Fading hipster Pat Nevin shares even more Celtic sliding doors moments

Pat Nevin has been reliving his favourite fantasy of almost playing for Celtic.

Back in the eighties as a leftie hipster there was a cutting political edge to the Chelsea winger, these days he will share his thoughts with obscure betting sites in order to keep the cash flowing.

My Betting Sites are the latest firm to think that the thoughts of Nevin are newsworthy with the Daily Record happy to copy and paste easy copy even if it is on a theme that they have covered many times.

As a kid from Easterhouse Nevin played for Celtic Boys Club but the offer of a Celtic apprenticeship never arrived, instead he joined Clyde under Craig Brown and studied at Glasgow College of Technology.

In 1983 as a Scotland u-21 internationalist he joined Chelsea who were in the Second Division, playing a role as an exciting young team earned promotion to the top flight led by the goals of Kerry Dixon and David Speedie.

Even by mid-eighties standards the Chelsea support was utterly toxic with a notorious right-wing core using football to promote their poison.

Nevin was happy enough to collect their coin for five years, these days he likes to portray himself as being in the vanguard of gentrifying the Chelsea support into something almost acceptable.

Regular slots in the Chelsea programme and Chelsea TV funded by Roman Abramovich has contributed to his media pot where he still plays on being the lefty radical of the eighties when it suits him.

Picking up on his fee from the gambling website the Daily Record reports Nevin saying:

Celtic came in for me three times, when I was at Chelsea and Everton, but I was under a contract. I couldn’t leave unless the club sold me.

I didn’t really have an option. Back then the club had the control and I felt being on a contract was like a promise. Even if Barcelona wanted me, I would have said that I was under a contract.

The last time Celtic came for me, it was a bit sad. I played at Tranmere, and I was told by Bolton Wanderers, who were in the Premier League, that they wanted to buy me. I told them to go through the proper channels.

The manager told me a week later that a club wanted me. I knew it was Bolton, so I said no. I wanted to stay. He asked me later if I wanted to know who the club was, and I said ‘Oh yes who is it?’ It was Celtic… And I had turned down the club that I loved without knowing.

I don’t regret it today, I am very happy about it, because I still live in Scotland and if you played for Celtic or Rangers your life would never become normal again. It will always be like half of the country doesn’t like you. Now, I can live a normal life, so in retrospect it was good for me and my family.

And it is something that no Celtic fan regrets either.

Having Nevin drone on about his Celtic days would be a painful experience compared to the annual reminder of how he used to be such a massive supporter but decided to ditch it all to assist his media career.

After professing his undying love for Celtic while playing in England Nevin dropped the hoops swiftly as he wound down his playing career at Kilmarnock and Motherwell where he was CEO as the club went into administration.

The Celtic affinity was killed stone dead as he threw himself into a media career, Hibs became a flag of convenience with references to the incredible team of the early eighties led by Pat Stanton.

Perhaps the most embarrassing episode in his fantasy life was when he claimed in one of his autobiographies that he was offered the chance to run the business side of Celtic by John Boyle.

At that time of the claim Nevin was 27 and playing for Everton, in 1989 he played in the FA Cup Final but apparently a year later he was in talks to run the business side of Celtic, presumably while also turning on his magic on the wing and sharing his love of the arts with anyone prepared to listen and pay.

John Boyle wasn’t slow to demolish that yarn, telling The Sun:

Pat Nevin’s book is called ‘The Accidental Footballer’, but he’s suffering from some kind of accidental memory loss.

When I came back home the other night one of my kids mentioned the story to me, and I thought it was a wind-up.

When I checked it out I was laughing my football socks off at the very idea. I do remember us being together with our families on a yacht off Rhodes because we had mutual friends.

It’s entirely possible there was a vague conversation along the lines of him being a footballer and me being a businessman, and Celtic being in real financial difficulties at that time.

But it would have been something like, ‘Someone should buy Celtic’, no more than that. The idea it would have been me is just farcical.

Apart from anything else, if that was in 1990 as he states, I simply wouldn’t have had the money to buy Celtic even if I’d been of a mind to.

In 1990 I couldn’t have afforded East Fife, never mind Celtic!

Hibs, Chelsea, Clyde and the Tartan Army are welcome to him