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Ewan Murray’s latest act of anti-Rodgers trolling should embarrass him and his employer.

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Regular readers know that I have a bit more respect for Ewan Murray than for the tabloid hacks. While his Guardian work is occasionally a cut above the typical dreck that plagues the Scottish sporting press, he’s far from perfect.

On Twitter Murray lets himself off the chain, and the results are often disastrous. My friends and colleagues in Celtic fan media frequently draw my attention to Murray’s antics on that toxic platform, where he regularly morphs from a seemingly rational journalist into an outright troll.

There are, it seems, two distinct Ewan Murrays.

There’s the version we see at the Guardian—someone capable of crafting a coherent argument, of stringing together decent sentences that sometimes suggest a spark of intelligence. It’s refreshing, in a way, to see a journalist who can occasionally offer a view which suggests he’s watched more than a handful of football games. And I’m glad that the Guardian, despite its near-total focus on English football, employs someone willing to cover the Scottish game.

But then there’s Twitter Ewan.

Twitter Ewan is an entirely different creature: a venomous character whose primary aim seems to be slinging barbs at Celtic and its manager, Brendan Rodgers. This isn’t professional journalism; it’s petty, personal, and reeking in the way those Facebook posts where people slag their exes is.

Frankly, I don’t know what Rodgers could have possibly done to this man in a past life, but whatever it was, it left a mark. In this one, the worst Rodgers has done to Murray, who is as a Hearts fan, is subject he and his club to a string of savaging’s, but he’s had less of them than the average Ibrox fan so you’d think he’d at least be capable of acting rationally.

But no; it’s like Rodgers personally kicked his dog, and so when Murray starts venting about him, he sounds less like a journalist and more like a bitter ex-partner unable to let go.

Yesterday was a textbook example of Murray’s antics.

The Celtic Star highlighted his latest Twitter tirade against Rodgers, this time because our manager dared to congratulate his team after a hard-fought victory at Motherwell, coming on the heels of our excellent result on Wednesday night.

Murray leapt on a bunch of harmless comments as though they were a personal affront, resorting to his usual sneering jibes about Celtic’s financial advantages over other teams in the league. Apparently, it’s a sin to praise your team for winning a game against a side with fewer resources, according to Murray’s bizarre logic.

But here’s the kicker: Murray loves to harp on about financial disparities when it suits him—namely, in the Scottish domestic context.

Yet he never stops raking Rodgers over the coals for Celtic’s struggles in Europe, where the financial gap between Celtic and its opponents is just as pronounced.

Somehow, in Murray’s world, Rodgers should not boast about how good this team is because he’s got more resources than the teams around him, but by the same token he’s expected to get results when the shoe is on the other foot, and is subject to the wildest criticism when he doesn’t. Let’s put this another way; if Murray was slagging Kettlewell for not finding a way to stop us most people would think he had lost the plot. That’s the benefit of the doubt Rodgers doesn’t get in Europe.

The hypocrisy is glaring, and I’d be shocked if Murray couldn’t see it. But Twitter brings out the worst in him, and he happily inhabits that contradictory mindset there.

Twitter, frankly, is where his true essence shines.

On there, he’s no longer constrained by journalistic integrity, so his trolling tendencies take full control. He’s free to be snide, petty, and mean-spirited without accountability. This isn’t the behaviour of a serious reporter; it’s the behaviour of an attention-seeking troll who’s found a niche he enjoys. If you’re going to indulge in juvenile, inflammatory rhetoric, that’s your choice—but you can’t pretend to be a respectable journalist at the same time.

It’s worth stressing: Murray isn’t a stupid man. But on Twitter, he plays the part rather well. He acts like a troll to stir up attention, fully knowing that it degrades his professional standing. It’s the behaviour of someone dense enough to not care about his reputation, or worse, someone unaware of how transparent his bitterness is.

Murray’s employers at the Guardian should be mortified by the way he conducts himself. His frequent lapses into immature rants drag the Guardian’s brand down and make his own credibility look as shaky as his objectivity.

Murray might want to take a moment to reflect on his Twitter activity from this weekend. There was nothing remotely objective or professional about his comments on Rodgers. They read as though he were having a tantrum, a snide dig with no purpose but to make himself feel good.

For what other purpose did it serve?

Was he simply having a bad day, or did he genuinely believe he was adding something insightful? Whatever justification he thinks exists, all it does is make him look like a scorned ex, still obsessing over Rodgers and eager for any excuse to take a swipe at him.

This repetitive, almost desperate desire to criticise Rodgers speaks to something deeper, almost as if there’s a history between them we’re not privy to. Has Rodgers slighted him in some way? Is there some hidden reason for Murray’s resentment? Whatever the case, if Rodgers has somehow bruised his ego, Murray ought to find a way to address it privately rather than resorting to these unpleasant, public digs. A private conversation might offer him some peace of mind—at the very least, it would be more dignified than broadcasting his bitterness on social media.

This kind of behaviour should be beneath a man with his intellect and professional standing, but evidently, it isn’t. He seems incapable of reigning in his emotions where Rodgers is concerned, letting himself be led by the nose into embarrassing, self-degrading diatribes where the hypocrisy is leaping off the page at you.

Yes, going to Rodgers in private might make him feel humiliated and degraded, depending on what the underlying issue is, but if anything should make him feel bad it should be the thought of that needless, nasty tweet and the mortifying nature of it.

If he were truly committed to his profession, Murray would take a hard look at how he’s presenting himself. Rather than criticising Rodgers, Murray should focus on getting his own emotions under control and bringing his public persona back to something resembling professionalism.

For now, though, Twitter is where he thrives, and perhaps that’s exactly where he belongs—a digital playground for trolls, far removed from the standards of real journalism.

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3 comments

  • TonyB says:

    He is a hurting mini hun and that explains his attitude to all things Celtic.

    Appears able to sublimate when writing for The Grauniad.

    A no mark who is better ignored.

  • peterbrady says:

    The corrupt officials at both games should be demoted down to amatuer football but will probably be promoted at this charade of so called sport . Also we all know the sheep will be cheated by beaton and his cabal to save flipflop and his sevco scum and no doubt on Thursday all the media bigots will be saying honest mistakes even itself over a season . Dirty racist bigot scum the whole lot of them

    • Clachnacuddin and the Hoops says:

      Beaton might play fair if he thinks it’ll hasten the end of Fillipe Fillop at his beloved club Peter !

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