There are times when I genuinely wonder whether some of the people paid to offer opinions on football are watching the same game as the rest of us.

Then Kris Boyd opens his mouth, and I remember that football punditry has become one of those professions where confidence can apparently compensate for an alarming shortage of nuance.

Following Celtic’s 2-1 victory over Hibernian, Aiden McGeady raised a question about Camilo Durán’s body language, while Boyd decided that Kasper Høgh was “offering absolutely nothing”.

Honestly, where do I even begin?

Let me make one thing clear. I have absolutely no problem with former footballers offering their opinions.

Quite the opposite.

I want to hear from people who understand the game, who can analyse performances, identify weaknesses and explain what they think players need to improve.

Football discussion would be terribly dull if everybody agreed.

But there is a difference between offering an informed footballing opinion and behaving as though playing the game professionally has somehow qualified you as an expert in absolutely everything connected with it.

I have enormous respect for Aiden McGeady as a former Celtic winger. In fact, I wrote yesterday about precisely that.

When McGeady talks about wingers, I listen.

He knows the position. He understands the movement, the decision-making, the courage required to attack defenders and the expectations which come with doing that in a Celtic shirt.

He has been there. He knows.

But body language is an entirely different conversation.

Of course we can all observe how a player looks. We can see when he shows frustration. We can see somebody throwing his arms up, looking unhappy or reacting badly when something goes wrong.

What we cannot necessarily do is take one of those moments and confidently transform it into a psychological assessment of what is happening inside somebody’s head.

A facial expression is not a diagnosis. A frustrated gesture does not prove somebody has given up. And looking annoyed does not automatically tell us anything sinister about your attitude or mentality.

Footballers are human beings. Durán may well have been frustrated at being played out wide. Frankly, if he was, I could understand why.

He has been scoring goals and performing well yet has found himself shifted away from the central role to accommodate Kasper Høgh.

But I would still rather judge Durán on what he actually does on the football pitch than pretend I possess some supernatural ability to read his mind from the way he stands before a corner kick.

If his movement is poor, discuss it.

If his decision-making is questionable, explain why.

If he is being wasted on the right, make the footballing argument.

That is analysis. Turning body language into an elaborate detective story is something else entirely.

McGeady knows how to spot a winger.

He knows what makes a good one and what somebody playing that position at Celtic ought to provide.

But being an excellent former footballer does not automatically make anyone an authority on another player’s psychological state.

Expertise has limits.

Now we come to Kris Boyd.

Ah, Kris. What would Scottish football punditry do without you?

Who else would volunteer to deliver such spectacularly sweeping verdicts with the confidence of a man who believes he has just solved one of the great mysteries of the universe?

Boyd’s assessment of Kasper Høgh was that he is currently “offering absolutely nothing”. Nothing? Absolutely nothing?

I beg your pardon, but what exactly are we measuring here?

Has football now become a sport where a striker’s entire contribution is determined solely by whether the ball ends up in the net?

Because somebody should probably tell all those coaches wasting their time talking about movement, pressing, link-up play, occupying centre-backs, running channels and creating space for other players.

Apparently we can throw all that complicated nonsense in the bin.

Goals or nothing. Simple.

Now, none of this means that Høgh played brilliantly against Hibernian.

He did not. He had opportunities to score and failed to bury them.

His goalscoring drought is becoming a serious problem, especially given the amount Celtic paid for him.

And when Durán continues scoring while being moved out of the central striking position, there is a perfectly legitimate argument about who should be playing through the middle.

Those are football arguments. They are worth having.

But “offering absolutely nothing” is different.

That is the kind of sweeping declaration which demands considerably more evidence than looking at the scoresheet and noticing that the striker’s name is not on it.

A striker can have a poor game and still contribute something.

His movement can create space. His positioning can occupy defenders. His pressing can force errors. He can link play. He can make a run which creates an opportunity for somebody else without ever touching the ball himself.

That does not mean goals are unimportant.

Of course they are important.

Goals are the currency of strikers, and Høgh will eventually be judged on whether he scores enough of them.

For an £11 million striker, expectations should be extremely high.

But there is a substantial difference between saying, “This striker needs to score more goals and influence games more consistently,” and saying he offers absolutely nothing whenever he fails to score.

One is legitimate criticism. The other is mundane punditry at best and at noise someone flapping his trap for the sake of it.

If Boyd genuinely believes goals are the only meaningful measurement of a striker, perhaps somebody should send him a wee revision sheet before his next television appearance. Nothing too complicated, obviously.

We would not want to overwhelm the poor man.

Perhaps there could be some pictures.

This is what frustrates me about football punditry generally.

When a striker scores, apparently, he has done his job. When he does not, suddenly we are discussing whether he contributed anything whatsoever.

It is such a convenient little system for people who prefer easy soundbites to actually analysing football.

The sport is more complicated than that.

A good striker has to understand when to drop deep, when to run behind, when to occupy a centre-half and when to move him somewhere he does not want to go.

He has to press. He has to combine with teammates. Sometimes he has to perform work which nobody notices precisely because somebody else benefits from it.

Again, none of that excuses Høgh’s lack of goals.

Celtic did not spend enormous money on him so that we could admire all the clever things he does without the ball while somebody else puts it in the net.

He has to start scoring. But criticism should still be accurate.

That is really my issue with both discussions.

I want Celtic players criticised when they deserve it. I have no interest in protecting them from legitimate scrutiny simply because they wear green and white hoops.

If Durán needs to improve something, talk about his football.

If Høgh is failing to influence matches, explain why.

If O’Neill is weakening the side by moving Durán out wide to accommodate his record signing, that absolutely deserves discussion. If the system is failing to provide Høgh with the kind of service he requires, discuss that too.

These are interesting football questions.

They deserve intelligent answers.

What I do not need are dramatic declarations dressed up as expert analysis.

McGeady has genuine knowledge of the winger’s position, and I will happily listen when he applies that knowledge to Celtic’s wide players.

But I am not going to treat speculation about somebody’s body language as established fact simply because a former professional said it.

As for Boyd, I shall put this as politely as circumstances allow; Kris, my dear fellow, football contains a few more subtleties than the contents of a goal net.

The Village idiot nickname did not exactly appear out of thin air.

Celtic players should be criticised.

Høgh needs goals. Durán needs to continue developing. The entire team needs to improve, and standards at Celtic should always be high.

But criticism should have substance.

It should be fair. It should be informed. And it should be grounded in what actually happens on the football pitch.

A striker failing to score does not automatically mean he contributed nothing. A player looking frustrated does not grant anyone access to his internal monologue. And speaking with absolute certainty does not magically transform utter pish into footballing wisdom.

So by all means, analyse Celtic’s performance against Hibernian.

Question the players. Question the tactics. Question the manager.

Demand better.

But let us leave the mind-reading to the fortune tellers and the embarrassingly simplistic verdicts to those who cannot think of anything more meaningful to say.

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