The uncomfortable truth about many Celtic fans

You need to go back and read the first post.

I'm not saying don't back Boruc, I'm puzzled at the endless support he receives no matter how shoddy his performances, when the manager is always one game away from the sack. Boruc has done more good than bad? Hasn't Strachan delivered more success than failure? You can't have it both ways.

I've also said repeatedly that Strachan, just like any manager, has made mistakes and no-one is above criticism.

 

okay am 45 and been going since l was 9 more home games than away admittedly in the last 10 years but our manager was the most arrogant annoying wee * in the aberdeen team but - he was good and would hurt us too often every game,l still remember when he was jumped at parkhead and thinking you had that comming but he is the boss now and what happened to the faithfull through and through for christ sake we are the champions - stop this constant snipping and get behind the team even if you dont like the boss he is still the boss - too many fans now slag than sing

 

Boruc has cost us a few games and so have most players wether it be a cm giving the ball away and costing a goal,a defensive error,a winger not tracking or a striker missing a sitter.

I dont think the manager is always one game away from the sack but he deserves to be criticised along with boruc and all other players for the poor performances.

I read posts where people are willing to overlook the managers shortcomings because of the great job he has done,and others are willing to afford boruc the same leniancy.

Fans call for boruc to be dropped for poor performances which is totally fair,but if others complain about the manager getting things wrong they are anti wgs and dont have a clue...

I dont want wgs sacked but i feel he should criticised along with players for poor performances.

If we were to drop all players for making mistakes lately we would be fielding a team of reserves.
My previous post was not dirrected at your initial post GD it was more to do with the direction the post has taken now.

 

If GS left today and wrote a book ,and the chapter about his celtic days ,what do you think he would say about celtic ,i think it would be that he loved his job at celtic ,he had great employers who stood by him ,he loved the euro nights the rangers games for the passion from the celtic support ,but couldnt put his finger on why he wasnt liked by an element of the support .

Heres a man that the celtic support thought had no emotion but the passing of TB put paid to that ,and afterwards he spoke of the passion that TB gave him for celtic ,and later that same guy said 2mins after winning the league at tannadice said to chick young ,he would rather be with people he trusted and believed in .personally i feel he hates the media ,and his persona tells you that when getting interviewed .

I would say to the support enjoy what you have ,cos one day rangers will come back at us and possibly go on a run like celtic are doing and then the penny might drop when someone mentions the strachan days ,when we were winning ,i still dont know why he is disliked ,but i believe in ,better the devil you know .

 

Excellent post, i was trying to explain this a few weeks ago that Boruc is immune to criticism because of his religion.

 

Agree with you there man can't say fairer than that

 

Revealing a tshirt at the end of a game for * knows what reason other than wind up the huns, putting pictures of himself with a huge wall picture of Pope John Paul II behind him, on his website. That to me says hes making a song and dance about being Catholic. I don't know if he genuinely is, since the Pope did come from his hometown, or whether he's doing this to get the fans on his side, I'm sure its the former but it hasn't stopped the latter happening either.

Chris Sutton came here and the first thing he did was say how he was going to put the huns in their place. That got him on "our" side immediately. Just like Boruc.

Icons at the club like Stein and Dalglish are ingrained (right word?) into the minds of supporters and no one bothers about their background as they came from before a lot of the hate-Strachan mob were even born. I'm sure they made many mistakes and were criticised for it at the time but in the present day people who are perceived as legends don't have their failings trotted out, only the great things that made them legends.

The hate-Strachan mob are as has been mentioned, generally younger, whose version of Celtic's history is more of their means of defending their right to sing political songs. I'm 16, so I am around good friends who are Celtic fans and the only way they talk about "history" is when its used to justify singing Boys of the old brigade and all this other pish. I'm not trying to add another tangent to the argument, I'm just mentioning that in many cases younger fans don't really connect with older legends as much.


Another point I'd like to make in answer to this is that players don't generally "follow" from the previous player in their position, in the same way that a manager's tenure follows on from the previous manager, therefor the comparisons are not discussed as in depth. I don't know how much that affects Gordon Strachan, as he is compared with his predecessor in a pretty skewered light whenever we lose or he does something some anti-Strachan "fan" disagrees with.

