Keevins has a Celtic love in this week, next week he’ll be tearing us to shreds again. Is this guy for real?
He's a week late on Martin O'Neill, a week early on the protest he'll save for next weekend, and he wants us to know he loves Celtic. We're not daft, Hugh.
Eric Knott 
Yesterday, Hugh Keevins treated the Daily Record’s readers to a Celtic love-in.
Frank McAvennie, Tommy Gemmell, Bobby Murdoch, Jinky, the long lunches and the wee tears at the dinner table – it had the lot.
If you didn’t know any better, you’d have thought he was Celtic’s biggest cheerleader.
And you’d be wrong.
He interviewed every one of the Lisbon Lions, and he wants us to know it
Here is how he put it, in his Oasis column for the Daily Record:
“Over the course of a working lifetime, I interviewed all of the Lions individually and felt privileged to have known them.”
Fair play to him, I’m sure he did.
I’m sure it was a privilege too.
But what does it have to do with the price of fish?
The man is using the greatest team in our history as a shield, so that when the knives come out again in a week or two, he can say, ‘How can you accuse me of hating Celtic?’
Look at the same column and you’ll see the other side of it.
He tells us the board couldn’t “run a bath, never mind a football club”.
He calls them the “hopeless hierarchy”.
And he has Martin O’Neill’s side in danger of coming home from Lisbon as the “Lisbon Liabilities”.
That’s the snide, sarcastic wee line he can’t help himself with, dropped in right after the warm bath of nostalgia.
Make no mistake, that’s not an accident.
Love-in on the way in, boot on the way out.
I get the dread about Benfica, we all feel it
Now, let me be fair to the man.
He’s right that the trip to Benfica on October 14 is a game to be worried about.
Of course it is.
We all know what the Ferencvaros game did to us, and the two maulings from the Ibrox side before that.
I’d bet there isn’t a Celtic supporter in the country who is looking forward to it.
But here’s the thing.
If we go to Lisbon and lose that game by a heavy margin, you know exactly who will be having a field day.
It’ll be the same journo, in the same newspaper, with the same typewriter, taking the club apart piece by piece.
And the Lisbon Lions will go straight back in the drawer until the next time he needs them.
Late to the table on Martin O’Neill again
Then there’s Martin O’Neill.
Keevins is wondering where the manager’s head is, and why there’s been no message to the fans since the break.
Where has Keevins been for the last fortnight?
That question has been chewed over endlessly during the international break, by every podcast, every message board and every pub in Glasgow.
Of course, there’s a fair point buried in there somewhere.
A manager who talks about taking time out to reflect on his position, then goes quiet, owes the support an explanation.
But we’ve been saying so for two weeks.
It’s the same old story with him.
By the time he gets to it, the rest of us have chewed it over, spat it out and moved on.
He’s a week late and he’s still presenting it like it’s a scoop.
Watch him back the absent meddling golfer next weekend
I’ll go one further, and I’m happy to put my name to it.
He seems to take the board apart every weekend of late.
But I can guarantee you he’ll back Dermot Desmond all the way next weekend.
Because on Saturday, there was a protest at St. Andrew’s.
That was the story.
That was the one that mattered to the support.
And if Keevins was a journalist worth his salt, he’d have pulled the column he had lined up for Sunday morning and he’d have reported on it.
A man who has spent a working lifetime with Celtic people would know that’s where the real story was.
Instead we got Oasis, Gemmell’s pension plan and a tear-jerker about Bobby Murdoch.
Of course, he’ll save the protest for next weekend.
By then the moment will have passed, the heat will be out of it, and he’ll have a nice, safe angle that lets the board off the hook.
Funny how that works, isn’t it?
You can’t have it both ways, Hugh
The support isn’t daft.
We know the difference between somebody who loves this club and somebody who loves a column inch.
Loving Celtic means turning up when the story is uncomfortable, not just when there’s a Lisbon Lion to wheel out.
It means asking the hard questions when they matter, not a week after everybody else.
And it means being consistent, instead of pulling on the hoops in one column and the boxing gloves in the next.
Which is why I’ll say it again.
Is this guy for real?
Next week we’ll find out…
Key Takeaways
- Hugh Keevins appears to use nostalgia for the Lisbon Lions as a shield against criticism of Celtic’s current board.
- Although he acknowledges concerns about upcoming matches, he will quickly turn to criticism if results go poorly.
- Keevins is often late with his opinions while failing to address pressing issues that fans care about.
- He tends to soften his critiques of club management but is likely to back board members in upcoming situations.
- Celtic supporters expect honesty and consistency from journalists like Keevins, especially during tough times.
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All from a tabloid scoop who never ever considered for promotion to head ‘sport ‘ hack in his decades long career at the daily Record but ended up answering phones for the seriously dwindling troubled paper ? HOTLINE !!!!!!! The old QEII.
Keevins is a headnipper . He doesn’t know where he stands on issues , forever changing his tune . Whenever I hear him , which now is very rarely he is forever getting corrected by the presenter on Clyde . He’s made his career on Celtic and rangers spouting sensational sentiments that will endear him to the other side . For me he is a weasel and a dinosaur who thinks he is an important voice in football . He had became an irrelevance