Hugh Keevins proves again what a clown he is with his latest Celtic piece.

Keevins has written a lot of abysmal things over the years. Regular readers of this blog know exactly what I think of this pitiful man and his apparent anti-Celtic agenda. Some of those things have been entertaining, but not for the reasons he’d have wanted. Some of them have been provocative. A fair number of them have been nonsense.

This latest column falls firmly into that last category.

Let’s start with the centrepiece of it. The anecdote. The “friend whose identity I’ll keep to myself” who claims that Jens Berthel Askou, in conversation, absent-mindedly referred to Celtic as “we.” That is the hook.

That is what we are apparently supposed to take seriously.

No name. No context and of course no verification.

Just a vague, unverifiable claim dropped into the public domain and presented as if it carries any weight whatsoever. It doesn’t, and that is the first thing that needs to be said about it.

The second is that this should never have been printed.

Because what does it actually do? It does not inform or analyse. It does not offer insight into the way Motherwell play, the way Askou sets his team up, or the job he has done since taking over. What it does is plant an idea.

A suggestion. A whisper. That the Motherwell manager might have some kind of affinity, some kind of connection, some kind of leaning towards Celtic.

Perhaps even that a secret deal has been done.

And once that idea is out there, it takes on a life of its own.

That is the problem.

This is not harmless nonsense. It is not throwaway filler. It is the kind of lazy, insinuation-driven writing that drags the conversation around Scottish football into the gutter, and we all know what mask-wearing, weapon carrying thugs live down there.

We are not talking about a quiet period in the season and we are not talking about a dead rubber. We are talking about a title race that is still very much alive, still finely balanced, still capable of turning on the smallest of margins.

At a time like this, words matter. Narratives matter.

And introducing this kind of baseless speculation into the mix is, at best, careless and at worst, it is reckless. Because what happens next is entirely predictable.

Now, every Motherwell game involving one of the contenders carries a different lens.

Every decision, every team selection, every substitution invites scrutiny and reinterpretation through the prism of that one throwaway line. The kind of person who throws a claim like that into a national newspaper is a moron. A dangerous moron.

That is not fair on the manager himself, or on the players, and it is not fair on the competition either. It would be grossly unfair on us if we were to face Motherwell on the last game of the season needing a win to secure the title.

(An unlikely prospect for a number of reasons I’m sure I have no need to go into.)

Motherwell have a professional football manager whose job is to win matches, to set his team up in the best possible way, and to compete.

That is it. That is all. To suggest anything beyond that, even indirectly, is an injustice to a guy who has been here for a single season and has done a very good job.

To do it now? Ridiculous.

And for what? For a line in a column. For a bit of colour, for something to get people talking. That is not good enough.

The rest of the piece is the usual Keevins schtick, which means it doesn’t get any better. We get the usual dire attempts at humour, the nickname, the labelling, the idea that we should be taking seriously the notion that this is the next great managerial candidate based on little more than momentum and media enthusiasm.

We have seen this before.

A manager strings together a run of results at a smaller club and suddenly becomes the answer to all of Celtic’s problems. As a result, people ignore the context. They brush aside the differences in expectation. They conveniently forget the scale of the job.

And then the media runs with it. That is not analysis. Instead, that is hype.

There is a serious conversation to be had about the next Celtic manager. About what the club needs, about the style of football required, about the structure that should be built around whoever takes the job.

However, this is not that conversation. This is noise. It is distraction dressed up as insight. Moreover, it suggests that the man who might find himself in the role of king-maker in this title race might not be operating in Motherwell’s interests, but in ours. And it comes at a time when Scottish football could really do with less of the lunacy, not more.

Hugh Keevins is not the only one guilty of this, but he is one of the most prominent voices doing it. When he chooses to base a column on something as flimsy as this, it says something about the standards he applies. Or does not apply.

And at a time when the stakes are as high as they are right now, the game does not need more baseless insinuation thrown into the mix just to fill space.

If you want to write about Jens Berthel Askou, then write about him properly. Others have analysed his team, broken down his tactics, and explained why he might or might not suit a bigger job.

So do the work. Do not hide behind anonymous “friends” and pretend that it means anything.

Because it doesn’t. Instead, it just adds to the noise. The drumbeat. The dog whistles.

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