Ally McCoist is a buffoon, but a dangerous one, pushing his baseless Celtic conspiracy theory.

One of the subjects that this blog returns to repeatedly is the issue of hypocrisy. It’s one of the things I hate most, and it’s something we see regularly in Scottish football. It manifests in various ways, but one of the most crucial is the double standard. We all hate the double standard, don’t we?

One of the people this blog has repeatedly criticised is Ally McCoist. He has been trading on his public persona as the so-called “cheeky chappie” for many years now. More than once, I’ve pointed out that this persona is largely a cover for someone who is quite bitter.

I wasn’t surprised to see his intervention in the penalty controversy. Every one of these pundits is going to have their say on this issue, banging the drum for the Ibrox club. I’ve never seen so many former Ibrox players or pro-Ibrox figures in the newspapers in one week, all singing from the same song sheet.

Most of it is easy to ignore.

But McCoist is a little harder to dismiss because it’s his public persona that allows him to say things others couldn’t get away with. I had a very public falling out with Graham Spiers and others in the punditry world last year when the Scottish Government passed its hate crime legislation. McCoist made a quip about being at Ibrox breaking the law, and I couldn’t believe he got away with those comments. He only did because he’s Ally McCoist, and these people are his mates.

They refuse to believe that inside McCoist is a bigot, even when he’s essentially saying it out loud. Some of us have never needed him to spell it out because we already know. We’ve been dealing with people like McCoist our whole lives. He’ll be nice to your face but call you every name under the sun behind your back. These people can smile for the cameras, but in private, when the mask is off, it all comes out.

I wasn’t surprised by his intervention, nor by the sly and sneaky way he made it—trying to sound reasonable while saying something wholly unacceptable. He tried to portray his club as a paragon of virtue that should never go down what he called “the Celtic route” of paranoia and other alleged behaviours.

But as the lads pointed out on the podcast, our biggest problem in the ’90s and the years that followed was that we weren’t paranoid enough. We had suspicions that things were going on behind the scenes, but we had no idea of the extent until HMRC’s investigation into EBTs uncovered the biggest scandal in Scottish football history, one in which I consider the SFA a co-conspirator.

Not only was McCoist having a dig at Celtic’s history, but he also made sure to include Michael Nicholson in his attack, suggesting that Nicholson and Celtic had gone down a “dangerous road.” This echoes comments from Tom English last night, as I highlighted earlier today.

It’s clear that McCoist and English are peddling the same baseless conspiracy theory: that Celtic wields undue influence behind the scenes. Let’s not beat around the bush—that’s exactly what they’re suggesting. By mentioning Michael Nicholson, McCoist implies there was some form of pressure applied, which is absurd.

Joe McHugh attended the AGM, and regular readers will know I backed his questioning of Michael Nicholson. We discussed this on the first podcast and again on Monday’s. None of us believes Celtic has done enough to put pressure on the SFA over officiating. I’ve lamented several times on this blog that we allow the manager to stick his neck out instead of having someone from the club do it.

The suggestion that Michael Nicholson applied pressure on officials at the AGM or in any public forum is not only fanciful but preposterous.

The only person going down a dangerous road here is McCoist himself. He does this often, painting targets on people’s backs while pretending it’s not what he intended. He knows, as well as we do, that Ibrox fan forums are full of this kind of madness, bubbling beneath the surface and often rising above it.

People like McCoist create a dangerous atmosphere by pushing the most discredited conspiracy theory in Scottish football—that Celtic pulls the strings. This theory has been debunked time and again. No one can point to a single instance where Celtic used its influence for its own benefit. If these critics know of something that happened behind the scenes, they should come forward with it, because it certainly hasn’t happened publicly.

If McCoist wants to examine people who’ve behaved hysterically and endangered others, he needn’t look far. It was the Ibrox club that last season tried to pressure officials, demanding certain referees never officiate their games again. Not only did they make this demand privately, but they ensured a fan media outlet leaked it publicly.

Ironically, the referee they targeted was removed from frontline duty but later became head of referees—a turn of events I see as simple karma.

The last time Celtic made an official statement about a referee was about John Beaton, and that statement was that he was incompetent. Beaton received pass marks for the weekend’s game, where a major mistake was made.

But, of course, the media insists it wasn’t his fault. That’s the narrative: it couldn’t possibly be Beaton’s fault because he’s their golden boy. The real scandal is that he was allowed to officiate the game in the first place.

Whoever is to blame for this shabby incident, blaming Michael Nicholson is out of order. Fans like me have accused Nicholson of not doing enough, so the idea that undue pressure from Celtic caused this is laughable.

Whether the media acknowledges it or not, McCoist’s comments and English’s hints boil down to the same baseless allegation.

They don’t get to lecture about dangerous roads while making accusations like these. McCoist, especially, has a history of painting targets and then wriggling out of accountability with excuses about being misunderstood. Most of the time, it’s exactly what he meant, and exactly what he intended.

His biggest problem is his belief that we’re fooled by the cheeky chappie act. We’re not, and we never have been.

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