ONE of the things that this site has been noted for since the start is promoting and supporting the new additions to the vibrant Celtic Fans media, which has enjoyed a remarkable growth in recent years.
A post caught our attention on Celtic Noise, the recently launched Celtic Fans forum – when it reached 1888 members one lucky reader was drawn from a raffle and won £100 and the same thing happened when membership reached 1967.
Anyway, that post was from a member of Celtic Noise who got barred from another new ‘Celtic’ site for pointing out that the author of a Celtic article he had just read was written by an online journalist from Rangers sites and the chap is a self promoted Rangers supporter.
These are the supporters who have the cheek to call us obsessed!
We checked this out incidentally, as did James Forrest at The Celtic Blog, and it is correct. Bloke is a blue nose, writing about Celtic on a new “Celtic” site!
The other evening he had another article up and it was adding nicely, from his point of view, to the emerging anti-Scott Sinclair narrative.
Then there’s the click-bait sites that do the same thing after every game Celtic don’t win comfortably. They find 3 or 4 negative posts about a player who didn’t have the best of games and use these to slaughter him – usually to great effect if you judge by where it sits as the most read stories on the Celtic page of the main news aggregator site.
There’s a theory that these click-bait sites actually have created some fake Twitter accounts themselves so they can create the narrative to suit the story that they want to write.
And maybe some of these accounts are those fake ones pretending to be Celtic supporters but are actually just there to harm the club.
Some, if not most, will be Celtic fans, caught up in the heat of the game, posting something that they never really intended to be part of a story that attracts a big audience on a click bait site. They could just as easily pull the same number of tweets in support of the same player – or create them themselves if that is what they do – but that would have no commercial sense. The ritual online slaughtering of a Celtic player or two is big business after a poor result.
Last night Scotty Sinclair was brought on at half time by his manager – the guy who knows him better than any of us – and like the rest of the Celtic players on the park, had a very disappointing second half.
A week ago Sinclair headed the goal that gave us the points in Norway. Last season he was our top goalscorer. The season before he was ours and Scotland’s Player of the Year.
Celtic players have always had to endure criticism. Even the Lisbon Lions had their moments when the fans were on their backs. Anyone remember Samaras being booed on to the field at Celtic Park when we came off the bench? Think it was against the Israeli side when Neil Lennon was the manager?
James Forrest, the current golden Bhoy of Scottish football, must have a thick skin to have endured the pelters he has had to take over the years.
Very few players fall into the category of being able to do no wrong, only KT in the current side for example. Listen the next time he makes a mistake.
Yet what is clear is that Forrest has been transformed by Brendan Rodgers believing in him and in doing so restoring his confidence, which was shot to pieces, frankly, during his previous few unhappy seasons.
There was no lack of effort or ability but it just wouldn’t fall for Forrest at that stage in his career. Now look at him.
Scotty Sinclair is at the biggest club he’s played for and the demands on his from a passionate support are huge. So too are the expectations after his first season in particular.
On Sunday he missed that penalty and his head seemed to go down. That was the expectations that he carries on his shoulders that caused that. He can’t be blamed for the referee chopping off a perfectly legitimate goal last night or Leigh Griffiths missing a penalty (he was a Whipping Bhoy at the start of his Celtic career, remember?) – let’s get real. And few players could have come on last night and made a difference when Celtic seemed devoid of ideas in the second half. Everyone had a stinker so why blame Sinclair?
Let’s give the players, especially the ones low on confidence, our full support.
UPDATE: Having just posted this article there’s another post from our Blue Nosed Bhoy closing the door on another Celtic player’s career. Have a look at these two posts and you will see that the author is the same…
https://www.rangersnews.uk/news/has-steven-gerrard-just-blamed-alfredo-morelos-for-last-night/
https://www.67hailhail.com/news/cristian-gamboa-played-last-game-celtic
