Cundy is an a***hole, but Celtic keep handing him the ammunition

Last night, we handed Jason Cundy an open goal.

And, as you’d expect, he put his foot through it.

Cundy has jumped on Celtic’s failings every time he’s had an opportunity, so it was hardly a surprise to see him straight on the airwaves after the 4-1 humbling in Lisbon.

Well, we got every bit of ridicule you could expect from the likes of him.

Here is what he had to say on his talkSPORT show on Thursday night, as reported by the Daily Record:

“Celtic, I don’t know why they bother.

“You know when you were in the playground and you need 11 players. Scottish clubs are always the last to be picked when you need another body.

“And again, they have disgraced UK football. What’s the point? They were smashed by Benfica tonight and it’s the same old, same old story.”

Cundy is an a***hole who thinks he’s funny, and it takes a certain kind of stupid to agree

I’ll say it plainly.

Jason Cundy is an a***hole.

He thinks he’s funny with the way he carries on on talkSPORT, giggling away beside Charlie Austin like a schoolboy who has just found a swear word.

It takes a certain kind of stupid to find somebody like Cundy funny.

And the stuff he came out with when the lads from the Open Goal podcast joined him was even better.

He told them there would be “some idiot like you” sitting there in a thousand years saying the same thing, and that we are “the Newcastle of the North”.

That one made me laugh, mainly because it says everything about how little he knows.

I’m no fan of the SMSM, but at least most of them have bothered to watch a Celtic game.

Cundy has clearly never looked beyond the scoreline, because the scoreline is all he needs.

But here’s the thing that really irks me.

He doesn’t need to have watched us to ask the question half our own support is asking anyway.

‘Why even bother in Europe?’ is a fair question when our own manager can’t answer it

Strip away the giggling and the playground nonsense, and that’s what he’s saying.

Why even bother?

Unfortunately, it’s a fair question.

It’s fair because the man in the dugout can’t even give a straight answer as to what our actual aspirations in Europe are.

Last night, after a 4-1 going on 10-1 beating, Martin O’Neill said he thinks we have a great chance of qualifying for the knockout stages of the Europa League.

Go figure.

Beaten 3-1 by Ferencvaros, beaten 4-1 by Benfica, knocked out of the Champions League by LASK before it even started, and we’re third from bottom of the Europa League?

You’ve got to admire his optimism, because it lies somewhere between misplaced and completely lost.

This is the same man who stood in front of the cameras and said he was delighted with the second half in Lisbon, after we’d been set up to fail in the first.

Delighted.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, you can’t dumb down the expectations of a club the size of Celtic and then be surprised when the rest of the world starts laughing.

Because that’s exactly what’s happened.

We spent the summer watching the squad get stripped back, and being told to trust the process.

Then LASK happened.

And since LASK, every performance has been met with a shrug, a press conference full of waffle, and a promise that it will all come good in the end.

It won’t.

Not like this.

Tragically, it’s nobody’s fault but our own

Cundy didn’t pick the team.

He didn’t leave us short in midfield and up front when the window slammed shut.

Cundy didn’t sit in a boardroom, or a villa somewhere sunny, signing off on a plan that puts the balance sheet ahead of a football team.

That was all us.

Or, to be more precise, that was all them.

Make no mistake, the board have spent years telling us that Celtic is a big club that does things the right way.

Silent Mike says nothing, and the absent meddling golfer says even less.

Then they hand the biggest stage we have to a group of players they haven’t bothered to strengthen, and a manager who talks like it’s 2003.

And who gets to laugh at the end of it?

A bloke on talkSPORT who couldn’t pick Celtic out of a line up.

That’s what hurts.

Not that he said it, but that he was handed the ammunition to say it.

I’d love to tell you he’s talking nonsense.

Honestly, I would.

But when we sit third from bottom, having been thumped by Ferencvaros and Benfica, what exactly is the counter argument?

That we’re bigger than Newcastle?

Maybe we are.

It doesn’t feel like it right now.

We can scream at Cundy all we like, but he only does what he’s paid to do – wind people up and wait for a Scottish club to give him a reason.

And we keep giving him one.

We are a laughing stock.

All Cundy does is prove that we are.

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