McCoist fears the Celtic boss to such an extent that he refuses to listen to him.

Here’s the problem with being a controversialist—or trying to be a controversialist—or being a shit-stirrer, or trying to be a shit-stirrer: sometimes you can outsmart yourself. Sometimes you’ll say something that you think is controversial or provocative, only to find that all you’ve actually done is make yourself look stupid. Stupid and slow. Stupid and ignorant.

We all know what McCoist is. We all know why he’s doing it. Desperate stuff, like popping Brendan Rodgers’ name into conversations about the job at Spurs. I don’t mind that. It doesn’t bother me. But it should embarrass him. Because he doesn’t sound controversial. He doesn’t come across like someone trying to stir the soup. He comes across like a yahoo, like a moron. Like a clown. Like someone who either doesn’t listen, or can’t comprehend what it is that he hears.

Let’s forget for a moment that Spurs is once again proving itself to be one of football’s leading basket-case clubs, whose only redeeming feature is the league it plays in. Now, I’m going to say something to you—and I’ll back it up later on—Spurs is actually a very well-run club. It is, in fact, the second-best-run club in the UK. And in a piece later on, I’m going to demonstrate that very ably.

But a fundamental difference exists between whether they’re well run and whether they’re a good football operation. They’re not a good football operation. They’ve sacked almost as many managers as the club across the city. That makes them a basket case. It doesn’t matter how good their governance is or how strong their finances are. That makes them a cautionary tale. It makes them the kind of club that a good manager with ambition and a proper understanding of the landscape should steer well clear of.

But really, that’s not even the issue here. Spurs are going to have one hell of a job picking their next manager because they’re a basket case, and everyone on the outside looking in knows that. The problems at Spurs go well beyond the guy in the dugout. As I said in the previous piece—the one I wrote on Ange—they are not a club where players go to win things. The attractions at Spurs are obvious: money and the bright lights of London. And the players who are attracted primarily by those two things are not the kind of guys you build a winning team with.

Spurs have cultural issues. They have identity issues. And they have a chairman who is not prepared to give anyone the space and time to put building blocks in place for a brighter future. Their fans are demanding to an astonishing degree for a club that hasn’t won anything in a long time. And Levy is nuts.

But it’s not all of that which makes McCoist a fool. He can throw Rodgers’ name into the mix for any club, and he would still sound just as daft as he does when he’s throwing it around in relation to Spurs. He comes across as desperate to see the back of Rodgers. He sounds fearful. But even that’s not what makes him sound like a fool.

What makes McCoist sound like a fool is that he just doesn’t bloody listen. Or if he does listen, he puts forward opinions and views which he knows are wholly detached from reality. He’s putting Rodgers’ name in the frame for a job he knows Rodgers won’t leave Celtic to take. And how do we know that? Because Rodgers has said so himself—repeatedly and emphatically.

There are too many people in our sports media who either think Rodgers is a liar or are simply incapable of understanding the words that come out of his mouth. But I sat in Rodgers’ press conference with the fan media on the day he returned to Celtic, and I heard him say—clearly—that unless he was fired, he would be here for three years. Minimum. He’s repeated this over and over again. And last weekend, when the question was put to him, he said he would be at Celtic next season. One hundred and fifty percent.

So McCoist throwing Rodgers’ name around for jobs south of the border makes him sound like a fool. Because Rodgers has already ruled it out. And he’s done so in a way that leaves no room for doubt or ambiguity. The prospect of Rodgers leaving for another club this summer is exactly zero. Even if the dream offer came along—the one Rodgers wouldn’t turn down in a million years—he will turn it down. Because he has willingly boxed himself into this position. He knows what it means. He knows what it might mean. And he’s done it anyway.

I would say it was fear that’s making McCoist say stupid things. But McCoist says stupid things so routinely now that you can’t just put it down to his nightmares about our manager.

But it is the fear of Rodgers that is driving a lot of our media commentators crazy right now and I’m going to do a line-by-line dissection of a Daily Record piece later today. It’s not even by Keith Jackson, but it contains so much stupidity that it might as well have been.

And Rodgers is the subject of that piece too.

On the brink of his third treble as Celtic boss, he lives in their heads rent-free. And the quest to defeat him while he’s in situ seems so absolutely beyond any of the prospective candidates for that club across the city—never mind the fantasy ones—that they’re all just waiting it out, hoping he’ll be gone soon.

And I wonder if maybe they’re in for a rude awakening on that front as well.