Every team, even the most successful of all, usually has a fall guy that gets the brunt of supporters’ criticism no matter how well the team as a whole are doing. Sometimes the stick is completely unwarranted but other times the fall guy is in fact the fall guy because he’s actually scheidt.
Who are the fall guys you can think of - both now and in the past?
Gary Caldwell is undoubtedly the fall guy at Celtic these days. On some occasions he can do a decent defensive job but he has this misplaced confidence or arrogance that makes him believe he’s far better than he really is. He fancies himself as a ball playing centre back and some kind of modern day Beckenbauer and is always trying these long raking balls that generally end up in the stand or at Thierry Henry’s feet. This stupidity also manifests itself in silly concentration lapses that can undo a period of good defending and present the opposition with a cheap goal and it gets on most supporters’ nerves. Evander Sno and Massimo Donati share the fall guy tag on occasion. Paul Telfer also held this role when he was at Celtic and Neil Lennon became somewhat of a fall guy as some supporters deemed a holding midfield player unnecessary for SPL games. A whole rake of 'keepers before Boruc were deserved fall guys too.
With Wexford hurlers it’s probably the Jacob brothers as a lot of people don’t think they’ve delivered on their early promise and haven’t contributed much in the past few years. Tom Dempsey would have been the fall guy pre-1996 when it was generally accepted that he never reproduced his club form for the county side and Larry Murphy’s inconsistency back then divided supporter opinion too. I recall one day years ago in Wexford Park when Larry went on a solo-run and pierced through the middle of the opposition defence only to smack the ball wide from about 20 yards out. As he ran back out to the half-forward line, an old wag sitting in front of me shouted, ‘There’s no point shaking your fooking head Larry cos there’s fook all inside it.’