Glenn Gibbons: Alan Pardew outburst may come back to bite him

Whatever spontaneous indignation may have been experienced by the average fan, only a professional apologist such as Peter Houston - understandably defending his own game - could have offered a serious argument with Alan Pardew's contemptuous dismissal of the standard of Scottish football.

Those observers without a vested interest who have witnessed the steady decline north of the border over the past two decades will almost certainly have become appropriately less touchy about criticism with each passing year.

The Newcastle United manager's comments, however, deserve ridicule for a reason quite unconnected with wounded pride: by disparaging the level of performance in this country - the result of monitoring United goalkeeper Fraser Forster during his loan season at Celtic - Pardew offered a variation on an old proverb by biting the hand that one day might have fed him.

In the matter of pursuing employment, managers are famously nomadic and Pardew's history in this respect (now in his fifth job, he has been jettisoned from three of his previous four) suggests that his future "availability" is emphatically more of a probability than a possibility.

In such an event, it is not difficult to imagine that someone of Pardew's average accomplishments would risk a speeding offence in getting to Celtic Park or Ibrox, were either of the Old Firm management positions to fall vacant.

In more extreme circumstances, he might even find the lure of any of the other SPL palaces irresistible. In the wake of his disdainful remarks this week, it is very likely that the attraction would not be mutual.