Award winning journalist condemns the Tom English Celtic tweet

Tom English is a divisive character amongst the Celtic support.

Many see him as ‘anti’ Celtic and will take whatever opportunity he can to criticise the club. Me? I think he sometimes misreads the room when it comes to the club. A lot.

Not so long ago I wrote a piece about the BBC journalist where I criticised him for pillorying Carl Starfelt after the defender played well in an away win in the the hunt for  the title.

He took umbrage to the piece, which he is perfectly entitled to do, but it does prove my point about him not ‘reading the room’.

Which is exactly what he did over the weekend when he criticised Celtic’s message of condolence for Shane Warne.

The legendary cricketer passed away tragically at 52 years old over the weekend and Celtic released a statement to offer their sympathies to the man and his family. English took to twitter to criticise the message by saying, “Shoehorning in a promotion for the club sponsor. This is so crass.” after the club used an image of Warne wearing a Celtic top with the Dafabet sponsor on it.

That tweet was met with a storm of protest from the Celtic fans and English was forced into an embarrassing climbdown VERY late on Saturday night by his BBC bosses when he posted again on social media, “The BBC has asked me to delete a tweet I posted yesterday about Celtic’s statement on Shane Warne, as it did not meet editorial standards.”

No apology. Just a ‘my boss told me to do this’.

Again, this was met with the usual responses from the Celtic fans but interestingly, award winning journalist Brian McNally , and self confessed Celtic fan, heavily criticised that retraction with this dig at his fellow journalist, “It has taken far too long for the @BBC to realise that @TEnglishSport  did not meet editorial standards.”

It has not been a good weekend for the BBC man.