I like to think it is the modern attention span and not my laboured intros that have droves of people clicking off my articles after reading the first couple of lines, and there is much else for which we can blame technology’s rotting of our brains.
The culture wars stoking division across society. Our children finding the phrase ‘six seven’ uncontrollably hilarious. Whatever that Salt Bae guy was.
Football cannot escape the pernicious influence of social media and the need for instant gratification, and it is beyond debate that the way that fans consume ‘content’ and react to results has changed beyond all recognition over the past decade or so.
Scottish football (like the rest of us) now exists in a 24 hours a day, seven days a week media environment, where the need to grab the attention of the doomscrollers pushes people to ever more extreme positions, with ever more scorching hot takes demanded to get people to maybe, just maybe, hang around for a few seconds.
We’re all at it. Yours truly included. We’re in print and on podcasts several times a week reacting to the latest round of results, the latest catastrophic defeats and the triumphant victories. This manager is under pressure. This manager is a genius. This player is a dud. This one is a diamond. And the next week, the roles could all be reversed.
To an extent, it was ever thus. At least when it comes to the biggest clubs in the country. But now the boom-and-bust culture and discourse extends to just about every fanbase. A couple of weeks ago, for instance, Alfred Johansson was being lauded for managing to maintain momentum at Motherwell despite the departure of the spine of the team that was so successful last season under Jens Berthel Askou. Now, after three losses on the trot, there are some who dwell in the darker corners of Facebook and X who want him binned.
It is a similar story with Craig McLeish, who only last week was being feted for daring to tread a similar, progressive path with St Mirren. Ok, even the most kneejerk, reactionary Saints fans (and there are a few in that far-side stand, never mind on the internet) have yet to call for his head after his side went down to a disappointing defeat to Dundee United at the weekend, but there were more than a few voicing their concern that ‘he has no Plan B’ following that 3-0 reverse.
The point is, every defeat is a disaster.
Perhaps the truth of all this lies somewhere in the middle. Neither Johansson, McLeish nor any other manager or player for that matter can really be definitively judged before we are in October. But hey, where’s the fun in that?
Which brings us to Celtic and Rangers, where the ‘three defeats from a crisis’ maxim that used to rule Glasgow has now been severely truncated.
A couple of weeks ago, it was Derek McInnes who was getting it in the neck, with Rangers fans and pundits loudly questioning whether he was cut out for the manager’s job at the club he loves. It was too big for him, was the theory. Then he beat Celtic twice in a week, and suddenly, it is erstwhile messiah Martin O’Neill who is being made out to be in over his head.
This is not to say that McInnes didn’t deserve criticism when Rangers were humiliatingly skittled out of Europe altogether. Or that O’Neill’s position should escape scrutiny after the manner of Celtic’s defeats in the big matches this season, where they have been a shambles tactically, found wanting physically and been far too easily beaten.
But watching the Old Firm game on Sunday, and being struck by the lack of quality on show (though in fairness, any that was to be found came from the men in blue), it was hard not to surmise that it is little wonder our showpiece game is frankly, in footballing terms, such a rabble. And we wonder why our clubs struggle when they take this rudimentary approach into the European arena against sides often with lesser resource, but with a great deal more sophistication.
The stakes on Sunday were sky high. Neither manager could afford to lose. If McInnes was defeated, the cup win was a flash in the pan, his team would have been eight points behind, and his blazer would be on a shoogly peg once again. If O’Neill lost twice to Rangers in a week after the humiliation in Linz, he’d be over the hill, and people would once again be questioning just who it was who was really picking the team, him or Shaun Maloney, despite his side still enjoying a two-point lead at the top of the table.
This was the seventh game of the season.
Listen, I’m not entering this debate on my high horse. I was pontificating on David Gray’s future at Hibs (or lack, thereof) in this column just a couple of weeks ago. Though, in my defence, he at least had a bit of time to build something at Easter Road before the club’s board succumbed to the swell of public and media opinion.
But it just seems as though we’re in a self-defeating cycle, where instant success is a must and anything less is a hanging offence.
There is a school of thought among sections of the Celtic support, for instance, that the club’s widely reviled board simply did not have the gumption or the foresight to have appointed the progressive, forward-thinking coach that was operating right under their nose last season – the aforementioned Askou. A position with which I tend to agree, incidentally.
Instead, the Dane was tempted away to Toulouse, where he has had a similarly slow start as the one he had at Fir Park last term as his players got used to his ideas, only claiming his first win of the Ligue 1 season at the weekend at the fifth time of asking.
Whether Toulouse’s patience will ultimately be rewarded remains to be seen, but can you imagine a scenario where he would have been afforded the time and the space to implement his philosophy at Celtic if they had failed to win any of their first four league matches this season?
The narrative would have been that Celtic was too big a club for him. That it was too huge a step for a manager to go from minding the corner shop to being the head honcho at Tesco. He’d be thrown in the Raggy Dolls’ reject bin with Wilfried Nancy as a manager whose blue-sky thinking just didn’t translate to being an effective leader of the men who bear the weight of the green and white jersey.
Maybe it is us who have it back to front, to labour a very niche, 1980s cartoon reference. Perhaps, while not advocating for limitless patience when you know something just isn’t going to work out, we need to give managers a bit of breathing space to get it right. McInnes is a case in point, but particularly with younger managers like McLeish and Johansson, who are trying to drag the Scottish game out of the dark ages.
I am writing this in La Manga, where Sebastien Pocognoli is embarking upon his first training camp as Scotland manager in preparation for the Nations League campaign, which kicks off in Ljubljana on Saturday evening.
Despite my baser instincts, I am going to try to keep all of the above in mind should he get off to a stuttering start. If we give him a little time, and afford him a little patience, who knows where it might lead?
And you can remind me of this in the comments section if you see me calling for Pocognoli’s head on YouTube on Monday morning.
