Keevins embarrasses himself again with his bitter, anti-Celtic nonsense.

It always amuses me when Hugh Keevins steps into a Scottish football discussion and reveals how appallingly ignorant he is of the subject. Yesterday, of course, he waded into the Celtic-Ibrox ticket dispute, where the SPFL found in our favour, as this blog predicted it would, because it was the only rational decision available.

Keevins accused Celtic of grandstanding. He said the decision would have no real force or effect because the Union Brats would be in the ground anyway. I’ll come back to that in more detail, because it reveals, once again, how painfully little this man knows about the things he thinks he is qualified to discuss.

But first, let’s deal with his general comments.

When Celtic expresses legitimate security concerns and puts the safety of its staff, supporters and players ahead of whether a particular policy pleases Barry Ferguson and Ian Durrant, that is not grandstanding.

It appals me that a member of the Scottish media can treat those concerns so lightly when this game carries obvious potential for serious disorder. If making light of Celtic’s position had been the worst of his sins, I probably would not care all that much.

But it was not.

Keevins then claimed that both clubs had reached an agreement that the SPFL decision would be final and that there would be no appeal. He then sarcastically pointed out that Celtic does not need to worry about an appeal since we got our way, as if there is some kind of problem with us doing our job properly and making our case more robustly than the club across the city.

There was no such agreement.

The two clubs did not need to discuss the possibility of an appeal, because the rules themselves make it clear that neither side can appeal the final decision of the arbitration panel. So whatever inference Keevins is trying to draw rests either on a misunderstanding of the rule book, or he is gilding the lily.

And I have no problem saying that, because I’m about to say something stronger.

He also claims there is a double standard in what Celtic has done here.

There is not.

Keevins points out that Celtic banned the Green Brigade from attending the two games at Ibrox. It’s the only fact in his whole embarrassing rant.

The ban did not end until several weeks later. The Ibrox matches were on 1 March and 8 March, and the Green Brigade could not attend matches again, under the terms of their ban, until 7 April.

That is all true. It is in the public domain.

Yet people have still accused Green Brigade members of being present at Ibrox and of invading the pitch. Now, I have no way of knowing whether individual Green Brigade members obtained tickets for that game. I have no way of knowing if individual Green Brigade members were on the pitch.

But I do know this; Celtic did not sell tickets directly to the Green Brigade.

Celtic keeps a very close watch on everyone in that section. That ban affected more than just formal Green Brigade members, and Celtic denied a ticket to every person whose name appeared on the relevant list. That does not mean someone could not have obtained a ticket by some other means.

But the suggestion that Celtic knowingly sold tickets to the Green Brigade is a claim he should be very careful with indeed, because it is, to put not too fine a point on it, absolute undiluted bullshit. In short, it is a lie.

I don’t know why Hugh Keevins hates this club of ours so much.

But I know he comes from a Celtic background. I know he once called himself a Celtic supporter. Somewhere along the line, he turned into Neil McCann, and I stopped caring long ago what caused the shift.

Maybe the Celtic Club threw him out all those years ago, a story he still tells as if it proves something. Perhaps a Celtic manager allegedly chinned him on an official club plane. Maybe Peter Lawwell occasionally phoned his house and dressed him down like a naughty schoolboy.

All I know is this. He cannot stay objective when it comes to Celtic. Keevins is, to put not too fine a point on it, a malignant, spiteful old bastard who would not take our side on anything if he saw a chance to stick the knife in.

But this issue leaves him badly exposed. No football club in this country should have to welcome into its stadium a violent element of an away support that attacked its players, staff and fans.

The attempt to draw a false equivalence between the Green Brigade and the Union Brats will not wash either. Keevins cannot name a single occasion where the Green Brigade invaded a pitch to reach rival supporters, because it has never happened. No other ultras group in this country has behaved that way.

For everyone claiming Celtic has acted out of pettiness, here are a few inconvenient facts. The SPFL disagrees. It backs Celtic’s position. Police Scotland will almost certainly support the decision to keep the Union Brats out. It remains to be seen whether other clubs in this league decide that the Union Brats pose a clear and present danger to their supporters as well.

Do not be surprised if they do.

Falkirk released a statement about the conduct of Ibrox fans not that long ago. Nobody wants to get into a cycle of tit-for-tat bans, and nobody should. But the Union Brats present a unique problem, and unique problems require unique solutions.

The Green Brigade have occasionally drawn the ire of UEFA for flares and political banners. The Union Brats drew UEFA scrutiny for outright racism. The kind that pours out of the main stands at Ibrox every single week. Few in the Scottish media ever express serious concern about it.

There are allegations, and that is all they are, of Green Brigade members breaking doors to gain entry to Ibrox. That, by the way, contradicts the claim about Celtic selling them tickets. If Celtic had sold them tickets, they would not have had to break doors. Not a single shred of evidence supports these lurid claims.

People have also talked about broken seats and graffiti on walls. I think anyone who scrawls slogans about dead football supporters is a piece of shit. But I would suggest that singing about being up to your knees in people’s blood is much worse.

None of those things meets the same standard of seriousness. Masked thugs came out of a stand with weapons and tried to reach our fans. That is the distinction. That is the issue. We have a supine, gutless media environment in which those words have barely escaped the lips of a single person.

That is how we got here. Nobody else took this problem seriously, so Celtic had to deal with it.

If our journalistic class wants to hide under the bed because it fears nasty comments from the Ibrox fan base, or worse, then that only proves the point.

If you are too afraid and too gutless to stand up, then you are admitting the problem exists. You are admitting it is too much for you to handle. Perhaps that means the game here should finally deal with it properly.

We still have a right to expect a basic standard of factual coverage from them.

Keevins offered neither analysis nor fact. In making the remarks he made, he exposed himself as one of two things. Either he is an absolute idiot, or he is a liar.

Those things used to disqualify a journalist. What a pity Scottish football no longer has those standards.

Choose The CelticBlog as a ‘Preferred Source’ on Google News for quick access to the news you value.