Dire clickbait website continues to make false claims about the Celtic boss.

I don’t know who Pete O’Rourke is. I don’t know what his qualifications are. But I do know that my football timeline is full of his name. And I do know that he claims all sorts of exclusives about what’s supposedly going on inside Celtic Park—claims he could not possibly verify.

So I have no problem calling Pete O’Rourke a fantasist, if not an outright liar. I’ve got no issue saying that the website he writes for, Football Insider, is a stain on the blogosphere, and that every single person who quotes from it embarrasses themselves and drags down the entire media ecosystem.

In recent weeks, articles from that site have claimed the manager is demanding meetings with the board, laying down the law, telling players they have no future, players supposedly telling him they have no future at the club… and on and on it goes, all of it supposedly from “club insiders.”

Insiders so secretive and elite that the only people they speak to are Football Insider. They don’t talk to mainstream outlets. They don’t speak to Celtic fan sites. There’s not even a whisper of a WhatsApp rumour, and there’s one of them about every damned thing going as far as I can tell. There’s just whatever pops up on that dreadful site. And every single word of it is rubbish.

If it disheartened me to see that site quoted across Celtic social media, it would be bad enough—but it actually infuriates me, because Football Insider singlehandedly drags down the standards of every other website that even mentions it. If you’re using Football Insider as a source, you look like a fool. And frankly, there’s no excuse at this point for anyone still treating that site as credible.

That website has never once got anything right. If you believe they know anything about what’s going on inside Celtic—or any other club—you’ve bought the Kingston Bridge ten times over. And for the sake of sparing yourself future embarrassment, you should probably take those ownership certificates down off the wall, because they’re worthless. As worthless as Ibrox shares.

In this business, there’s pressure on all of us to turn out content every day. There’s pressure to get numbers. That’s a fact—everybody knows it. But there has to be some integrity in how you do it.

You don’t spread lies and disinformation. You don’t make up stories or fabricate quotes. You don’t pretend to have sources just so you can churn out drivel. You need a little pride, a bit of respect for yourself and the people who read your work.

Normally, I don’t care what Football Insider writes. They can peddle transfer rumours all day long, pretend to be in the know about summer plans, whatever they like. But when they start publishing stories about Rodgers demanding meetings with the board—Rodgers being unhappy, Rodgers stamping his feet—that’s too much.

There’s a difference between harmless lies and harmful ones. I don’t care about the former. Anyone reading that site who thinks there’s a shred of truth in it hasn’t been paying attention. But when they start writing stuff that’s actively damaging, they deserve to be called out—especially when so many mainstream outlets use them as a source.

What sparked my frustration was a rash of recent headline claimed Brendan Rodgers was making demands in a meeting with the board. Really? How would anyone know that? Because here’s what I do know—whatever conversations are going on in that boardroom, no one is leaking them. No one on the board. No one close to Rodgers. The man won’t even discuss that kind of thing outside a tiny, tightly controlled circle. You only have to look at his response to the dressing room leaks—to the publishing of team information—to know how cautious he is with sensitive details.

So ask yourself—if Rodgers is that careful with the team line-up, how careful do you think he is about transfer targets? How careful do you think the people in that boardroom are? Why on earth would any of them talk to a fourth-rate blog?

If they were going to disclose anything – and people at Celtic never do – they’d go to the mainstream press. To people with credibility, much as it makes me laugh to write that. What I mean, of course, is more credibility than this.

Celtic has good relationships with any number of journalists who’d love to run that kind of scoop. So just that alone—that fact—should make people pause.

That alone should raise questions. That alone should convince you there’s nothing on that site worth reading.

And when it’s not pretending to have “insiders,” it’s publishing clickbait.

Articles where the headline promises drama, but the content delivers absolutely nothing. Take the one from today, which appeared on the increasingly dire news aggregator Newsnow: Big-name Celtic star all but certain to leave this summer.

You click the article. Who is it? Greg Taylor.

And O’Rourke has the cheek to brand that an exclusive. He can exclusively reveal that Greg Taylor is heading for the exit door. There’s not a single person in Scotland who hasn’t known that for months. So where, exactly, is the exclusive?

Look, if the people at Football Insider don’t like what I say about them, they’re more than welcome to act. If they don’t think I should be calling them fantasists, or denying their supposed “inside sources,” they can do whatever they think they need to. But I stand by every single word of this.

Which is more than they’ll ever do with anything they’ve written.

If I sound like I’m on a bit of a media tirade today, that’s because I am. But let me be absolutely clear—this isn’t the media.

Football Insider isn’t part of the media, although there are some in the media who like to quote them—hell, the BBC gossip section quoted them this morning. And in what context? The utterly absurd idea that Greg Taylor could be off to Ibrox. That’s the national broadcaster quoting a notorious fantasy blog. About a story based on nothing but the ramblings of Kris Boyd, The Village I diot.

But Football Insider is making claims about our manager and boardroom showdowns. About Rodgers stamping his feet. Today, of all days, you can see that such stories might be capable of causing us problems.

This is where the line needs to be drawn. That’s where Celtic fans should be standing up and saying, “No more.” That’s where Celtic Football Club itself should be a bit more invested in protecting its reputation.