Cut TheCrap - The Game Already Supplies Plenty

I HAVE said this before, and I will surely say it again right up until the day my daughters take my lap top off me and remove me, gaga and gibbering, to the nice care home where “Big Angel”, aka Number One Daughter – the geriatric nurse – says she has already reserved me a place.

But, the Scottish Football Writers Association does the game in Scotland few, if any, favours. They do this by continually talking-up the mundane and the muddled, boosting the bullshiters and braggards and in particular, trying to convince us that Celtic are a good side.

They used to do the same with Rangers, but, not even Big Wullie, the village Chief Bear now tries to tell us he is following a good team in the current Rangers squad.

So, all the “Celtic departed Europe with their heads high” headlines are pure shite, but, pointing this out doesn't sell papers among the Celtic Family. I watched Man City v Celtic on BT Sport. It was, a typical British cup-tie, with perhaps a few more players with better-than-average skill levels, however, what was effectively a Manchester City reserve team played the better football, probably deserved to win, and, if drawing with a shadow squad enables Celtic to hold their heads up – dearie me, how the mighty have fallen.

Joe Mercer and Malcolm Allison would never have contemplated putting out a virtual reserve team against the Lisbon Lions. Sure, Old Joe, and more-so Big Mal would have talked up Colin Bell, Denis Tueart, Mike Summerbee, Franny Lee and Co against Bobby Murdoch, Bobby Lennox, Jinky and Bertie Auld, but, you still fancied, the Lions would have won.

The present City squad – I mean the first team, including the guys rested last night – is far-closer in ability to the sainted names above than the current Celtic squad is to the blessed Lions. I do not accept money makes all the difference. A lot of the current City squad are, thanks to the obscene sums floating around in English football, being paid way too-much. But, the same accusation might be levelled at some of the Celtic squad.

That Celtic is the top side in Scotland cannot be disputed, but, they are some way off being a top side in Europe. Peter Lawwell can spout all the guff he likes about Celtic being the biggest club in the Solar System – if only they could get into the English League – it will not happen. I've got more chance of winning that Scotland cap which a lack of ability and desire cost me back in the 1970s, than Celtic has of getting into the English League any time soon.

For Lawwell to even mention such a move is crass populism – for the stenographers and churnalists to even dignify his comments with an appearance in print is sheer stupidity. It will not happen.

Lawwell is a prime example of all that is wrong with the management of Scottish Football. He is a member of the main SFA Board, some of the stenographers and churnalists insist he is the most-powerful man in Scottish football, which, given the way the diddy teams repeatedly prostrate themselves in front of the Bigot Brothers and invite them to figuratively boot them in the goolies one more time, might be true.

But, the primary objective of the SFA is to nurture and promote Scottish football; to improve and grow the game here. Does it meet these objectives when a main board member speaks openly of taking his club out of Scottish football and into England?

No, it bloody well doesn't, and, since the other clubs will not pull him up for this, it is surely up to any self-respecting press corps to do this. But, you and I know full well, the stenographers and churnalists will no more censure Celtic than they will draw back the curtains on the continued horror show which is the management of the other cheek of Scottish football's sectarian arse.

Scottish fitba is in a mess, but, not as big a mess as Scottish fitba writing is.

MIND you, there is an oasis of quality, a few diamonds amidst the stones in the intellectual desert of Scottish fitba journalism.

I commend the readers' attention to the second edition of Nutmeg – the Scottish football periodical, 196 pages of very good writing about the game up here. You will not find-out what any former Rangers or Celtic “legend” thinks about current events; you will not find any of the writers indulging in gratuitous slagging-off of current Scottish fitba heroes, but, what you will find is enough in-depth reading to keep you going through several lang winter nichts, and leave you thinking.

Editor Ally Palmer has done a fantastic job in getting Nutmeg up and running. Support it, buy it, take out a susbcription – this publication deserves to succeed; it is a beacon of light in the wilderness.