Whenever I sit down to write a Fear & Loathing piece these days, I always want to record the podcast version first and open with some downbeat poem, and some mournful violin music in the background, just for the giggles, just to pretend that the words need to be spoken in a soft, quiet, almost sad voice when really, I’m holding back laughter.
This is an old trick in theatre. It’s also an old trick in music.
I’m a lyrics guy. I love a good lyric. And when that’s melded to a good tune that’s a happy coincidence that I am ever grateful for.
And nothing is cooler than a set of lyrics set to a tune which doesn’t match the mood of the words.
One of my favourites is a Warren Zevon tune called Bad Karma, one with a foot-tapping tempo, but devilishly downbeat lyrics.
Was it something I did in another life?
I try and try but nothing comes out right for me
Bad karma, killing me by degrees …
All summer long, it seems, we’ve all been looking ahead to this day and wondering how it would go, stuck as we are in the perverse circumstances where the team which finished second is kicking off ahead of the champions, who are unfurling the flag.
We probably all harboured a suspicion that they would find a way past Hearts in spite of all the gloom that has descended on their club; after all, looking at that starting lineup today there wasn’t a world of difference between that and the team which pulverised Naismith’s hapless lot several times last season. And yet it wasn’t to be.
In fact, things proceeded along more or less the lines their pre-season and their dreadful, abject state suggested they would before a ball was kicked.
That weird floating sense of dread that they’ve been encased in, that bad karma that’s hung over them for months, it’s not in their imaginations, it’s real after all, and they really are in a whole lot of trouble.
Imagine how it feels to be them right now.
I took a wrong turn on the astral plane
Now I keep on thinking my luck is gonna change someday
Bad karma, it’s uphill all the way …
Phillipe Clement, at least, should be smiling right now.
He signed a new deal yesterday, and one can only wonder whether that was his bright idea of theirs, but when a guy who already had three years to run on his deal and whose jacket is already on a very shaky nail is signing a new contract it seems obvious that it’s more in his benefit than it is theirs.
More money if they have to pay him off? Oh, for sure.
But perhaps a handy escape hatch just in case some club is mad enough to come in and take him off their hands.
Whatever it is, if you’re an Ibrox fan reading that news yesterday, are you really confident that things just got better, or are you afraid that they just got worse?
What about if you’re reviewing it in light of that performance, and that result, today?
Does that four year deal look like solid corporate strategy or suicidal stupidity which can only have an unhappy ending?
It’s a dog’s life and it’s not my fault
Ought to hang my picture in the all-time losers’ hall of fame
Bad karma, it’s a low-down dirty shame for you
They started Tavernier, who knows he’s only at the club because no offer came in for him.
They started Wright, who they can’t even give away, and they have tried.
They started Dessers who every agent in Europe has been messaged about … and he was their best player today by a country mile and should have scored, except that he’s Cyriel Dessers.
Their keeper had little to do, but still managed to make one of those heart-in-the-mouth mistakes which would have me hiding my face every time the ball went near him.
But nothing summed their day up for me more than Cortes, their winger, going down early in the second half after inexplicably starting it after he’d sustaining a knock I felt certain would result in his staying in the dressing room after the break … he looked pained, and then he stood up and cried real tears.
Yet he was fit enough to walk around the pitch to be subbed.
I saw that and thought, “This kid’s all over the shop. That injury is more in his head than real,” and imagine that?
You’d be terrified if you were watching one of our own players do that.
They have him on a “buy now, pay later” deal which is locked in and where they do absolutely have to find the money to make the deal permanent, and this for a player who spent most of his loan spell last year lying on the treatment table listening to his iPod.
Clement saw enough to want him there on a long-term deal. The treatment table being the “there” in question, presumably, as he played in a grand total of six matches during his loan spell, and not even for the full 90 minutes in most of them.
After the game, he said it was a good result against the team that placed third last season and then lamented that they had missed John Lundstram.
Christ. Is that what he’s come to now?
Excuses like that? Are we allowed to do that if we don’t do well in Europe?
Talk about how we missed Steve Chalmers and Jimmy Johnstone?
I can’t run, I can’t hide
I can’t get away
It must be my destiny
The same thing happens to me every day
Bad karma coming after me
Bad karma, killing me by degrees …
You can only imagine how this is going down on their fan forums, right?
They aren’t the most tolerant, respectful or civilised places at the best of times but as it sinks in that this really is happening, that their problems are factual, that the bad karma is not just vapours but that their issues are substantial and genuine, that they really do have a guy at the helm who “just doesn’t get it” and that the team they’ve spent the summer assembling really isn’t up to much the fear grows and the loathing grows with it.
That is not a happy camp to be part of right now.
