Paranoid Propaganda- Bill Leckie demolishes Celtic’s Champions League spin

Bill Leckie has performed a brutal hatchet job on Celtic’s Champions League performance.

Jumping in with the heavy boots on the Sun reported seemed to revel in last night’s draw, confirming his views against the paranoid propaganda that Celtic have performed pretty well over five matches but had been caught a little short.

Many issues in football are decided by fine margins although Ukraine’s victory over Scotland at Hampden in June was more of a trouncing. It is not fine margins that see a nation fail to qualify for six consecutive World Cup Finals.

Two years ago Celtic were being beaten 4-1 home and away by Sparta Prague. Last summer Ange Postecoglou inherited Callum McGregor, revived Greg Taylor and Tony Ralston and has slowly nursed James Forrest back to something like his old self.

From that base to create more than 10 chances per match in the Champions League is no mean feat, one that more than 90% of Celtic fans recognise and appreciate.

Leckie views it from a very different perspective, explaining to readers of The Sun:

But let’s be honest. Scotland’s champions were in the position of desperately chasing their tails last night not because of bad luck, but because they hadn’t been nearly good enough in the four previous ties.

There’s a narrative doing the rounds that a couple of kicks here and there might have made all the difference – Callum McGregor hitting the post at 0-0 at home to Real Madrid, Daizen Maeda and Giorgos Giakoumakis missing chances late on away to Shakhtar – but that’s not so much a positive spin as paranoid propaganda.

Later on he added:

Matt O’Riley’s radar was miles off beam in those early stages. The first anyone would see of Reo Hatate’s quick feet were when he stumbled jogging up the tunnel at half-time and had to pull some nifty moves to stop himself hitting the deck. Kyogo and Giakoumakis looked like exactly what thy are – a partnership who’d only ever started one game together before now.

Liel Abada couldn’t get into the game, Sead Haksabanovic grafted up and down the left without any real end product – and as for Moritz Jenz, he continued to step out from the back like Virgil Van Dijk before using the ball like Dick Van Dyke.

But as everyone from their gaffer down to the tealady never stops telling us, they never stop. They believe in what they do, in how they want to play, no matter how iffily they might be executing the plan – and finally, 12 minutes from the break, they got their reward thanks to one of their most tried and trusted ploys.