Gary Keown has produced one of the most incredible hatchet jobs on Celtic ever published, the win over YB Bern and the subsequent celebrations have reopened old wounds for the Daily Mail columnist.
Keown is paid for his opinion, it seems to chime very closely with most Ibrox fan media sites, even verging towards you know what with a claim that there has been a stampede to have a Sainthood bestowed upon Brendan Rodgers. I must have missed those claims.
Celtic’s success does of course cause the deepest of pain for many inside Scottish football, when Rodgers returned to Celtic in June 2023 Keown branded his first stint as a failure. Thankfully Mark Warburton, Pedro Caixinha, Mister Gerrard, Micky Beale, Giovanni van Bronckhorst and Phil Clement achieved real failure at Ibrox, none of them getting close to the ‘failures’ of Rodgers.
It seems that the phrase knock-out has given Keown something to get upset over, Celtic will be involved in knock-out ties next month but they aren’t the real ones according to the European expert from the Daily Mail:
Technically, it could be argued that Celtic are in the Champions League knockouts.
And there are certainly plenty advancing that argument in the breathless aftermath of their skin-of-the-teeth one-goal win against the worst team in the competition.
It’s just not true, though, is it? They’re in a play-off to get to the knockout rounds. The knockout rounds proper, that is.
And amid the stampede to have Sainthood bestowed upon Brendan Rodgers and Callum McGregor nominated to be the next First Minister, perhaps that ought to be remembered.
Celtic have done well to secure a place in the top 24 of the new-look league system. There is no question they have made progress in Europe this season — although, given the club’s previous reputation as a punchbag for the continent’s flotsam and jetsam, the only way was up, to be perfectly frank.
Punchbag? Must be getting confused with van Bronckhorst’s efforts in 2022. When his team finished with zero points and a -20 goal difference, that stat would have been much worse if Liverpool had put Mo Sallah on before the 68th minute of their trip to Ibrox, the Egyptian only had time for a hat-trick.
Those record breakers won’t be beaten, there will never again be four team Champions League groups, in their one and only Champions League season the Tribute Act formed by Charles Green in 2012 were the worst in the 31 years of that format.
Keown added:
For this campaign to be a real success — a real exercise in planting the flag after years of being manacled in a cave to be kicked around by the likes of Sparta Prague’s reserve team and Maribor — they need to go one step further and be back mixing it with the elite. Mixing it in the games that really, really matter.
This not an attempt to be harsh. It is not an attempt to belittle what this Celtic side have achieved.
Just a bit late to start back-tracking, your hurt, anger and pain from the last decade or so is overwhelming. Better to stick to the boxing if football is causing so much grief.
Slovan Bratislava are described as dugmeat, probably more apt for his Thursday night viewing than to describe the Slovakian champions.
And on we go, more anger from yer man Keown:
The goalless draw at Dinamo Zagreb, meanwhile, was like watching paint dry and last Tuesday’s 1-0 win over Young Boys, eked out thanks to a freakish own goal late on, will hardly have sent shockwaves around the planet.
It created a few more shockwaves than a VAR decision in the League Cup Final that Clement claimed was the talk of Europe because a few old Belgian chums sent him a text message.
People have been falling over themselves to lavish praise on Celtic this week. You’d think they’d landed a space probe on Saturn given the eagerness to scatter rose petals in their path for seeing off a team languishing ninth out of 12 in the Swiss Super League.
Followed by:
No one is trying to play down what has happened here. No one is using Europe to beat Celtic over the head with a stick, as Rodgers claimed everyone wants to do just a matter of months ago.
Hopefully there will be a few more evenings of painful viewing for Keown to watch this season as he charts the progress of Scotland’s most successful club.
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5 Comments
by Marky
What a bitter wee bastard, compared to the teams below us with trillions to spend we’re doing pretty damn good & a result at Villa will make things even better!! What a plonker, Rodney!
by Stevie Bhoy
Is that a Scottish Sports Journalists column or was that tajen from a “Rangers” fanzine? Bloody hell, that guy is hurting
by Phelim grehan
What was that their headlines were in 2012 , something about rangers dying , shocking not 1 comment on the scum that follow his new club around , scotlands shame , love his pain 55 will break him altogether, their old record of 54 including the ten years of EBT cheating is about to be disappear , bless him
by BriBhoy
This angry wee clown seems to have missed the fact that, after 7 games and with just one left to play, we are on the same points as Champions, Real Madrid and guaranteed to finish above Man City, who have individual players on their bench that cost more than our entire squad. These teams are in the same, supposedly “easier”, expanded league setup as Celtic, so should easily be well ahead of us, if it’s that easy, eh Gary?
We have only lost one game out of 7 – away to last year’s semi-finalists. We may have dropped points here and there in other games, but those games actually felt like losses, not ones we were lucky to draw, as was often the case previously. As for the YB game you claim we were lucky to win Gary, look at the stats, the fact that we had three goals disallowed in less than 45 mins and the fact that we had to play a top player who was, it turns out, in the process of sealing a transfer away. Puts a slightly different complexion on things, doesn’t it?
Contrary to what you claim in your pathetic, childish, dummy-spitting tirade, Gary, no one I know wants sainthood for BR, or any of the other BS you are claiming. We are merely happy to still be in a competition that the likes of RB Leipzig have been knocked out of. And that your favoured team didn’t even make it to the play offs for, despite getting what most people would say was an easy draw. So grow the fuck up mate and maybe try to behave like the journalist you claim to be, rather than some desperate Hun fanboy doing podcasts from his maw’s basement.
by BriBhoy
Make that finalists, not semi-finalists. Wee senior moment there.
Oh and if you’re talking about “pure dugmeat” teams Gary, you can put the Dynamo Kiev team that beat your beloved Huns in there. And maybe take a look at how RB Salzburg, the team that knocked Kiev out at the final play off stage, have fared in what you claim is now an easy competition. Not to mention that your team’s £30 million gazillion keeper’s calamity swing at the ball and poor defending saw you get pumped by what their own manager described as “the worst Man Utd team in history”, having previously scraped a draw against an injury-ravaged Spurs side that even relegation fodder Leicester managed to beat at home this weekend.
That’s before we even get to the behaviour of the scum Hun fans “winning friends on the journey” again by causing fights in the Old Trafford stadium and in the same city centre they wrecked last time they were there. I didn’t realise “Everyone, anyone” referred to who your team’s fans are spoiling for a fight with, Gary.