IMAGINE a goalie being booed off for shipping six in the biggest game of the season, then putting out the following statement . . .
“Dear Angry Mob, It has always been and will continue to be my intention to save every shot that comes my way.
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“However, this is not always possible, not least because I have long since operated a strict policy of diving out the way when big boys smash hardies at me.
“Yes, being brave and stopping the ball would pacify you wonderful supporters and satisfy the inaccurate media frenzy around my form.
“But the model I have adopted — that is, not getting hurt — remains in the best interests of my long-term health and safety.
“In short, it’s not easy being me. So please go away.”
That, right there, is basically the statement Celtic Football Club put out at 8.52pm on Saturday in response to fans getting upset about their lack of big-time transfer-window activity.
Except, of course, that a player who fronts up to his mistakes can’t do so anonymously, seeing as everyone knows his face and his name’s on the back of his shirt.
Whereas when it was time for the suits in Parkhead’s boardroom to face the music for THEIR performance, they did so, quite shamefully, via the anonymity of an unattributed post on X.
Or as they know it, Mr X.
As I write this, their rambling, babbling exercise in denial, deflection and delusion has racked up close on three million hits.
And I’m guessing roughly 2.99m of those who made it past the first two paragraphs are still bamboozled by the sheer incompetence that runs through its 1,028 words.
My first thought when it dropped was: Who wrote this naive drivel?
But this was followed by a far more pertinent question, as in: Who the hell in authority read it and decided, ‘Yeah, this’ll make it all go away — and it certainly won’t make us the subject of ridicule, nor crank the existing levels of terracing anger up to 11’.
Are Celtic REALLY this dismissive of their supporters?
Do they REALLY give this little of a toss for what anyone thinks?
Or are they REALLY so out of touch with the world beyond their bubble that they genuinely believe this kind of nonsense will get them back in everyone’s good books?
I’m going with that last one — because if it was either of the other two, they wouldn’t have bothered meeting fans groups in the first place, as they did on Friday.
Never mind then plunging themselves into this inevitable slanging match.
It’s a slanging match they can’t win, either, not when the only argument they have is the same one as the imaginary goalie . . .
It’s not easy being us.
Fact is, it’s an argument so weak and so poorly made that a gaggle of men with decades of high-level business experience between them have somehow made themselves look intellectually inferior to the Green Brigade.
That’s not me saying everyone in the Green Brigade is thick.
Quite the opposite, because no matter what you think of what they stand for, they’ve proved time and again how capable they are of making their point succinctly, powerfully and with some quite amazing creativity.
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Which the club they support quite clearly are not.
This shambles of an attempt at appeasement openly admits that they’re constantly outwitted in negotiations with transfer targets and their representatives.
Not in those exact words, obviously, but near enough when you get to the bit that reads: “Unfortunately, it is not always possible to conclude transfers, either within the timescales we target, or at all.
“There are many factors . . . including selling clubs seeking fees beyond our valuation, waiting until the end of the transfer window to seek the maximum price, or players choosing to join another club or requesting terms we cannot responsibly meet.”
In other words, it’s just not fair that no one plays to our rules.
Neither, apparently, is it fair that the media — both mainstream and social — finds Scotland’s biggest football club interesting enough to speculate about.
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Apparently, when team manager Brendan Rodgers admits publicly how desperately he needs signings capable of performing in the Champions League, we’re all meant to write and say nothing until deals are done and dusted.
Naive doesn’t even begin to describe that attitude.
I mean, do they think they are the only ones involved in negotiations?
That players and agents and rival boards aren’t all leaking information?
That people inside Parkhead itself don’t like a bit of tittle-tattle?
More to the point, do they expect us to believe that if only they’d been allowed to do their wheeler-dealing in private, they’d have signed Alexander Isak and Scott McTominay for £5million each?
It really is nonsense, all of it.
This has been the highest-spending transfer window of all time.
Clubs spent money like water, agents filled their boots, stars held out for the right moves at the risk of training with the kids for the rest of their contracts.
Yet the people who run Parkhead — or, at least, the faceless poster representing them — make it sound like signing the talent Rodgers craves was like getting blood from a stone.
I genuinely don’t know where they go after that.
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They’ve made it crystal clear they want to be a Champions League club, but on Europa League money, which these days simply isn’t viable.
They’ve let the entire football world know they’re not savvy enough to go toe to toe when it comes to sealing a deal.
Most tellingly of all, though, they’ve told their fanbase pretty much the same as wee Jonathan Watson did when he played then-chairman Michael Kelly in an Only An Excuse sketch from 30-odd years ago.
“Go away. Gie’s a break. It’s no’ our fault.
“Gie’s yer money.”
Well, back then the punters forced Kelly and his muckers out.
And after this latest slap in the face, you get the feeling they won’t rest until history repeats itself.
ONLY the Tartan Army would spend fortunes travelling to the middle of nowhere for a game they’re not allowed into.
But that’s what a pile of them have done this weekend. And I guess that’s what makes them unique among the world’s football supporters.
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I mean, you could see the point of turning Budapest into a wee city break if we were playing Belarus there.
Zalaegerszeg, though? Two and a half hours drive from the Hungarian capital?
So remote that my colleague Robert Grieve had to fly to AUSTRIA then take a minibus the rest of the way?
That’s properly bizarre.
Yet somehow, knowing the kind of people who’ll support us evermore, it also makes perfect sense.
So here’s hoping they find a nice bar showing the game and that Steve Clarke and his boys make their planes, trains and carthorses trek worthwhile with a win to back up Friday night’s excellent 0-0 away to Denmark.
The nightmare scenario for our World Cup dreams was losing in Copenhagen then going to Scrabbletown knowing anything less than a win would probably kill us off there and then.
Instead, an under-pressure gaffer picked a properly pragmatic 11 who did a properly professional job in giving us what really does feel like a bonus point.
If we now go out and pile more misery on a homeless Belarusian side already stinging from a 5-1 tonking at the hands of Greece, we’re off to a great start.
If the Greeks and the Danes could manage a draw at the same time? All the better.
If we’re to make the play-offs at least, we then need to beat both the big guns at Hampden and most probably get something in Athens.
Before then, though, it’s all about doing the business before the empty, echoing stands of the ZTE Arena, a throwback to the Covid times when Clarke and Co were grinding towards the first of their two Euros appearances.
It’ll have the feel of a training game. But they need to have it in their heads that it’s the most crucial game they’ll ever play.
Let’s get it done and catch the first mule out of Scrabbletown.
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