And Thru The Red Window...

Our hero (that'll be me I guess) is pottering around his gaff getting ready to go to work the following day, in the back ground the BBC news is on and the last minute deadline buys are being announced...

"Francis Jeffers to Rangers"...aye aye... 'Some Chinese bloke to Celtic'...whoopy feckin do and then...

'And Stevie Crawford has signed for...' (oor hero is mutterin 'Dunfermline Dunfermline')...

'...Aberdeen on a 2 year deal'....a shrill wail cuts the Aberdonian air and an 'AW FER F*CK'S SAKE NO!!!' is heard echoing fae the bunker's walls.

Nae the sort o reaction you're meant to have to yer side signing a player....but sorry I've never rated Crawford and can't for the life of me figure out why we've signed him...I mean for f*ck's sake the guys the SPL equivalent of Brian Deane.

Oh dinna get me wrong if Tango and Sash can wave their magic wand/incriminating photaes at Crawford and transform him into a 20 goal a season man then I'll happily admit I was wrong. Yep when he scores his 20th o the season then I'll be the one in the sombrero leading the conga line up and doon the 'Y' singin 'Way hey-hey Stevie Crawford'....honest nothing would give me greater pleasure than to be proved wrong, and if I am - well...looking like a twat (Baldy) is an occupational hazard for me anyway so nae harm done.

So why the bile?

Well it's not down to the fact he's kb'd us not once...not twice...but thrice afore...though to be fair the first couple o times as a club we were goin doon the cludgie quicker than a dead goldfish...

Nah it's nae even the fact he's a stroppy git wi an overinflated opinion o his ain abilities (an ageing Stevie Craig if ye like)...

It's not even the fact I quite enjoyed regally rippin the pish oot the Arabs for signing him...oh how me, Z and the Barman guffawed and chortled at the Arabs paying over the odds for the useless fecker...only to discover 8 months that we've gone a signed the feckin useless bawbag. 'Another Egg for yer coupon there Mr Avenger Sir?'... .'Nah it's alright this entire f*ckin omelette should de the trick'.

No it's cos ...and I dinna believe I'm doin this...but Sandy Clark, when he was mangling the English language as an 'Anal-ist' (my hyphen) for the Beeb's woeful SPL coverage, once summed up Crawford thus: "the problem wi Stevie is: as a striker he disnae score goals."

Hmm...a striker that disnae score goals...a slightly major f*ckin problem there then eh? On a par wi a boat that winna float, a plane that winna fly and a mail order Thai Bride that's no intae shaggin.

Yep that's my problem wi Crawford....his scorin record is f*ckin pish. As anyone who's had the misfortune to see him play for Scotland will tell you for every goal he DOES score there are 20-odd sclaffs/dunts to a grounded keeper etc. One of the few positive to come out this signing is that now he's joined us there no way Wattie will ever pick him for Scotland again unless bubonic plague break oot in the central belt and even then he'll be back up to the huns' U16 centre forward. Hence the sheer joy when Granville decided to blow a large wedge of his cash on him in January.

In fact the only time Crawford has lived up to his own hype was when he was feeding off knock downs fae the archetypal class in a glass wily old pro that is Craig Brewster. Now aye Mackie can leap like a salmon but compared to Brewster, he heads like one as well.

So wi'oot a target man to feed him I just dinna see the point in Tango signing him, but wi a heavy heart I guess I'll just trust Tango's judgement. After all he's the manager who's taken us back to the cusp of respectability and I'm just a dope smokin bar-fly....the same dope smokin bar-fly who dismissed the leg-end that is Zizou Smith as 'A Den Haag reject who just nae good enough'.

So I'll give him a clean slate and ma full backin for love him or loathe him he is now a Red and therefore is entitled to ma full support.

But it's just this naggin premonition I have (and this is the REAL reason I'm pissed off) of standing on a real brass monkeys of a February day on the 'Y', watching him miss his 15th sitter of the day and generally lookin disinterested and me screamin....

"CRAWFORD!! You useless f*cker....we coulda had Boyd...But NO!!!...We signed you, you useless piece o shite"

Yep never one to avoid a passing bandwagon I was kinda hoping God and Tango had a cunning and fiendish plan to land us Boyd on the cheap in January by being real bastards to Killie by signing him on a pre-contract on or near Jan 1st and then making Killie a derisory offer to Killie to take him there and then. Alas the chances of that happening now are thinner than a blue Rizla.

That my fellow Dandies is what's truly pissed me off about this signing....whadda ye know...it turns out it has little to do wi Crawford at all.

So welcome Stevie...we welcome you wi open arms (and clenched fists and half bricks) and wish you glorious success.

Did that sound sincere enough??...och who cares.... just score us a hat trick at Parkhead and I'll dig oot ma sombrero.


The Red Avenger