At one time or another we’ve all said something we can’t take back. That something might be a fairly innocuous statement like “This Paul Heckingbottom CV looks interesting. Add it to the ‘Maybe’ pile” or something with far more grave consequences like “Congratulations Mr Heckingbottom, you’ve got the job”.
In the age of social media, it’s harder to brush those statements under the carpet. All your most ill-judged predictions are forever enshrined in the form of screenshots, ready to be shared and roundly mocked. Over the weekend Scottish football saw numerous such examples.
Top-flight football returned following yet another interminable international break, the component parts of which were 10% trying to find reasonable excuses for not watching the Scotland games, 17% Rangers fans rewriting the history of Alex McLeish’s second spell as Scotland boss, 4% Gary Caldwell rewriting the history of Gary Caldwell’s spell as Partick Thistle boss, 9% Celtic fans trying to hide videos of Odsonne Edouard’s France Under-21 performances from Man United scouts and 54% Celtic and Rangers fans forensically analysing Colombia’s 3-0 defeat to Algeria.
It was something of a relief, then, to be back in the completely rational world of club football. A world where with Celtic 1-0 up at home against Ross County a Rangers fan calling himself ‘Bears fight back’ might consider posting a tweet that read “Celtic struggling at home to Ross County” to be a logical move. As his words went viral with the help of a share from Chris Sutton following Celtic’s eventual 6-0 win, Parkhead fans were unsure whether to laugh harder at the “Celtic struggling” part or the ‘Grown man calling himself a Bear without any irony’ part.
It wasn’t just bears who were speaking too soon. After announcing manager Robbie Neilson’s contract extension, Dundee United encouraged fans to “Read Robbie’s thoughts on the feelgood factor being back at Tannadice and tomorrow’s trip to Queen of the South”. “Boy, I sure am loving this feelgood factor” remarked one United fan during his team’s 4-0 defeat to Queen of the South.
It was Fir Park, though, that saw the weekend’s highest proportion of words being eaten. Third-placed Motherwell were justifiably confident ahead of Aberdeen’s visit after a superb start to the season, and it is was in that spirit of ebullience that the club tweeted “We’re third for a reason. But there’s more. This is an opportunity. Nobody drop any standards”. Bet you can’t guess whether they dropped their standards.
The mood was significantly less optimistic among Aberdeen fans, particularly when Derek McInnes unveiled a lineup less adventurous than Michael Gove’s lovemaking (presumably). “Classic post international break McInnes lineup. F*** knows” shrugged @stonefish100, while @StevieG1978 said “Only the six defenders but Gallagher can also move into defence to make it seven, in the event that we need to step things getting embarrassing”.
As it turned out, both the optimism of Motherwell and the self-deprecation of Aberdeen were misplaced, as McInnes’ side cruised to a 3-0 victory. According to @IngramGreig, one Motherwell fan leaving the ground remarked “They completely stitched us up, fair play to them”.
After Dundee United’s feelgood factor and Motherwell’s dropped standards, James Tavernier’s dignity became the weekend’s latest casualty on Sunday. It was a big afternoon for the Rangers captain, who has been a target for abuse from the club's fans following his disastrous showing against Young Boys.
Away supporters arrived at Tynecastle asking ‘Do you think Tav’s learned from that experience?’, and within six minutes of the game starting they had their answer - ‘Not really, no’. In the build-up to Ryotaro Meshino’s opener, the right-back showed all the composure of Arlene Foster being forced to watch a Queer Eye marathon.
BT Sport’s Stephen Craigan told viewers “Hearts are a completely different animal”, with the animal they’ve most resembled so far this season being Bambi’s mum. Steven Gerrard took a lot of criticism for his team’s sluggish start to the game, but in fairness, ‘Just turn up and assume Hearts are going to be more sh**e than us’ ’is a tactic that’s worked for most opposition managers in 2019.
Alfredo Morelos levelled on 38 minutes, and made a point of celebrating in front of the Hearts supporters. Those killjoys who believe you should only celebrate near your own fans were vindicated when one furious Hearts fan responded by...eh...taking a photo of Morelos. Absolutely indefensible behaviour, which if left unpunished risks Scottish football turning into English football.
A 1-1 draw ensured Celtic ended the weekend on top of the table, thanks to the sixth goal of their epic struggle against Ross County. For Rangers, it was the end of two memorable weeks at the top. Two weeks in which they didn’t actually have any fixtures, but memorable weeks nonetheless.
