Celtic’s penalty win at Hampden got none of the credit Ibrox got today.

So last night, the Ibrox club got through their Europa League game against Fenerbahçe. There was a massive story to tell here, but I’m going to leave it for now—until tomorrow instead. Today, I want to focus on the game itself and what I think is yet another example of the media’s staggering hypocrisy.

A lot of hacks are celebrating because their favourite team has gone through. That doesn’t mean I’m going to give them a free pass.

I understand why they’re in a good mood. What I don’t understand is why some of them are actually euphoric. But since their own editors won’t hold them to account, and the tiny handful of readers they have left won’t hold them to account, who else is here to do it? Who else but us?

What’s my bone of contention? Well, I just find it a little bit absurd to read some of the coverage of a victory achieved on penalty kicks in a game where they deserved to have their backsides handed to them.

Barry Ferguson is strutting around like a conqueror. The media is talking him up as some sort of managerial guru. I can’t help but scratch my head and think—why didn’t Brendan Rodgers and our team get this level of praise after the League Cup Final?

See, I can take the criticisms when they come. I can take the media BS when it’s being spread around like manure on a field. But what I don’t like, and what pisses me off to the extent that I have to rant about it, is this kind of blatant double standard.

Suddenly, it’s permissible to secure a victory in a penalty shootout? Now, a manager who does that is a genius?

Because that’s not what they said when it was us who got through a match on penalties. That’s not what they did after the League Cup Final.

That was all about how the beaten team was the better team, how they were brilliant, how they deserved to get more out of the game. And that wasn’t even true. We deserved to win. Every statistical metric bore that out.

Last night, there was no doubt who the better team was.

Had Fenerbahçe played like that in the home leg, there would have been no need for penalty kicks. They would have won the tie comfortably—very comfortably indeed. They should have won last night out of the park.

I listened to Mourinho’s hard luck story in the aftermath of the game, and I was completely unmoved by it—because they didn’t do enough in the first leg to get through. They didn’t do enough last night to win the tie.

They were awful in the penalty shootout. To miss three is almost unconscionable, so they didn’t prepare properly. They didn’t do all the things they should have done, and that’s why they lost. By all those metrics, they got what they deserved.

The team that put in the work, the team that was disciplined, got through to the next round. See, I’m not saying the media shouldn’t be giving Ferguson and his team credit. They made it. They’ve done the job. They’ve completed the mission—even if I think Mourinho’s team blew it for themselves to an extent. All the credit goes to them because they’re through and Fenerbahçe are not.

But if we’re going to say that, and if we’re going to give Ferguson credit, if we’re going to say that the side who went through deserved to go through because they did the work over the two legs, then I want some consideration for what we did in the Cup Final. I want some consideration for our stellar record this season. And I want to hear no more of this rubbish—this absolute objectionable garbage—about how we won the cup on nothing but luck, as though a penalty win shouldn’t count.

They used that to rewrite history.

They used that to turn a defeat into some kind of triumph and to undermine what we achieved. As if our victory was unearned. As if it wasn’t proof of preparation, of discipline, of composure. Winning on penalties shows remarkable discipline and composure. The same sort they showed last night in putting away so many of their spot-kicks. The kind they showed in defence last night to stop the other team from scoring enough goals to go through on the night.

So if it’s good enough for them, then it’s good enough for us—or it ought to be. And I would just like it if, for once, the media covered it in the same way and showed us the respect they get automatically.

And of course, bigger issues arise from the game. Much bigger ones. But I didn’t have time to write about them today, and I’ve pencilled them in for tomorrow. Be sure of this, though—I haven’t overlooked them, and I’m not going to.

And I hope to God that UEFA isn’t going to overlook them either, and that Celtic are likewise watching.

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