The only thing Celtic fans are queing for, Tom English, is to laugh at how badly you’re hurting.

Yesterday, in the aftermath of the SFA statement—after the SFA had given some in the media what they’ve wanted since Sunday, which was the confirmation that an error was made—the BBC’s Tom English couldn’t wait to have a go at our fans.

“Celtic fans on here, can you form an orderly queue to admit you were wrong on the penalty. Many thanks,” he said on Twitter. And I have to be honest, I initially reacted very angrily to that tweet. But after a moment, I deleted my reply and thought, no, because what do I really feel about all this?

Let’s start with this: I couldn’t give a monkey’s what this preening arsehole thinks of our fans, and that’s a widely shared view.

The overwhelming response to his arrogant Twitter rant was mockery. And that’s the appropriate response, because that’s all he’s fit for—to be mocked. Because he’s a joke. He spent the past few days fulminating over this and stamping his feet, and it’s not the first time that he’s jumped on an Ibrox bandwagon without a second thought.

We talked about this on the podcast the other night.

We talked about English specifically.

And it wasn’t so much whether it was a penalty or not that we thought was dreadful. It was the fact that a very simple explanation—i.e., that the referee had given a free kick for the initial pull on the jersey when it was still outside the box—didn’t even cross his mind and wasn’t given consideration for even a second. He couldn’t wait to pronounce in Ibrox’s favour. And that’s what was astonishing about it.

I focus most of my attention on the double standard, and I couldn’t have cared less whether it was a penalty or not.

As I’ve said before, I enjoy these little controversies because they make victories all the sweeter, knowing that people like this are out there, hurting, and unable to contain themselves. What I find disgusting is the hypocrisy of people like this, who pick and choose what they want to get outraged about. Because they don’t react like this to every bad decision. In fact, it’s a rarity that they get animated about decisions at all.

English works for the national broadcaster, and he has shamed himself and that broadcaster over and over again over the years. If he wants to apologise to all of us, to all of his listeners or readers, for his own comments on Ibrox’s famous Dodgy Dossier, he should feel free, because rarely has an individual made such a raging fool of himself as he did over that.

And the thing of it is, he’s one of those people who hates being called out on any mistake he makes. He spent the last few days, along with others, pushing a very dangerous narrative. And when challenged on that yesterday, you know what he said? “We entered this dangerous territory quite a while ago.”

Take a moment and think about what he said there. He’s acknowledging that some of his own coverage has verged on accusatory, and he’s excusing that by throwing it back at us and suggesting that we led the discussion here. You know what? He’s right about that too, because we did lead the discussion here. And people like him have decried us at every step of the way as being paranoid.

And it’s not that this guy can’t get his story straight. It’s not that he’s inconsistent in his views. He doesn’t accept that there is anti-Celtic sentiment in some sections of our game. But he does believe that there is an anti-Ibrox cabal operating in the shadows. He’s made this clear several times over the past few years.

And that’s what makes his behaviour yesterday hard to stomach, and it’s why my initial reaction was anger.

Because English is one of the premier conspiracy theorists in the mainstream media. He’s one of the fundamental believers in an anti-Ibrox conspiracy. His conduct during the period when Ibrox was pushing its Dodgy Dossier was so bad and so suspect that two of his own colleagues, Michael Stewart and Graham Spiers, had a public Twitter spat with him over his remarks.

This stems from an article he wrote after the dossier, which he had helped to hype, had been utterly rejected by the clubs as utterly baseless.

In that article, English wrote the following:

“The dossier wasn’t the howitzer (Ibrox’s directors) were hoping for, but neither was it the popgun that the SPFL laughably claimed it to be in their statement of Thursday morning.”

Except, yes, it was the popgun the SPFL claimed it to be. Peter Lawwell described its contents as “embarrassing” and was happy to have that on the record. English, clearly fuming at having seen his own hype come to nothing, went on.

“In this game of politics, (they) made a mistake by hyping what they had. Calling for the suspension of Doncaster and SPFL lawyer, Rod McKenzie, without simultaneously publishing the information that supposedly damned them, was an unwise play – and an unfair slight against both men.”

Notice that there is not a trace of shame in that paragraph about the role he himself played in hyping the document and its ludicrous claims.

“It only ratcheted up the pressure on (them) to back up their fighting talk with knockout evidence,” he wrote, apparently forgetting that he had claimed it contained exactly that, based no doubt on briefings from inside the club.

“They’ve raised a huge amount of questions and have cast a lot of doubt about the performance and motives of the SPFL executive, but it’s not a piece of work that will put Doncaster on the canvas and keep him there.”

You’ll notice the use of the word “motives” in there. So he’s talking here about a conspiracy, isn’t he? You don’t need codebreakers to work that out.

“It would have been interesting to see the reaction to (their) dossier had they been more stoic in the preamble. It’s a serious document and had they published it without fanfare then its impact might have been greater, which would in turn have proven more troublesome for the people at the heart of it.”

It would have been laughed out of the room exactly as it ended up being.

It was certainly not a “serious document.”

It was, in fact, a list of vague innuendos, supposition and atrociously light on actual facts. The whole episode was deeply humiliating for the club and damaging for the credibility of those who presented it as so-called evidence.

He then goes on to write this troubling paragraph, which must have had the BBC lawyers sweating bullets for the line that it tries to skate:

“Because there’s no indisputable evidence of corruption – a bar that grew higher the longer (Ibrox) left it before publishing what they had – then it’s easy for the SPFL board and its supporters to look at this in the narrowest of terms and to shoot it down, as they already have in a short statement and will attempt to do again in a much longer one.”

There was no evidence of corruption at all, indisputable or otherwise.

Only the suggestion that there must have been, because the outcome wasn’t beloved by the Ibrox club or the one at Tynecastle.

You have to remember what the circumstances were in the event of that vote to close the league: we had a global pandemic which was only growing more dangerous. You also have to remember that the position of the Ibrox club was not even that the league should be completed behind closed doors but the preposterous demand that games should be played in front of full houses.

English supported them every step of the way, and when Spiers and Stewart pulled him up on his attempt to deflect attention from his reversal on the issue of Ibrox’s allegation of bullying, he reacted with typical petulance by firing back sarcastically at both. They stuck to their guns, with Stewart saying at one stage that he thought nothing excused the way the Ibrox club had handled the affair.

English’s problem is that he thinks we all have short memories.

He thinks that we don’t all recognise what he is and what he has tried to do at times. But we all know those things. And this is why he is not trusted by our fans. And you know what? I read over the Ibrox fan forums’ threads on that article, and they don’t trust him either. Now you tell me what that does for your credibility.

English has none of it.

His is just one of the many faces that I can see when I close my eyes and think about our triumph on Sunday and what it means for our club and for the one across the city.

I feel glad in my heart, because he is hurting, hurting, hurting big time and his little attempt at lashing out at our fans was greeted by most of those who read it with scorn and hilarity.

And I wish those had been my initial responses.

But I got there—it just took a minute—and so today, yes, I’m laughing like everyone else.

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