 

There are twelve pages so far on this, and while it is a pleasant change to see WGS discussed without it descending in to abuse, I don't see any evidence that the supporters who don't like him are bigoted.

No doubt there are a few nutters for whom that will be a reason but I have met many fans who can't stand him and not one have mentioned religion. In fact his religion has never even come up and I, as is probably true with most of us, don't even know what his religion is. In fact given that he was a Hibee is he not more likely to be Catholic. Venglos, Jansen and Barnes weren't 'one of us' and they didn't come in to the job with no goodwill from the fans.

As far as I can see there are many reasons for not liking him, albeit these are subjective.

1. His personality. Some fans like his humour and find his personality unique. What the pro-WGS folk seem unwilling to recognise is that to a lot of people WGS comes across as a very unpleasant individual who is arrogant, rude and ultra-defensive. I understand that some folk like the fact that he is difficult with the media because they feel the media give Celtic a bad press. But when he speaks to the media he is actually speaking to us and the smart thing is to play the game. If you are manager of Celtic or Rangers then you have to deal with the media, it is part of the job, that's it. It is best to accept that and make it work for you. Also when he is dissing the media I don't believe for a minute he is doing it to defend Celtic, he is doing it for Gordon Strachan. He has also been very disparaging towards fans. I accept that there is an element of humour in his 'devil dugs' quote but you don't dis the customer. I do no believe that he feels an affinity with the fans therefore it is understandable why many fans feel no affinity with him.

2. Quality of football. I just don't know what to say to those who claim we play great football under WGS. We were good at the start of this season, and there have been some great one-off performances (Benfica at CP) but overall there is no doubt in my mind that the quality of football has been poor. The fact that we are winning and attendances are falling is a sure sign that people are not enjoying what they are seeing. I cannot agree either with the pro-WGS fans who dismiss the football under MON as 'long-ball'. That team was indeed physical, 'British', however you like to describe it but it was packed with players who had a real football brain - Lambert, Lennon, Larsson, Sutton (who was good enough to play in midfield or as a ball-playing CB), Hartson (who was actually not a bad footballer either), Moravcik, and Petrov. We were also exciting to watch and regularly banged in the goals. It is interesting that those who dismiss the quality of football under MON do so in order to talk up the football under WGS - for me it is about that rather than a real insight in to the football under MON. I realise that winning the league is priority and as long as he does that I will accept that he is doing his job and should be secure in it however winning the SPL does not by definition mean that we are a good team. That is a fact. We are only challenged by one team for the title and they have been in utter disarray in McLeish's last season (oh how we laughed at how * they were) and in chaos under PLG. Last season there is no question that Rangers' involvement in Europe gave us an advantage in winning the league - just as it did them during our run to Seville. Winning three SPL titles in a row does not prove that we are a good football team, not in these circumstances.

3. Transfers/signings. For me his success in the transfer market is highly questionable. I appreciate we are no longer shopping in the same market as we did under MON but nevertheless many signings have been outright failures. The turnover of players has been relatively high and thus can only be because previous signings have not worked.

4. Tactics. He has made mistakes, as all managers do, it is just a question of degree as to whether it is to an acceptable level. Again this is subjective.

5. His time at Aberdeen. I include myself in this and I fully accept that it is somewhat irrational to dislike someone for events which happened decades ago. But who said football was rational ? Football is about rivalries, heroes, hate figures. I still hate Rapid Vienna for events in the 80s, as should any fan old enough to remember, and younger fans should be in no doubt that WGS HATED the Celtic support with a vengeance. I hated him then and I have to say I see no change in him that endears me to him even as Celtic manager.

6. His man-management. There are again legitimate questions about his man-management. He seems to have issues with 'big name' players. I realise that players can be arseholes but a really good man-manager will be able to get a player to toe the line and produce the goods for the team. That is a large part of the manager's job. He perhaps lacks skills in this area. In the end it doesn't matter if a player is right or wrong it is up to the manager (who is almost twice as old, and wise, as the player) to steer the situation in a way that benefits the club.