The stink of defeatism wafts off them like the smell of impending death on a dying animal … and with Kiev away coming up in Lublin, Poland, on Tuesday night, with so much at stake in that game, the predators are already closing in.
Bad karma? Bad everything.
This is where, if I did the audio, I’d end this piece with the Death March.
Now it’s over to Celtic, to really pile on the misery, and the pressure.
There will be at least two video clips floating about from different games tomorrow
All asking about consistency on hand balls in the box
Guaranteed
No way do see this being Constituent throughout the Season..
Extended contract could his contract out live the club?
magic james
Was there not something weird in the lead up to him joining originally where he had to be paid contract in full if he was sacked? I’m wondering if the extension was contractual as well.
Excellent article, especially citing the late, great Warren Zevon…Grandpa pissed his pants again… he was a true individual. Never thought I’d hear Warren used to hammer the huns. Keep skelping it into them, James.
🙂 🙂 Been a superfan for years.
Can’t get enough of the Excitable Boy, 30 years gone, never forgotten.
I watched the game but not the post match interviews, sounds like I missed the good bit. I actually came away from the game a bit disappointed Hearts never won. Why Cortez started the 2nd half is a mystery, why Clement got a new deal is a mystery. How Limassol afforded Goldson is a mystery.
We know they desperately tried to sell Dessers yet didn’t bring Danilo in when they needed a goal.
Hahaha Lundstrum!
Le Flippe Flop will be gone by Sept 1st when they’re MINIMUM 7 pts behind & oot the Champions League!! In Hampdump tae Feb at least, they’re a TOTAL DISASTER!!
A decent result that could’ve been better had it not been for Scottish ‘cheats with whistles, flags and monitors’ yet again…
Was out today at other things so didn’t know the result until after 3pm but I’ll take it for sure –
And Clachnacuddin beat Keith 2-0 and are joint top of The Highland League – Jeez wonders will never cease…
A decent Saturday so far and off out for dinner with friends and a mega booze up thereafter !
Oh yes, definitely.
Nice one James ? I hope we don’t just pile on the agony but put on the style. That will surely send them over the top. HH
That should have been nice one James! With no question mark.
🙂
Clement really struggles to get through an interview without making a direct or indirect reference to us. Today he mentioned how teams struggle against Hearts, even Celtic. Previously after a pre-season match and before we had signed the goalies, when asked about his signings, he mentioned that other teams hadn’t signed anybody. He’s obsessed with us, it’s constant, we’re rent free in his head!!
Contract to 2028 to coincide with works being completed at ibrox
We should av finnished them years ago but for the greed off our board we never and they will never do it
2sides locked together imo. Draw fair result. Have hearts stepped up or the rangers stepped down. I reckon Hearts will overtake the rangers to second place.
My hun neighbour and decent guy had a chat with my son after the game stating no heart in the the rangers team. Surgically removed by Clemente.
Celts will be 4 to the good tomorrow. HH
It’s a point more than Ange got at Tynecastle in our first game of the season 21/22. That’s the way some might look at it. Including Clement himself.
As much as I am happy when that lot don’t win and as much as I enjoy a Fear and Loathing piece on here, I don’t think this one is justified. Their view will be that whatever lead we build up, whilst they get their ideas in place, can be clawed back like it was last season.
I enjoyed listening to Brendan’s confidence the other day but we need reinforcements. I would rather we got them in earlier but this is something that Celtic fans should be used to, waiting till the death. But I am still sure we will be stronger than heading into September.
If I am right fhen I think we’ll hold them off again but it’s going to be another long season. I am also sure of that. Clemente might talk pish and I agree that the contract extension is a head scratcher. But if I were one of them (thank Christ not) then I would applaud that move. Give the man time, that lot need stability. And he is a million times better than Beale.
One last point (other than thanking you for putting me onto Warren Zevron – in a previous article) is that you have a go at other teams for not putting up a better challenge. I remember the days when a 0-0 at Tynecastle was a decent result. It seems that Hearts played OK yesterday. If they can find some consistency then maybe they can maintain a semblance of a challenge for a change.
Hiwever, I was sure the huns would do it. Buy we all know the papers will use this score to put more pressure on Hearts to do the honourable thing and send Shankland “home”.
It’s good to be back. Even if it annoys the fk out of me.
Mon the Hoops!
Key difference for me Roonsa with regard to Ange losing his opening game there is that it was clear to me even then that he had a clear style of play that he was implementing. And the result that night didn’t reflect the performance. This is missing from Clemente’s team.
Watching the match I wondered if a Sevco win might be better as it may alert the Celtic board to making signings, and a defeat the reverse effect.
I soon realised I’d been sucked into that ridiculous way of thinking and returned to normality and wanted Hearts to beat them convincingly, which they should have.