Celtic pull 2 clear of the Ibrox side, and Barry is out with the home truths already…

Last Wednesday, I wrote a piece about Barry Ferguson fawning over Staunch Del’s new Ibrox side before a ball had been kicked, under the headline:

Let’s see what happens if they drop points on Friday night and Celtic win on Monday…

Well.

They dropped points on Friday night.

We won on Monday.

And this morning we sit 2 points clear of theym after one single game of football.

I’m not usually one for taking a bow, but I’ll take this one.

I said Tannadice wouldn’t be the stroll Barry thought it would be, because they’d already drawn 2-2 with United twice last season.

I said the bubble would burst the minute they dropped a point.

And I said you’d see the words ‘serial’, ‘loser’ and ‘bottle merchant’ on Follow Follow by the Saturday morning.

I said the meltdown would begin the moment we did the business against Dundee.

Four out of five.

Not bad for a man ranting into the void.

Apparently I do that a lot…

Or do I?

The one I got wrong was that Barry Ferguson would eat humble pie in his column this week.

He hasn’t.

Of course he hasn’t.

Instead, the great man is out in the Record this morning with ‘home truths’.

And he opens it like this:

There’s no point beating about the bush. On Friday night at Tannadice the F word was what sprang to my mind. Frustration.

The F word, Barry?

Funnily enough, a different one sprang to my mind, and it wasn’t frustration.

But since we’re doing F words, here’s the one buried in his own column near the bottom.

Four.

As in four years without a win on the opening day of a league season.

Four years, and the F word he reaches for is ‘frustration’.

Six days ago, this man was convinced the R*****s soft touch was gone.

He’d seen a new ‘steeliness’ about them that he hadn’t seen in years, and he’d seen enough to make him believe we were about to see a very different version of them coming out of that tunnel.

Ninety minutes at Tannadice later, and here’s where the steeliness went:

And, not for the first time, it’s led to questions being asked about the mentality of some of these players because they should have been even more frustrated than anyone else.

The mentality of some of these players.

These very same players he’d watched all pre-season before declaring the soft touch dead.

The ‘steeliness’ lasted exactly one football match.

And just look at who carries the can for it.

Not the manager who picked them.

Not the manager whose face Barry tells us had frustration ‘etched all over’ it.

The manager can’t do very much about that.

The manager can’t do very much about that.

I’ve read that line six times now and it still makes me laugh.

He picked the team, and he set them up.

He had seven of last season’s medal-free specialists in his starting eleven, a point I made yesterday when Keith Jackson was busy sniffing around for a ‘stench of complacency’.

Jackson on Monday.

Barry on Tuesday.

Same script, same scapegoats, same protected man in the dugout.

The Stenography Corps have their story straight, and it isn’t the manager’s fault.

But here’s the part that genuinely made me sit up.

Not only will Del use this as an opportunity to tell a few home truths inside his dressing room but he will also be able to knock on the door of his recruitment department and demand more help from them, as quickly as possible.

Knock on the door of his recruitment department, and demand more help.

Now hold on a wee minute, because last Wednesday I gave the Ibrox board the one bit of credit I felt they’d earned: their fans couldn’t question the board’s commitment, because Andrew Cavenagh and co. had handed Derek McInnes seven new players.

Today, the count has risen to eight.

And counting…

Their commitment to the cause, unlike our board’s, could not be called into question.

That was six days ago, and it’s now eight signings, with Staunch Del already pleading for more before a ball was kicked.

The one defence I granted them lasted a single game before their own cheerleader started banging on the recruitment department’s door.

Eight players in the door, and it’s the recruitment department getting the knock.

Not the man in the platform brogues.

Barry even does us the courtesy of laying the excuse track in advance:

Unfortunately, you can’t just click your fingers and bring these guys in.

Ah.

So when the board delivers, it’s proof of ambition.

And when the manager’s team drops points, it’s the players’ mentality, and also the recruitment department, and also the fact that transfers are hard.

Convenient, isn’t it??

He finishes by telling us it’s ‘way too soon for anyone to push the panic button’.

Barry Ferguson (EBT £2.5 million).

Nuff said.

Two clear at the top doesn’t mean I’m sitting here with my feet up.

Far from it.

As I said in my article earlier today, Monday night told us very little in footballing terms.

We won, and we still looked makeshift, transitional and short.

We have 2 signings in the door and a Champions League qualifier against LASK coming down the tracks.

Michael Nicholson still needs that firecracker.

But that’s the difference between the two halves of this city, and it’s the exact point I made last Wednesday.

When we drop points, we aim our ire at the boardroom.

When they drop points, they aim it at each other, and the SMSM aim it at whichever player is nearest the door.

Staunch Del has Jagiellonia Białystok away on Thursday, then Hibs at Ibrox on Sunday.

The bubble is punctured, not burst.

Give it a fortnight.

Last week I signed off by saying Follow Follow should be a joy to behold, and that a man can dream.

Well, I dreamt it, and it came true inside 72 hours.

Anyone fancy placing a bet on me getting the humble pie one right by Christmas…?

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Make sure to join us on the Trinity Tims this evening, where special guest Des McLean will be chatting and promoting his comedy show, “And if you know your history”