Anti-Celtic hack outdoes himself with his latest helping of slop.

Yesterday, I wrote about Dave King and his constant lies, and the astonishing number of people who still take him at his word.

Ibrox fans continue to swallow his fabrications, despite him being exposed repeatedly as a liar. One of his latest claims, which he’s been peddling like snake oil, is that their club could have overtaken Celtic after the 2021 campaign, where they finished as champions, by spending more money and thus taking advantage of the fortuitous situation they found themselves in.

This idea has been debated to death, and it’s almost beyond belief that it’s still circulating. The facts are out there in the public domain; they’re well-known, even to some of those perpetuating this myth. I’m revisiting it because someone pointed me to Gary Keown’s piece in the Mail on Sunday, which repeats the same tired rhetoric—this time with a peculiar twist.

Keown’s article is mostly an attack on the Ibrox board, and under normal circumstances, I’d say let him write whatever he likes on that front—a bit of blue-on-blue action never harmed anyone on the green side of Glasgow. But he drifts into outright fantasy when he describes the summer after that season as a “sliding doors moment.” Gerrard had said at the end of that campaign that recruitment would be crucial, and as Keown notes, their key signings that summer were Sakala, Lundstram, and Bacuna, which he claims represented a failure.

What comes next truly veers into the absurd. I’ll quote it exactly: “They had their foot on Celtic’s throat. A crumbling empire that got lucky by bringing in Ange Postecoglou and giving him carte blanche to rebuild a broken squad.”

Where does one even start with such drivel?

Let’s revisit his central point—that the board let the manager down. This is absolute rubbish. We’ve covered this ground over and over, and the facts are clear. Even King admitted—before he spectacularly changed his tune this summer—that they overspent in the first two seasons, going beyond what they could afford, knowing they would have to cut back in subsequent years. “Front loaded spending”, that was the phrase he used.

It’s no surprise that they scaled back. They had to. On top of that, they emerged from the COVID crisis tens of millions lighter, which further limited their spending power.

So, much as I hate to defend an Ibrox board, the truth is no one botched some golden opportunity. They operated within the constraints they had, and for all the talk of failure, that team was still good enough to reach a European final. This narrative is completely baseless, and those pushing it deserve to be called out.

Even more ludicrous is the claim that they “had their foot on our throat.”

That’s pure fantasy. If Celtic were a “crumbling empire,” how were we able to give a manager total freedom to rebuild the squad? Crumbling empires don’t do that. Yes, hiring Ange Postecoglou might have been fortuitous, but our first choice was Eddie Howe, another top-quality manager who would have debunked any notion that we were falling apart. If hiring Ange was lucky, then the decision to fully support him was one of the smartest moves the club has ever made.

Celtic was never a crumbling empire. We made some poor decisions internally, but the fact that we could still provide the manager with the funds and freedom to rebuild shows we weren’t on our knees, and it proves that there was never a foot on our throat. If you’ve got your foot on someone’s throat, they don’t get back up by sheer luck.

Frankly, this whole narrative doesn’t stand up to even the slightest scrutiny, and for them to cling to this kind of rubbish and believe in it like an article of faith does them nothing but harm. Frankly, it’s entered the realms of blue-on-blue torture porn; we’re all sitting here with our popcorn watching the bloodshed and hardly able to believe our luck.

They are busily tearing each other apart over a supposed “missed opportunity” that never existed IN the first place, and all this self-inflicted damage, clinging to a belief that some grand chance was squandered when, in reality, it was never there to begin with, only makes it harder to move forward.

They reached the limits of what they could achieve, while we, being better managed, surged ahead again. Four seasons of trebles, one season without silverware, followed by a double, another treble, and another double. That season, with empty stadiums and every club slashing budgets, was an anomaly. They capitalised on our dip and took their only title. It did not represent, as they seem to believe, some shifting of the firmament.

Convincing themselves that they missed some golden opportunity is self-delusion at its finest. It’s causing more internal strife than necessary, blaming those who weren’t at fault for things beyond their control, and Keown, unwittingly, is simply twisting the knife.

It’s not the only piece of fiction here either.

The idea that Morelos and Kent could have jumpstarted their player trading model because Lille and Leeds were supposedly ready to pay £30 million for them is another fantasy. Those bids never materialised because that interest never existed, and those players left Ibrox for free just two years later.

Even at the end, no serious clubs were interested in either of them.

Where’s Morelos now? Most people couldn’t tell you. Kent is on the verge of being shown the door at his current club because he simply isn’t good enough. The notion that they missed out on £30 million in transfer fees for those two overhyped thugs is pure make-believe.

Keown has never been particularly credible, sharp, or insightful, but his biggest flaw is a strong streak of anti-Celtic bias that shows up in all his work. From questioning Rodgers’ record—nine trophies out of ten in Scotland; how’s that looking now, Gary? —to this nonsense, it’s always the same.

We shouldn’t be overly worried, though. If they believe their problems stem from Celtic getting lucky or from a board that didn’t spend enough, they’re looking for solutions in all the wrong places. Still, it’s infuriating to see this kind of stuff in a national paper, which could easily afford to hire people who are more grounded in reality.

Why they don’t is a question for them to ponder.