Scottish Daily Mail Chief Football Writer Stephen McGowan has come under fire tonight from Celtic supporters on the Kerrydale Street fans forum for his article about Ange Postecoglou.
In his article, McGowan takes digs at the Celtic support, Ange and promotes the idea that supporters should be happy if the club appointed a “steady Eddie” as manager, naming assistant manger John Kennedy as an example of that.
McGowan’s article from tomorrow’s Mail was posted in full on the forum. He writes:
WHEN IT comes to managers, Celtic are becoming the unlucky-in-love Taylor Swift of Scottish football.
On the face of things, the champions seem like quite the catch. Blessed with fame and Champions League football, they know how to put on a show under the disco lights.
The problem is finding someone they can rely on to guide and share all that success. They just can’t find a keeper. The days of Martin O’Neill hanging around to do the school run for five years feel like a lifetime ago.
Brendan Rodgers looked like a half-decent bet. Blessed with the gift of the gab, his own teeth and a year-round tan, the Northern Irishman ticked all the boxes.
He showered them in compliments, claimed to be living the dream and spoke of growing old together in the Champions League. After a couple of years, the rows and bickering over money started and it was ‘terminado’. He packed a bag and performed a midnight flit to Leicester in the middle of a season.
Heartbroken, Celtic returned to an old flame in Neil Lennon. Rekindling a broken relationship always runs the risk of fireworks. Ten in a row ended in screaming, shouting and the Green Brigade firing distress flares into the Glasgow sky.
The champions turned to Eddie Howe and begged him to put a ring on their finger. Nursing a few commitment issues, the Englishman broke off the engagement.
Ange Postecoglou? He came from nowhere and felt like the classic rebound hook-up.
There seemed no danger of others fluttering their eyes at an older man. No one else seemed to want him.
The strong silent type, he inherited a mess and cleaned it up. He won the league in his first season and, best of all, he seemed happy.
‘It’s everything I’ve ever wanted in a football club,’ he said this time last year.
‘It’s a massive club, it’s geared for success and I’m a pretty driven guy in terms of success. We’ve got Champions League football next year.
‘Those are the kind of things that are important to me.
I’m very happy where I am and as long as the club want me to stay, I’ll be around.’
Twelve months later, it turns out he’s the same as all the rest. The itchy feet seemed to start shortly after a furtive call from a Brighton dial code.
Now a leggy North London widow is hitching a skirt in his direction and, after a glance at the bank balance, Postecoglou has the sniff of perfume in his nostrils.
There’s no talk of being happy as a rancher with a can of Foster’s now. Repeated chances to nail all this Spurs speculation have been passed up. Everything he says is conspicuously similar to the words he used before leaving Yokohama for Glasgow. Approaching 58, he’s the late bloomer ready to get out there, hit the town and live a little.
If Tottenham Hotspur come calling on Monday, then, there’s an inevitability to how this ends.
Until victory over Inverness in the Scottish Cup final is done and dusted, Big Ange might feel the need to keep up the pretence.
If he seals his fifth trophy in two years at Hampden this evening, he can spare fans the banging-the-fist-on-the-chest routine and start fronting up the suspicions of infidelity.
Before Josip Juranovic left for Union Berlin, the Parkhead boss spoke of encouraging players to play the field and make the most of their careers. It’s time for him to admit that’s his plan as well.
While some will take the news badly, most accept that Spurs is an offer he has to accept.
In modern football, the battle between money and medals feels a bit like Sevilla in the Europa League. There can only be one winner.
When a top-six club from the English Premier League start waving their chequebook around, it’s time to accept the reality of the situation.
There’s no way of knowing if he’ll ever get another offer to match Tottenham Hotspur. If he stays at Celtic, another fourth-place finish in the Champions League group stage could damage his share price big time. An opportunity of a lifetime beckons.
If he goes, the champions will shake his hand, pocket the compensation cheque and resist the temptation to turn the kids against him.
Daniel Levy might be no one’s idea of love’s young dream. The thing with old romantics like Postecoglou is that they always think they can be the one to tame the Spur’s chairman’s controlling behaviour. Right up until the moment when they realise they can’t.
In a worst-case scenario, Angeball could crash and burn and he could walk away with £15million in his hip pocket before landing a gig at AEK Athens.
For a Greek kid who uprooted to Australia at the age of five with nothing more than a woolly jumper and a teddy bear, that’s not half bad.
For Celtic, the pain of splitting up might take a little longer to heal. For supporters, in particular, Postecoglou felt like Mr Right.
Spurned directors will already be thumbing through the latest up-and-coming coach catalogue from the City Football Group.
If nothing catches their eye, they might even be tempted to turn to David Moyes or a Steve Clarke or a John Kennedy. A steady Eddie who won’t spend every conversation scanning the room for chairmen from clubs in bigger leagues.
The trouble is that fans don’t want someone like that. They don’t care about a good sense of humour, a love of reading and long walks in the country.
They crave the exotic outsider who’ll set the pulse racing by firing jibes across the city at Rangers.
The smooth talker who’ll tell them how great Scottish football is to their face, while plotting a move to England behind their backs.
The man-on-the-make who revs up the engine of his Range Rover and hits the M6 as soon as he has a couple of medals round his neck.
The two-timer most likely to ditch them at the altar and leave them crying on the steps, clutching a crumpled up photo of the Lisbon Lions.
Push them hard enough and some might even be willing to speak the six hardest words in the English language.
Come back Brendan, all is forgiven.
And McGowan’s article has come in for fierce criticism from posters on the forum.
Check out the comments below.
