It was an intriguing business last Thursday evening in Eindhoven. Some time around 5pm the word went round that Ally McCoist wanted to speak to the newspaper hacks, so we rounded ourselves up. The Rangers assistant manager duly appeared and, over three or four minutes, calmly expressed his views.
They were about Neil Lennon and Celtic. It was all on the record. There was no pique, no anger, no fit of seething. McCoist simply wanted to reassert that he would be making no apology for wanting to defend his players in front of Lennon at the end of the recent infamous Scottish Cup tie at Celtic Park. Calmly, and actually with a degree of humour, McCoist had his say and then went back to the dressing room to prepare his players for that evening’s Europa League clash.
What had irked McCoist, it became clear, were some radio comments aired back in Scotland by Paul McBride QC, who acts for Celtic, and also by a football agent and friend of Lennon. “I thought a line had been drawn under it, but obviously not,” McCoist said. “So I make no apology for defending my players, who were verbally abused.”
One factor in this whole Old Firm rumpus has been the slick working of the Celtic PR machinery. I neither condemn it nor acclaim it, but the fact is, Celtic no longer take these things lying down. Wherever the degree of guilt lies between Lennon and McCoist — and neither was innocent at Celtic Park — Celtic have certainly waded into the affray, with McBride punchy and acute in his participation in it.
Celtic, far more than Rangers, have developed a recent appetite for this, just as they have in sinking their teeth into the SFA on other issues. Celtic currently have more political motivation and muscle than Rangers, and you can feel it and hear it in the debate across the airwaves. It was probably this sense of Celtic’s capacity for verbal sparring that prompted McCoist to finally comment on the matter.
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I’m not sure if we have heard the end of this, but I hope we have. If I was Lennon, with so much good going for his team, I would let the matter go, and let his team speak for him on the pitch. It is not inconceivable that Celtic will land a domestic treble in Lennon’s first season as manager; if not, even a cup double of some form is distinctly possible. In the Old Firm rivalry nothing speaks louder or more crowingly than that.
But Lennon might not be able to let it go. Certainly, he will be invited to keep it going by a media-pack hungry for more. Lennon has gone to ground at press conferences since that Celtic Park storm, but when he returns, no one will be ready with questions about knee knocks or groin strains. There will only be one subject we all want to hear about from him.
Before the wider country dies from boredom over it all, let’s move on. If you take into account the recent summit in Edinburgh, which was triggered by the Old Firm, there has already been quite an over-reaction to a football game that simply got quite heated. There is little to be gained from further verbal volleys traded between Lennon and McCoist.
Next Sunday, with beautiful timing, comes the Old Firm clashing in the Co-operative Insurance Cup final. It might be too much to hope that the warring won’t continue, either before or after this fixture. And remember, we are just at very outset of what might become a lengthy Lennon v McCoist marathon in Scotland.
• Surely Aberdeen are not about to make yet another cup mess of things? I watched the television pictures of the St Mirren-Aberdeen Scottish Cup quarter-final in Paisley on Saturday, and witnessed Craig Brown’s team get out of jail with Rory McArdle’s 93rd-minute equaliser. The Dons should now be a shoo-in for the semi-finals. I say this, except to refer back a litany of recent botches by Aberdeen in the cups. So will St Mirren be next to impale them?
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Much of Brown’s good work will be undone if his team does not bag itself another semi-final spot next month.