably quoting the only posts he could find which justified him writing his shoddy story.

Look, Oh is going to go with the best wishes of most fans.

He was simply a guy who someone sent to the wrong film set; he was offered a chance to go to Europe and play and he took it. The problem is not with him but with the geniuses who thought this rookie kid could come in and fill the boots of a proven scorer like Giakoumakis. The day I get upset with the player for that will be a pretty bad one.

Most Celtic fans are pretty relaxed about the sale, and happy about the money we’re getting for him, a nice return on a player who didn’t set the heather on fire but who has somehow helped us post a transfer trading profit.

Pirie could write about that if he chose, and contrast it with the state the Ibrox club is getting itself into trying to punt Lammers … thank God for that small number of people who posted nasty things on Instagram.

They made sure he didn’t have to.