The story which dominated social media over the past week was of course Scott Allan who – much as if he were a contestant on the X-Factor – has been on ‘an incredible journey’. A few weeks ago he was a highly rated young midfielder who had got his career back on track at Hibs. Then he was a midfield genius headed for Ibrox, before he becoming a tortured soul being held against his footballing will at Easter Road (a feeling Hibs fans themselves would have empathised with during Terry Butcher’s reign).
Now he’s either the final piece in the Deila jigsaw, a reasonably priced benchwarmer or a wee b*st*rd depending on where you fall on the Scottish football spectrum. If nothing else his decision made for good box office for BT Sport – who probably gained a few extra viewers of Alloa vs. Rangers on Sunday; ones switching on to see if Andy Halliday would be sporting a black armband in mourning for the loss of a best friend.
Last week’s social media sub-plot though was John Collins deciding that it was a good idea to say no Scottish sides had players clever enough or with the speed of thought to challenge Celtic. Balancing that up, it seems that at least one SPFL club lacks an assistant manager clever enough to understand what effect writing off the opposition has on both the opposition themselves and on demand for the tickets you’re trying to shift to see your team supposedly get a game from them.
If you were writing a script then Celtic’s next opponents would have won a last-minute penalty to equalise and converted it via an audacious Panenka finish. Kudos then to the people working on last week’s episode of Scottish Football.
Killie also managed to cause a ripple on the back pages when their chairman spoke out in favour of a larger top division. An argument that might have carried more weight if it didn’t seem like possibly the earliest ever plea for a club to be saved by league reconstruction.
In England, the news was being made by a couple of people in need of a positive PR story. Joey Barton’s potential move to West Ham was derailed by Hammers fans who deemed that he wasn’t the right fit for the club. No word yet on whether this is because they think he lacks the elegance of Bobby Moore or because they don’t think he could take Julian Dicks in a fight.
As well as Barton, Jose Mourinho has also been going through his own turbulent period. When Eden Hazard hit the deck and demanded medical attention and the referee then summoned that medical attention, Jose was raging that the aforementioned medical attention in the form of Eva Carneiro and Jon Fearn dared to appear. Surely if you don’t want your medical team to actually treat your players, you shouldn’t actually employ them? See how you get on tossing a mobile phone to Hazard and suggesting he gives NHS 24 a ring instead.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvQrDbOz7zI
The footballing world was split in how it treated Mourinho’s petulance. Those who agreed that his actions were unjustifiable in relation to medical best practice, ethics and the Hippocratic oath generally managed to remember to mention that Jon Fearn also existed. While those who’ve spent the last few years googling “pretty Chelsea doctor” painted a picture of a tragic beauty, scorned by an ungrateful and emotionally distant boss.
It made for some unsettling coverage that even a 35 year-old man could detect as containing gratuitous Carneiro shots. Let me put it this way, if Jon Fearn burgled my house at gun point – I’d be unable to tell the police that it was the Chelsea physio who did it but I could now pick Eva Carneiro out of a line-up from a range of about quarter of a mile.
To be honest though, whatever your motivation for arriving at the result, it’s pretty clear that Jose was in the wrong. Which must have occurred to him when he spent Sunday after the final whistle trying to find someone who could actually give him something for the headache his team had caused him.
Before I go, a wee thought for new Rangers loan signing Nathan Oduwa who tried an outrageous showboat against Alloa on Sunday. Wingers doing flicks and tricks are always welcome in the game and particularly – from my point of view – in a Rangers shirt. Just be careful that there’s a point to those tricks though. I remember one winger who had a fairly underwhelming spell despite (because?) of things like this:
My preferred winger memory from that game above (which I was at) is Chris Burke coming on as a sub to make a scoring debut…
Among other TV and radio credits, his football-savvy has meant roles as writer/script-editor on Offside and Only An Excuse (both BBC1 Scotland).
He set up ScottishComedyFC.com in 2011, hosts and produces the Scottish Comedy FC Podcast and is often the fingers behind the tweets on @ScotComFC.
These days, his content-creative and social media skills have led to him working as a content marketing specialist with a top Edinburgh agency. He remains in demand as a comedy writer and this year has been commissioned to write on the BBC Radio Scotland shows ‘The Good, The Bad and The Unexpected’, ‘The Fame Game’ and ‘Breaking The News’.