As I say I see no proof that it is down to bigotry but what I do notice is what I see as pretty much a fascism of sorts from pro-WGS folk who ask for reasons, are given reasons and then dismiss them as being invalid. I read in the pages above that his conduct with the media wasn't a reason to criticise him - it is. How he represents the club in the mass media is a valid aspect of his job that he can be accountable for. For me maybe the pro-WGS supporters, understandably, want to defend Celtic's manager but perhaps they could look at him more objectively.

That said no manager who keeps winning the league should be sacked.

EDIT

One other point. If those who dislike him are such a minority then why don't the majority, who apparently support him, chant his name at matches as has been asked above ? There should be enough of them to get a song going.

 

Nobody said that all people that dont like Strachan's management are all bigots but there is a large section, alot who havent posted in this thread if they havent been banned already. You dont see the evidence because staff remove it from the public domain for the right reasons.

Now here comes a double standard, no cant sack him when he's winning but when he doesnt bring home the league, the knives will come out, dont say they wont, they will from you and others.

Did any other successful manager get that sort of ultra high expectation? No

Did a Manager will similar success, MON, get that treatment when he lost leagues for us? No way

There is more of the double standards

 

OMFG, Martin what a post Best ever honestly. Thats most of the reason I have found that other supporters dont like him for. None of the " hes not Celtic minded" or " Hes not catholic " mince.

I have posted most of the reasons more than a few times, and PRO Gs'ers or whatever you want to call them simply dismiss them and then say nobody comes up with any facts so they must be bigots

 

The problem is that you can't prove that people think that way.

No one is ever going to admit to being a sectarian bigot and not liking him because he's not Irish, Catholic or "Celtic minded".

It could well be subconcious thoughts, or as I suspect it's people who think like that, but are ashamed of their own reasoning and know it won't stand up so they cover it up with other things like "we're playing crap football" as if we have some * given right to play like Man Utd with something like 10% of their transfer budget. And its a million times better than the brutes we had previously, two players like Larsson and Lubo Moravcik dressed it up because they were world class players but other than them there was no kind of football played "the Celtic way".

Just because no one has come out and said that they don't like him for bigoted reasons, doesn't mean there are no people who don't like him for bigoted reasons.

 

Its fair to say dobbin that I've seen, and alot of staff, more on this forum in the last couple of years than you or most. So dont try to sweep it under the rug, these * do exist and they do have Celtic jerseys and possibly season books. How does that make you feel?

 

i agree totally with the previous post. brilliant post.

 

i meant martins

 

Just read the bolded, some have said it on this forum, several times. But when they were called bigots, they went underground and used other excuses to oust the manager. FACT

 

In which case there is no point in discussing the matter if you are asking for reasons, are then given reasons, and then say 'I don't believe you'. It makes discussion on this matter futile.

Jansen, Venglos and Barnes weren't 'one of us'. Were the fans bigoted against them ?

 

Im just saying from my time on here i haven't seen much or any people come and say i hate him because hes not Celtic minded or hes not catholic, you've been on here a lot longer than me and so have most of the staff that have to deal with that so you probably have seen it.

Its fair to say i would be very dissapointed if people hate/dislike him for not being catholic/celtic minded as that has nothing to do with anything, if at the end of the day hes doing his job right. I have met him on more than one occassion and must say he was very pleasant so i dont have anything against him in that way, just for some of the reasons Martin posted above that i dont agree (sometimes) with his management.

 

Thats a fair & honest post Martin, good read! Very similar to how i feel at the moment. I'm behind strach 100% but i don't gloss over & sugar coat everything he does, the same went for MON and every other man who stepped up to manage the hoops. Its not like we hire & fire our managers at the drop of a hat, like some epl teams! Sometimes i wonder if i myself are being labeled a WGS hater?????

 

I have read many different reasons over the last two days and some I just can't fathom, some I can understand even if I personally disagree, maybe its the paranoid Celtic fan in me that sees it this way but I believe there are people, maybe not you in particular as although I disagree with your points you have previously made, and ask you to look at other factors like for example, why does he treat the media the way he does. There are people who would rather have mediocre managers simply because they once played for the club.