If you don’t know what the BBC Scottish football “gossip” page is, then congratulations on avoiding it, because there are times when I genuinely wish I had done the same.
Today the headline on a popular news aggregator – and frankly I think the site does enough promotion without any support from them – was: “Kyogo and O’Reilly leave, Armstrong returns to Celtic?”
If you’re reading this for the first time and thinking “Huh? What? Kyogo is leaving Celtic?” then rest assured. Although many media outlets are looking at every word that comes out of Kyogo’s mouth and trying to write articles suggesting that Kyogo might be leaving Celtic, there are no indications to conclude otherwise.
“Honestly, I don’t know what my future holds,” he was quoted as telling Japanese media, but that is true for any player when a club is in the midst of a rebuild.
However, with reports of his departure focusing on a return to Japan, he added: “But I want to do my best overseas for as long as I can and if I can come back one day I would love to come back to Japan and play in front of you all.”
That’s all he has to say. There’s absolutely no room for debate. Rumours of interest in him from other parts of Europe have faded to barely a whisper in recent months. So where does the BBC get its justification for printing it in their gossip columns?
It’s in the same place as Armstrong’s article, from football’s worst website, Football Insider, which this site and others have repeatedly denounced as merely a repository of clickbait and sports fiction.
They don’t have any “insider” knowledge, they’re just a bunch of people who have been involved with the game in some way in the past and still talk like they’re “in the know”. If that horrible site gets one article right it’s the first time.
The site should not be legalized by the national broadcaster.
There is absolutely no justification for this.
Their “exclusive” report is no doubt based on a completely discredited story from Urawa Reds – which, as you can see, the player himself has denied as if he needed to – but they have attracted phantom interest from elsewhere, with Celtic apparently ready to entertain a £25m offer.
That’s the level at which this site operates. Not at the low end of the scale, but at “how clever am I to state the obvious” level.
It would be brazen to claim that as an exclusive. Kyogo is 29 years old. Of course we would be open to an offer of £25 million for him. You don’t need inside information to realise that, anybody with common sense already knows that.
And then you’re going to sign 32-year-old Stuart Armstrong on a free transfer? To do what? To get an inferior player than you had before he left?
The chances of that happening are just as slim as our receiving a £25m offer for the Japan boys and turning it down. The Armstrong story reeks of the same lack of imagination that has already linked us with Jota, Tierney and Edouard in this transfer window.
It astounds me that serious professionals in a supposedly serious profession can continue to churn out so much obvious rubbish on a daily basis – Jota for £25m, Edouard for £20m – how could anyone believe these stories or any suggestion that Tierney is on the verge of returning to Celtic when virtually every word he has said has confirmed he intends to stay in a top five league…it’s astonishing.
Now we add Armstrong, but why?
He played under Rodgers so he’s free to play, it’s just laziness.
The O’Reilly story comes from Neil Lennon. Does he have no job? Last week he told the media he “wouldn’t rule out” a return to Celtic. He doesn’t need to. It’s more likely that Armstrong, Edouard, Tierney and Jota will be in the squad next season than it is that Lennon will return to Celtic in an official capacity.
He still refuses to acknowledge the fact that he made a huge mistake the last time he was here, but the caliber of clubs which have employed him since then suggests that the football world itself essentially agrees with the verdict that many of us passed on him back then.
O’Reilly’s headline states that his departure this summer is “inevitable,” which is an entirely foolish statement, because any deal needs all three elements to be in place for it to happen.
Firstly, Celtic would have to demonstrate a willingness to sell, secondly, a sale would only take place if a club willing to match our valuation showed serious interest, and thirdly, the club itself would have to be attractive enough for O’Reilly to leave Celtic to go there.
I’m not sure there’s a good chance of keeping him if the first two conditions are met, but using the word “inevitable” here is pretty silly, especially since the second condition is not a small hurdle to overcome. Probably, but anyone who knows what they’re talking about would be willing to go that far.
But at least Lennon is still involved in the media to some extent, and he’s still active in football, with a new management role waiting for him at the end of the summer.
So whilst I do think he’s talking nonsense by using the word ‘inevitable’, it is far more credible than Football Insider and the fact that the BBC managed to create a ‘gossip’ headline out of Lennon’s stupid comments and two articles which used them as their main source shows just how corrupt the BBC themselves have become.
