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1 week ago | 
thescottishsun.co.uk | Bill Leckie
THIS time in 1975, Johnny Rotten and the Sex Pistols were plotting to smash the system. Half a century on, it's Nigel Farage and Reform. Both loud, both aggressive, both sneering at The Establishment. Neither with anything truly inspirational to say. But both saying it so loud and with such bravado that they grow from playing to two men and a dog in a church hall to being the most talked-about rebels in the land.
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1 week ago | 
thescottishsun.co.uk | Bill Leckie
IT’S one thing choosing not to clap the champions onto the pitch. It’s another altogether pointing a double-barrelled shotgun in their faces. Shamefully, that’s what Rangers did when Celtic came calling. That’s the image the world saw of a club on the brink of a takeover that could make or break its future.
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2 weeks ago | 
thescottishsun.co.uk | Bill Leckie
WHEN they blew a place in the top six, he distanced himself from failure by spouting hot air about his points-per-game record. When ill-discipline cost them a chance to make the Scottish Cup final, he deflected blame by launching an attack on the referee. But when they lost their first post-split fixture at a Tynecastle turning more toxic by the second, Neil Critchley finally had nowhere to hide. Which meant the people who hired him had no one to absorb the flak for them.
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2 weeks ago | 
thescottishsun.co.uk | Bill Leckie
THE very best aren't driven by how good they were today. It’s about a gnawing hunger to be even better tomorrow. And you get the feeling that, even as they clinch the Premiership trophy yet again, there are times when Brendan Rodgers reckons his team are too well fed. He’s hinted at it often enough this season. He’s had to keep reminding his players – often in public – that he won’t accept standards slipping, that there’s never an excuse for letting an eight out of ten turn into a six.
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3 weeks ago | 
thescottishsun.co.uk | Bill Leckie
IF you’re asked the same question five times and can’t give a straight answer, chances are you know it but are just too damn scared to say it. That’s certainly how it sounded in the case of John Swinney, squirming on radio at the weekend like someone just poured a bucket of worms down his breeks as he faced reality over the SNP’s obsession with gender identity.
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3 weeks ago | 
thescottishsun.co.uk | Bill Leckie
THEY were born 50 years apart — but the place they hold in the hearts of countless fans is timeless. First came Bobby Lennox, then James Forrest. Two Ayrshire boys, weaving their way past countless opponents and into the fabric of the club both love. More than 1,000 games between them. More than 300 goals. Not to mention 50 winners’ medals, a haul that for the past 127 days they’ve shared between them, 25 each.
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3 weeks ago | 
thescottishsun.co.uk | David Friel |Bill Leckie
CYRIEL DESSERS pulled his shirt up over his face and shook his head in disbelief. Pity it wasn’t the one he’d been wearing at the start of the night — because then we could have looked through the hole in the front to see whether he was laughing or crying. There were 20 minutes to go and the big striker had just given a Bilbao defender the kind of nudge in the back that wouldn’t have knocked a passing midge off its flightpath.
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1 month ago | 
thescottishsun.co.uk | Bill Leckie
THERE’S a beautiful moment that kind of got washed away in the tsunami of emotion unleashed by Rory McIlroy’s win at the Masters late on Sunday night. It came as he walked off what should have been the final green, having just missed the five-foot putt that would have made him only the sixth golfer to win his sport’s fabled Grand Slam. His head must have been spinning. His heart must have been sinking.
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1 month ago | 
thescottishsun.co.uk | Bill Leckie
IF ever a single performance summed up an entire season, it was surely Aberdeen’s at Pittodrie this weekend. All over the opposition in the first half. All over the shop in the second. Had they gone in four up on a ten-man Rangers reserves side, it would have been no more than they deserved. Yet had there been eight or nine minutes of stoppage-time at the end of the 90 rather than five, they might easily have lost.
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1 month ago | 
thescottishsun.co.uk | Bill Leckie
IN the cinema room of an Istanbul penthouse apartment, Jose Mourinho was screaming: I told you so. Hadn’t he called it? Hadn’t he come in after Fenerbahce had lost at Ibrox on penalties and predicted that UEFA would do anything to make sure Bilbao made it to the final in their own stadium? Hadn’t his old Roma side gone there that same night 2-1 up from the home leg, only to have Mats Hummels sent off inside 11 minutes and go out on aggregate? And what was he watching now?
