No need for paranoia when the enemies are within

The by now infamous revelation that a fan called “Burnsy” chose to offer Celtic data, private photographs and a personal letter to Scott Brown should be viewed with the utmost seriousness by Celtic and the fans.

Yes, the person who supplied the information will almost certainly be sacked. After all, there are at least three kinds of information and there can’t be that many people who could access Gordon Strachan’s computer (presumably the source of the player data), apparently rifle through Scott Brown’s personal effects, get hold of photos AND access the dressing room. Perhaps, of course, the letter, photos and computer data were all stored together.

While I doubt that Brown feels too much of his private life has been exposed with the “well-done” letter, almost everyone feels aggrieved when they find their correspondence has been read by other people without permission and he deserved better.

But for “Burnsy” and two Celtic sites to offer analytical data on the players beggars belief.

This is information that previously only Celtic held about their players and can be used by competitors – try Rangers and Barcelona for starters. It costs thousands of pounds to assemble and is the sort of information any coach could use to mark players more effectively, or develop tactics to exploit weaknesses.

For example, if the data revealed that two right-sided players covered significantly less ground in the last half hour of a game, an opposing coach could use this to plan for the introduction of a winger just as he knows for a fact that the two players will start to struggle. That’s just a simplistic example – there are hundreds of other possibilities.

And there should be some extremely worried people around Celtic cyber-space today.

See, what these supposedly Celtic-supporting morons failed to realise is that in procuring and publishing private professional data they have taken part in industrial espionage, which could potentially lead to a jail sentence. Right now Celtic will almost certainly be using the services of top specialists in this area and the identities of all concerned will be discovered.

The best thing these people could do would be to throw themselves on the club’s mercy and stay away from Celtic for the rest of their days. Oh yes, and hope that Celtic don’t suffer narrow defeats to Barca or Rangers!