Rodgers and Hopkin are the odd couple
Timing is everything in football. Bad timing is particularly problematic.
I would refer you to the case of Rangers’ Michael O’Halloran being captured by camera while sitting among the Celtic support at Hampden on Saturday as Brendan Rodgers’ side beat Motherwell to become double treble winners.
Forgiveness from an outraged Ibrox support may be a long time in coming for Michael, if ever at all. O’Halloran has fallen foul of social media’s omniverous eye.
What are we to do about two other cases of inappropriate timing which have nothing at all to do with the Twitteratti?
Scottish football now has the first man in the entire history of the game to win back to back trebles. Rodgers also failed to win the Premiership’s Manager of the Year award at the same time.
David Hopkin has now completed the improbable feat of back to back promotions with Livingston and taken the club into the top flight of Scottish football for the first time in twelve years.
He wasn’t voted Manager of the Year in the Championship either.
I’ll be diplomatic and file both cases under the heading of ‘oversight.’
The reason for both oversights, and that is undoubtedly what they are, is that recognition is handed out on an annual basis before all of the reasons for delivering recognition have been properly collated.
It does look odd, does it not, that the manager who finished fifth in the Premiership league table, Steve Clarke, gets named is named the top boss in the division ahead of someone who has delivered something unique and unprecedented?
I wish Steve nothing but success and unreservedly acknowledge the quality he has brought to the managerial side of our game at the highest level. May he stay here for the remainder of his career and prosper at Rugby Park.
But it looks odd, does it not?
As odd as someone who inherits a team in the third tier of Scottish football with a plastic pitch, paltry support and a pauper’s budget and takes them into the top division in two seasons flat while being overlooked on prize-giving day.
We invite ridicule being heaped upon ourselves by making these decisions.
Just as it doesn’t look good to have one quarter of the playing surfaces in our flagship competition made up of artificial grass.
Livingston have done something bordering on the miraculous. Hamilton Accies have once again survived in the major league in the face of local apathy and meagre resources. Kilmarnock took part in the transformation of the season story.
Sincere congratulations to all concerned. Now comes the ‘But.’
Synthetic surfaces are for training facilities. They are not for the league competition which defines us. They diminish credibility and make the league look second rate.
And that is particularly disappointing as the profile of our game off the park gets set to enjoy a significant increase next week with the arrival of Steven Gerrard in the manager’s office at Ibrox.
The whole idea of Gerrard trying to prevent Rodgers from winning an eighth successive title for Celtic is a headline writer’s dream and television and radio’s idea of golden content.
Our game is set to enter a new phase of rivalry involving the two best supported sides in the country. They could charge £100 a ticket for the first meeting of Celtic and Rangers next season and demand would still far exceed supply.
That’s why there’ll be no such thing as a close season.
The planning for the defence of Celtic’s title and the possibility of a triple treble will already have begun inside Rodgers’ office, of that there need be no doubt whatsoever.
The strategy meetings dedicated to stopping Celtic’s domination of our game, you can be equally certain, will have taken place between Gerrard and all who surround him.
This is how it should be and the intensity levels which managers speak of in relation to matters on the pitch will now be replicated off the park during a Summer of ‘banter’ in excess of anything seen here for many years.
There will now be a mass outbreak of discussions concerning fathers who are bigger than other people’s fathers, a raft of incoming and outgoing transfers and no opportunity to miss football during the Summer recess because it simply won’t go away.
The SFA will unveil their new CEO, Ian Maxwell, tomorrow. The day after, Alex McLeish will take the odds and sods he has been left with to represent Scotland on their ill-conceived trip to Peru and Mexico.
Gerrard will clock on for work in the madhouse that is Scottish football after he does his telly punditry at Saturday’s Champions League final between Liverpool and Real Madrid.
Where do you find time to play with your bucket and spade in the midst of all this stuff?
The only pity is Partick Thistle will no longer be part of the fun in the top flight, having done a characteristically daft thing by going from the top six one season to relegation the next.
But what happened to them is only proof of one thing, no matter how much shouting and bawling we have to endure between now and the resumption of hostilities in August one thing, and one thing only, will separate the successful from the under achieving.
And that will be the consistency of your results and not the size of your gob