INJURY UPDATE ON JOTA: CELTIC FANS, DON’T TRUST THE S*N, WAIT AND SEE
- BY LIAM CARRIGAN
- Apr 28
- 3 min read
We all knew it was coming.
Following a weekend when Celtic confirmed ourselves as Champions once again, we all knew the media would seize on anything, anything at all, to try and cast the celebratory mood in a negative light.
With their “update” on Jota’s knee injury, The S*n did what they set out to do. That being: to put Celtic fans on a downer and give our supposed rivals yet another ray of false hope going into an, ultimately meaningless derby weekend.
Jota Might Not Play Again This Season, But Wait and See What Celtic Say
As usual with The S*n, looking at the wording of their story, and the implied plausible deniability that comes with it, is crucial.
Note that at no point in the story is any source given beyond “We think...”, “if our fears are realized...” etc. So in other words, it’s mostly guesswork.
There’s a couple of things I should point out here, because The S*n chose not to.
They said “it’s believed Jota has already had an initial diagnosis, which suggests he’s facing months on the sidelines.”
I’m just going to go right ahead and call BS on this immediately. No such diagnosis of a knee injury could be given without a scan.
Sure, a medical professional will have examined Jota immediately after the injury and said “Here’s what the problem might be...”
However, there wouldn’t be any diagnosis, initial or otherwise until the appropriate scans were carried out. Those could not happen until today at the earliest.
It’s also extremely unlikely that any medical professional who examined Jota on Saturday would have disclosed such medically sensitive, confidential opinion to a rag like The S*n.
What is far more likely, is that a S*n reporter saw Jota on crutches with his knee immobilized post-match on Saturday (a perfectly normal and standard procedure with injuries of this type) and thought:
“Ok, we’ve got the photos, now all we need to do is throw some scary medical jargon in there and we’ve got the negative news angle we need.”
It's yet another case of Scottish mainstream media putting 2 and 2 together and coming up with 1690.
The only surprise in my book is that they chose to wait until this morning before unleashing this nonsense.
“It is believed”, “if our fears are confirmed”, “we understand that...” these are the stock phrases of sensationalism, of panic, of fear. There is no named source, there is no medical evidence presented. It is pure, hopeful (on their part) fiction.
Again, remember the agenda of outlets like The S*n: downplay Celtic’s achievements at every opportunity and seize any scrap of negativity you can.
Jota may well not play again for Celtic this season, but that’s a month. That’s all.
Could it be longer? Maybe.
I don’t know, but neither does The S*n. I doubt even Jota himself knows at this point.
We need to wait and see what Celtic say.
Don’t let the tabloids attempts to create a climate of fear and panic ahead of a derby succeed.
And, as always, don’t buy The S*n.
