COUPLEOF TWITS
Motormouth English DJs are more about clickbait audience...so don’t get riled by mugs on the mics
RABBIE BURNS kind of summed it up nicely. “O, wad some power the giftie gie us, to see oursels as others see us,” wrote Robert Burns.
Mercifully for the Bard, he lived blissfully in a simpler time prior to the advent of TalkSPORT, who have been going out of their way recently to tell us exactly how our English cousins look upon Scottish football.
But frankly, the opinions of some of their ‘shock-jocks’ like Adrian Durham or Jason Cundy about Scottish football should hold about as much weight north of the border as Jim White’s musings on quantum physics.
Their ill-informed tripe is as predictable as it is effective in raising the hackles of supporters this side of Hadrian’s Wall.
The station long ago abandoned any pretence of balanced analysis or intelligent discussion in favour of their audio form of click-baiting.
And fair play to them, I’m sure their website and phone-ins have attracted their fair share of attention from north of the border in the last couple of weeks as they have lambasted our game, with particular attention being paid to belittling the achievements and overall stature of the country’s champions, Celtic.
Part of this ludicrous nonsense was an attempt to rank Celtic, two-time European Cup finalists and first British club to win the trophy, as a smaller club than some English League One sides based on the yardstick of their number of followers on Twitter.
It’s a transparent, if effective, ploy. Fire out some moronic, controversial statements and sit back and watch the click counter go.
But as much as I feel their shock tactics don’t deserve the attention that we have given them, the reaction from football fans here does rather beg the question; why do we care?
We all know our game isn’t perfect. Far, far from it. But lurking within us all seems to still be a burning inferiority complex when it comes to our much larger neighbour, and particularly the behemoth that is the English Premier League.
It is time that we stopped comparing ourselves, and therefore judging ourselves, against a football country that can boast over 10 times the population and many hundred times the revenue streams.
When Neil Doncaster and his chums at the SPFL unveiled the new names for our league competitions a couple of years ago, simply mimicking their English equivalents at the time, I despaired.
All it does is encourage the comparison between two things that actually have very little in common.
The English Premier League is well-packaged, well-presented entertainment.
Even if their teams are no longer anywhere near the level of the elite Spanish and German sides, as Bayern Munich so overwhelmingly illustrated against Arsenal last week, we should still be able to enjoy it for what it is rather than use it as a stick to beat up our own game.
THE quite wonderful ‘Oldfirmfacts’ of Twitter fame wrote a hilarious article in response to Durham and his ilk pointing out many of the things that make football in this country so unique.
And behind the numerous belly laughs, there is a serious point to be made about appreciating our game for what it is.
Rich in history. Attended by the highest percentage of population per capita in Europe. Home to the first club in the British Isles to lift the European Cup. Home to one of the world’s biggest rivalries, among many other things.
Yes, our game has undoubtedly seen better days, and there are deep-rooted problems that need to be addressed.
Whether the solutions to the betterment of our football lie in the SFA’s flagship Project Brave remains to be seen, but they definitely do not lie in spending our time worrying about how it measures up against the English scene.
And there is certainly nothing of value to be gained from fretting about the kernels of wisdom spluttering from the mics of Cundy and Durham.
We have more pressing issues here to be worrying about than concerning ourselves with the opinions of two guys who probably think that culture peaked with the release of Fat Les’s ‘Vindaloo’.
To paraphrase dear auld Rabbie, let their schemes alone, and let’s not get distracted from doing what we can to improve our own game.