LEAVE PARANOIA TO OLD FIRM

KNOW the trouble with constantly claiming the world's out to get you?

People will eventually get so fed up hearing it they WILL be.

That's the feeling I'm getting with Hearts right now. That they need to start taking responsibility and stop believing it's always someone else's fault.

Or any punter who was happy to see a club finally trying to rip the crown off the heads of the big two will just lump them right in beside them instead.

See, if you took a poll of any fan of any diddy club over the last 30 years and asked them what gets their goat most about Scottish football I guarantee you the answer will be, 'The Old Firm.'

The fact that Rangers and Celtic seemed to think the rest of the game somehow owed them a living.

That their fans patronised you to the point where you wished a plague on their homes.

That they got every decision going yet bleated they were hard done by and the world was against them. A 52lb sack of spuds on the shoulder because chips just weren't big enough.

And we're not even mentioning the kind of intolerance that can see a man with a criminal record for an expression of his faith.

But it's time to make space on the Old Firm's pantheon of paranoia - because Hearts have now officially joined them at the top.

At first it was a breath of fresh air. Someone taking on the establishment, prepared to stick the boot into the status quo.

Now? The amount of whingeing coming out of Tynecastle is nauseating.

Look at their reaction this week.Tonked 5-1 on aggregate by a clearly superior team yet NONE of it was their fault.

Ref Yuri Baskakov was a cheat. A joke. He was "got at." Edgaras Jankauskas even brought up the fact he was suspended from officiating in the Russian First Division.

Nice weight to the conspiracy theories.

He was suspended last season, but Baskakov has already been in the middle for eight top-flight games this term and his FA are sending him to UEFA's elite refs seminar in Nyon tomorrow morning.

Let's break it down here though.

The red cards? It wouldn't have mattered if Julian Brellier (below, right) had had the Koh-i-Noor dangling from each ear. HE was still the guy in the wrong, not the ref.

It's something you learn whether you're playing at under-8s, welfare, amateur, or the Champions League. It's the rule.

Any jewellery is "forbidden."

Yet Brellier says: "Usually in Scotland the referees notice them and ask me to take them off. At other times I don't think they see them and I play with them in."

Why? Why would you do that when you know you might be booked for it?

Doesn't matter if the Greeks were wearing rings or not.

Doesn't matter tape isn't allowed as protection anymore.

Between being thick enough to wear earrings in the first place and thick enough to make a stupid challenge minutes after being booked Brellier was the architect of his own demise.

And the second one? After digging himself into a hole by not making a simple five-yard pass Neil McCann makes a two-footed tackle. In Europe? Straight red. No question.

The truth is over 180 minutes Hearts had the better of maybe 30 of them.

Sure if Paul Hartley and Brellier had been fit for the first game they would have made a difference.

If the ball had crept on to Jamie Mole's left foot where he wanted it 15 minutes instead of his right. If Hartley's header in 26 had gone down or up instead of the perfect height for the keeper. If, if, if.

Then you have Vladimir Romanov (left). If a few days go by without a bizarre outburst it's time to check if time has stopped. Last week? The ref cost him £6million, obviously. And if any team of his ever played the way Athens did he'd withdraw his money from the game.

Aye, right. A team that has 51 efforts on goal in two games. A team with quality such as Dellas, Ivic, Liberopoulos?

Not that you can question anything Vlad says without your email inbox filling up like a cistern after a flush.

Because the punters are in there hook, line and sinker as well. They've bought the whole paranoid package and they reckon the refs, the Glasgow Football Association and the Weegie media all have them at the top of their black ops' agenda.

They've also lost any humility or reality they ever had. Booing their team off the park the day they went top of the league presumably because they thought Falkirk were beneath coming to Tynecastle and earning a point?

The same billy big-time attitude the Old Firm have had for decades.

Here's the news, though - the world ISN'T out to get you. Most people I know would LOVE to see Rangers and Celtic get their come-uppance. I've said it often enough.

So for God's sake, stop looking over your shoulder and just get on with the game.

Taken from the Sunday Mail