Ferguson’s comments on the Cerny incident at Celtic Park are grossly irresponsible.

Earlier today, Barry Ferguson gave a series of interviews, and in one of them, he addressed the Vaclav Cerney incident at Celtic Park a fortnight ago. He expressed complete indifference about what happened that day, stating that he wants his players to celebrate.

Regular readers will know that I don’t consider this guy the sharpest tool in the box. Ferguson is the epitome of the clichéd thick footballer. If he couldn’t kick a ball, God alone knows what menial task he’d have had to eke a living out of. He certainly wouldn’t have been headhunted by GlaxoSmithKline.

But Ferguson isn’t that stupid. He knows full well where the line is between celebrating—perfectly valid, perfectly legitimate—and goading rival supporters. That’s exactly what his player did, and Ferguson knows it.

This is a two-fold scandal: first, Ferguson is taking us for fools, pretending not to understand what the issue is. Second, the journalists interviewing him failed to hold him accountable, when it was blatantly clear what should have been said.

The same media that hypes this fixture as the most intense in world football can’t pretend that an incident like this is meaningless or can be ignored. Yet that’s exactly what they’re doing, allowing Ferguson to say whatever he likes without pushback. The SFA is also sitting on its hands, refusing to take disciplinary action.

This isn’t complicated, despite the best efforts of some to muddy the waters. It’s a simple matter of whether this kind of conduct is acceptable in football. Ferguson is saying it is—that players can goad and inflame opposition fans with impunity. The media, by its silence, is agreeing. They are saying it’s fine for a manager to set that standard. The SFA is conspicuous by its own silence.

It is grossly irresponsible to send that message. I already criticised the media for trying to find excuses and mitigations for what Cerney did.

The rules of the game exist to prevent exactly this kind of behaviour. If there’s a sanction—and right now, there’s no sign of one—then he deserves whatever he gets. But it’s disgraceful that the media is making excuses for him, whether by pushing them directly or by allowing Ferguson to spout them unchallenged. He should be getting raked over the coals for this.

Earlier this week, I wrote that no Celtic player would have gotten away with this if it had happened at Ibrox. That player would still be getting battered in the press two weeks later, and there would be demands for the SFA to issue a statement and take action if they hadn’t already, and we know they would have.

That is not hyperbole. It is a fact. We all know it.

But we can go further. Because no Celtic manager—especially not Brendan Rodgers—would have been allowed to defend a player who did this, with the media simply nodding along. It’s inconceivable that Rodgers would sit there and excuse a Celtic player doing this to Ibrox fans without facing an immediate backlash.

Instead, Ferguson is being allowed to get away with it, even as he prattles on about “restoring standards.” Is this the kind of standard he’s talking about? We know it is. We know Ferguson enjoyed watching his player get in the faces of our fans. We know he doesn’t care that it could have sparked serious trouble—because he would have simply blamed us for it, just as much of the media would have.

Celtic, for example, would never have been allowed to use the same excuse that the Ibrox club trotted out after the 2016 Scottish Cup Final—that their fans were “provoked” into rioting.

But it’s not even the double standard that bothers me most. We’ve lived with that for years. We know they get treated differently in the media.

We know excuses are made for them that would never be made for us. And we know the press has been desperate for a “real Ranjurs man” in the dugout over there—this is them getting their wish.

The real question is this: Do we, as a collective, in the Scottish football community, accept that deliberately winding up fans in this fixture, in these circumstances, was reckless at best and outright dangerous at worst?

The answer to that can only be yes. And if that’s the case, then it raises another question: isn’t a manager who defends that behaviour—who says it’s exactly what he wants from his players—also being reckless and promoting something dangerous?

To me, that’s a no-brainer. But only in this warped little corner of the footballing world would that basic truth be ignored.

I have no idea what the SFA is waiting for. It’s been two weeks since that game—how many more do they need to act? If they claim they’re waiting on the outcome of a police investigation, that’s a ludicrous excuse. It doesn’t take a police case to determine that this violates the rules of the game and undermines Scottish football.

Whether Ferguson thinks this is beneath his “standards” or not, the game itself cannot afford to set this precedent. Because we all know that in different circumstances, this kind of behaviour could have resulted in serious disorder. Unless the SFA steps in, the message being sent here is that would be just fine by them.