Yes, I know that recently blog updates have been as sparse as green vegetables on a Scotsman's dinner plate.
Sorry about that. Now and again my attention is distracted away from the busy, unpredictable and stressful world of football, and focused towards the busy, unpredictable and stressful - and rather more important, sadly - world that is known as Real Life.
I'd love to say it won't happen again, but the nature of my day job means that, inevitably, there will continue to be occasional lapses in my blogging. Any association between a lack of new blogposts and Caley Thistle's mediocre start to the season is, of course, purely coincidental...
Anyway, it's not as if I've exactly missed much, is it?
Two big stories have dominated the start of the Scottish football season; firstly, the trials and travails of Ally McCoist, and secondly Hearts' decision to chuck Jim Jefferies.
Let's tackle Tynecastle first. If I was feeling lazy, I would spout out a few paragraphs about how the sacking of Jefferies, and his replacement by Portuguese coach Paulo Sergio, was a scandalous way to treat a decent, dignified man with bags of experience, and how the outrageous, reckless actions of a madman from Eastern Europe who knows nothing about football are damaging one of Scotland's biggest clubs and bringing ridicule onto Scottish football.
Actually, for the record, I am feeling lazy. But I'm not going to write a character assassination of Vladimir Romanov today. For one thing, every other sports hack in the country has already done it, with such similar elements of melodrama, sensationalism, and, frankly, some xenophobia (would a Scottish chairman be treated in such a way? I doubt it) that you would be forgiven for thinking that there was only one football journalist in the entire country, writing under a dozen pseudonyms.
In fact, you could employ similar logic to the McCoist-Rangers saga...where if the press shout "Crisis! Crisis!" loud enough, sooner or later the public will start to believe it (as I discovered to my horror regarding the MMR vaccine debacle a decade ago) and, lo and behold, Rangers fans, who are so volatile at the best of times that they start biting their fingernails to the quick as soon as opponents win a throw-in in their half, will get on the team's back at the slightest provocation. Why? Because the team is in crisis. Everybody says so.
But, for goodness sake, he has been charge for four competitive games, which include a win over St Johnstone and a match in Sweden where, by all accounts, Rangers were the better team even when a man short. Yes, the failure to make the Champions League is a huge blow to the club, but remember Gordon Strachan's start at Celtic? Where they drew 4-4 with Motherwell on opening day (McCoist's Rangers drew with Hears) and got stuffed 5-0 in the Champions League qualifiers by those European behemoths Artmedia Bratislava? Strachan went on to do pretty okay at Celtic Park, I would say.
By all means judge McCoist over, say a fifteen game period - and if Rangers are struggling, then maybe there is a crisis. And, conveniently enough for this piece, Romanov indeed judged his manager over a fifteen game period...and Jim Jefferies' last fifteen games as Hearts boss produced a grand total of one win. Which is pretty appalling, to be honest. My opinion is that the dismissal was still hasty, but it's easy to find Hearts fans who actually agreed with the change of manager.
Look, I'm no fan of Romanov, and I'm certainly no fan of Rangers either. And we should by all means rip the man to shreds over these ridiculous press releases - 'media monkeys' being his latest bizarre comment - but you can't dispute that he has been a pretty successful businessman, and there is no evidence that mismanaging Hearts would be to his financial benefit. And who knows, maybe his logic is that he was aware of a coach who was available and, in Romanov's opinion, more able than his current one, and so why wait before installing him?
To be honest, I'm not sure I totally...or even partly...agree with what I've written above. But doesn't it make a pleasant change from the generic crap that appears in the national rags in response to these sort of events?
L.
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