Some Celtic fans have slammed BBC Scotland’s Tom English after a post involving him caught their attention on Twitter recently.
Celtic fan ‘St. Anthony’ recently relayed another account’s tweet that had two images of English’s past tweets. One had him call Virgil van Dijk ‘vastly overrated’ and that he gets ‘found out by decent strikers’. The other image had a tweet in which he said that he ‘knew’ that he was a Champions League finalist ‘the first minute’ that he saw him.
On seeing this tweet, many Celtic fans were fuming at English. They made their displeasure with the BBC Sport journalist very clear.
Hes doing the classic faux self mockery.. utterly fake and desperate
— Electronic Tims (@ETimsNet) May 3, 2020
Was Van Dijk overrated in 2014?
Yes, he was
Never!
Shows you English’s lack of integrity and his knowledge of football…maybe he should stick to commentating on the oval ball game.?
— Gerry M ? ? (@f4828d243a11456) May 3, 2020
And arrogance , that’s his worst one
— Herewego10inarow (@JanKubis) May 3, 2020
To be fair to Tom English…
I knew he was a weasel the first time I read him…
— Sarto (@eva3michael7) May 3, 2020
Knows hee haw about football. Knows even less about football governance.
— Andrew (@Hullbhoy) May 3, 2020
Maybe this journalism crack isn’t for Tom.
— jinkysboots1967 (@jinkysboots1967) May 3, 2020
As things stand, Van Dijk is a European champion with Liverpool, who are at the top of the Premier League table and have a huge 25-point lead over Manchester City.
Back in 2014, English indeed had tweeted about Van Dijk and had called him overrated. In May 2018, he had tweeted about the Dutchman, saying that he ‘knew’ that Van Dijk would be a Champions League finalist. However, given he had acknowledged Van Dijk had ‘improved hugely’ prior to his move to Liverpool, it seems likely that his second tweet was a rather tongue-in-cheek remark.
What do we think?
What Van Dijk has achieved with Liverpool shows that English was wrong in his initial judgment of the centre-back. This shows why Celtic fans are angry at English, especially in light of the recent allegations surrounding the SPFL, but this particular criticism is a bit harsh since football can be tough to predict and judgments can go wrong – while it seems English was being sarcastic in his later comment.