‘Bitter aul clown’ ‘How succulent’ ‘His opinion is worthless’ Tom English mourns a season of broken dreams

‘Rubbish, waterlogged, incompetent’ isn’t the title of Tom English’s autobiography.

Instead it is the title of a podcast where the Chief Sports Writer at the BBC reflects back on another season of broken dreams and heart-break in Scottish football.

After going all in with the Micky Beale Revolution! English quickly switched horses to A Proper Football Manager but again had to end the season watching Celtic lift two trophies in less than a fortnight to reinforce their place as the dominant force in Scottish football.

For English it was another season of abject failure, kicked off in spectacular fashion when Celtic didn’t invite BBC Scotland to media conferences after their star man had gone off on one during a podcast aimed at an Irish audience.

Once again English never got a sniff of a worthwhile story outside of Gorgie Road, there were no job offers from the Irish rugby scene with just 12 paydays to comfort the man affectionately known as House Paddy by his BBC Scotland colleagues.

During the winter there were some real moments of hope and excitement but as spring appeared so to did Celtic at the business end of the season to leave James Tavernier and the BBC Scotland Sports Desk bitterly disappointed, again.

Sharing most Saturday afternoons in a studio with Kenny Macintyre is about as low as you can get in journalistic terms, trying to become a character, shock-jock personality is a big ask when you are a figure of fun after more than a decade following instructions from Ibrox.

This season has seen almost all commercial media groups forced to cut back on jobs and service, fortunately for English the BBC TV licence keeps him comforted from reality with a jolly to Germany coming soon where he’ll be picking up second hand on stories and waiting on exciting transfer news from Ibrox and Tynecastle.