Deranged Hack Attempts To Frame This Summer As A Shambles At Celtic As Well As Ibrox.

Celtic hasn’t done nearly enough in the transfer market. We all know this. But you would not think that there would be any journalist out there brazen enough to suggest that our lack of a couple of quality additions equated to a crisis. You would certainly not think that anyone would seek to paint our club as being as dysfunctional as the one across the road.

But I am guessing that one of two things has happened to Gary Keown. He’s either run out of anti-psychotic medication or he’s taking a bit of stick from his Ibrox brethren and has decided to do a little “but Celtic are a mess too” trolling.

So that’s what he’s done today, in an article that makes Keevins ranting in The Sunday Mail sound intelligent. He’s too late for the Jackson treatment; Keevins got that already so I’m not doing it for Keown, but believe me folks, his piece is absolutely woeful.

His entire piece, in The Daily Mail, is nothing but a bitter rant, and is a re-tread of ancient arguments which would bore you to tears. He’s doing the whole “Celtic are a shambles” bit based on our European record. That’s part of what he’s got his knickers in a knot about. He’s also moaning about our lack of signings, as though someone from Sevconia cares about that.

But he’s once again suggested that Rodgers was a failure in his first stint at the club, although an Invincible Treble contradicts that as well as a grand total of seven trophies from seven. How anyone would have the brass neck to make that claim in the first place, at the start of last season, is incredible enough. To be continuing to defend it, when Rodgers has won another two trophies to go with them, is absurd. His whole article is like that.

In it, he expresses his annoyance at people who rubbed his face in it a wee bit after we won the double, when he had started the campaign decrying Rodgers not even as a busted flush but a guy who has never achieved anything credible in the game.

(Except for the things he’s done in England. Airbrushed out of the narrative of course by a guy whose bitterness is astonishing even by the standards of the rest of the Scottish hacks.)

This shows Keown up for what he is though; one of those “sportswriters” who thinks they have a divine right to spout ignorance nonsense and that the freedom to do it should only apply to them, with no comeback. These people hate being called out on the garbage they write and which blows up in their face, as his pre-season rant was always going to.

He claims in the piece that “(Ibrox) have emphasised success in Europe and have achieved plenty there.” And I laughed out loud at that, and even more so in that he appears to be using this as an excuse for their lack of a league title in the last three years.

Keown is hurting. He is hurting so much that he’s lashing out at a familiar target; us. Maybe we should feel sorry for the guy, but I absolutely don’t. I feel nothing but contempt for people like this, people who should be holding their own club to account.

The crux of his piece appears to be that our fans, and theirs, tolerate too much from our clubs. Is he joking? He must have missed the fan media coverage last summer got, the fan media coverage the club got from the failure to strengthen for Europe.

I am firmly of the view that it was Celtic fan media which ushered Lawwell junior out the door and which continues to put pressure on the chairman to follow his boy off into the sunset.

Ibrox fan media, by contrast, is still not properly pressing their club on where they’ll be playing their matches, and I suppose that’s only natural when the media is putting them under no pressure whatsoever. Nor are they questioning the “quality” of the signings.

Keown has never been playing with a full deck of cards, but time after time he proves to us how off the planet and wired to the moon he really is.

There is one story which should be getting pulled apart by every newspaper columnist in this country. Keevins thinks that it’s no big deal. Jackson wants to ignore it completely. Keown wants to equate it with Celtic not signing anyone yet.

None of that is credible, because it’s perfectly obvious that the club from Ibrox is in deep, deep crisis with this stadium thing, which in spite of Keevins blithe suggestion that it’s only a minor inconvenience has knock-on affects for every part of their club, including, by the way, their chances of reaching the Champions League and the manager’s ability to spend money, not to mention the prospect of refunds on a grand scale.

And this is what these people choose to do … to blow smoke. They can blow as much as they like. The objective facts don’t change either way.