The Record’s second anti-Celtic fan article ended up worse than the first.

Last night, after I’d finished my piece on the way the Daily Record covered the alleged trouble in Bologna, another story appeared on their website. This time, it centred on a Celtic fan allegedly “confronting” Michael Nicholson over transfers.

By then, the clip had been circulating on social media all night. It showed a Celtic supporter filming Nicholson, who smiled throughout, looked relaxed, and showed no sign of intimidation. The supporter lightly joshed him. That was it.

Earlier, some of us joked, half-seriously, that the Record or another rag would frame it as intimidation or confrontation.

Sure enough, that joke turned into reality, even though the footage itself is utterly innocuous. It is the definition of a non-story. A fan films a short clip on his phone. Nicholson grins throughout. Nobody acts aggressively. Nothing even remotely threatening happens.

And yet, the Daily Record framed it as a “confrontation”.

You could not ask for a clearer illustration of the point I made earlier. This was absolute nonsense. A third-rate story that deserves to be shovelled up and flushed away. It stinks. It gives off such a noxious stench that it makes you want to find the nearest receptacle and be sick into it.

At this point, an agenda against Celtic supporters is obvious. The media pushes it relentlessly, and it dovetails uncomfortably with an increasingly desperate narrative emerging from inside the club itself. The aim is simple: to portray a large section of the support as having crossed some imaginary line.

What makes this especially dangerous, however, is the odd convergence of otherwise irreconcilable interests. This club and that newspaper could not be further apart in outlook or alignment. Nevertheless, the Record despises Celtic fans, and right now the board appears to believe it benefits from promoting the idea that supporters have become a problem.

Anyone inside Celtic who believes that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” should think again. History has tested that theory to destruction.

In this case, the story does not appear to have come from the club. Unless Michael Nicholson personally phoned the Record and asked them to inflate it, which I doubt. He comes across in the footage as faintly gormless, and it immediately raises a far more legitimate question: why is the chief executive of Celtic wandering the streets of Bologna instead of being back in Glasgow signing players?

No, this was just a nasty, snide, vindictive little Daily Record hit job. Nothing more. A low-order attempt to smear our supporters, just as the Bologna violence story attempted to smear our supporters.

Once you recognise the pattern, you see it instantly.

What makes this worse is the double standard I highlighted earlier.

Ibrox supporters have genuinely confronted their directors at European away games. Those incidents involved real anger, real tension, and genuinely ugly scenes in public places. Some of them came close to becoming dangerous. Even so, the media treated those moments with a strange tolerance. An implied understanding. A suggestion that their anger was justified because they had “suffered in Celtic’s shadow”.

Everyone reading this knows I am not exaggerating. That inference followed those stories all the way through.

Now compare that to what happened in Bologna.

A Celtic supporter spotted an opportunity to have a bit of fun. He filmed a short selfie video. He and Nicholson stood in the same frame, both smiling. Some chanting followed as Nicholson walked away. Chants aimed at the board. A legitimate sentiment, and one Nicholson will hear everywhere he goes as long as he holds that position. That was it.

If that now qualifies as a “confrontation”, then we really are living in a pitiful age. Especially one supposedly dominated by real bullies, from the White House to the big mansions in Dublin. This was not intimidation. It was not aggression and it was not disorder.

It was a supporter taking the piss, and the fact it was framed as anything else confirms everything I wrote earlier, and in particular that ending line: there is no low to which these people will not stoop.