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Brendan’s Magical Run Continues On The Night When Warburton Is Toasted

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A single goal victory at Celtic Park continues the run. The amazing incredible unbeaten run. It wasn’t pretty, but if we’d had one striker fit we’d have scored a couple. Aberdeen gave us a tough time of it – that must be said from the off – but we endured.

This team always endures.

We need to pay tribute to Dedryk Boyata. What a comeback this has been from him. I thought this guy was done for, I really did. We all must have. He looked about as far from first team football as you could get. Had he left on a free we’d barely have noticed. The guy who looked nervous and weak under Ronny now looks like a player.

This is part of the Rodgers magic. He does this. He finds something in players which others can’t see. He makes them better. He lifts them up. I could not see any other boss turning this guy around like he has. Boyata was excellent tonight, and capped it with his goal.

Yes, we are missing key players. We badly needed a goal scorer on the park tonight. When I asked a few weeks ago if we really needed to sign one the response was almost unanimously “Yes” and I agreed with that verdict then and I most definitely agree with it now. Griffiths and Dembele need to get fit quick because there’s a dire need for one or both of them.

The run will not last if we have to keep on doing it like this.

Elsewhere, things have come to an end already.

One jolt of juice, a timer running down and pop. Warburton is toast. The press can butter him up as much as they want, but it’s finished. King will fire this guy, and if he has any sense he’ll do it first thing in the morning. Otherwise second place will go, third place maybe with it, and Europe next season? Why even bother? If the SFA grants them a license and UEFA rubber stamps it any team that gets them will knock them out in Round 1.

The full scale of the crisis engulfing that club cannot be over-stated. Sacking the manager is a stop-gap measure, but it’s required because unless it’s done they won’t be able to give season tickets away. They were routed tonight. Purely and simply routed.

It was a destruction, the football equivalent of a punishment beating with samurai swords.

It could have been six. Seven. Eight. Easily.

A better team than Hearts – who were sensational, by the way – would have scored ten.

We would have broken records.

There’s no surviving this. They were a shambles.

Useless footballers and a manager who stood there, shell-shocked, like Tony Mowbray on the night of his own Waterloo at St Mirren. Mark my words, this was worse. Their fans couldn’t have made it clearer what their view was; they are beyond furious. They are past ready for revolt. (They are revolting, you might say.)

Tomorrow I’ll give a fuller account on where we all are; the league table didn’t change tonight, but it feels seismic in terms of the European places.

For Celtic, the run goes on.

The Brendan Revolution continues to gather pace.

At Tynecastle the managerial reign of Mark Warburton came to an end. If he’s still in his job when I next sit in front of the keyboard … well the lights might be on at Ibrox but clearly nobody’s home. I repeat, they were routed tonight

He cannot survive it.

In some ways, the fun’s over. In another sense it’s just begun.

It’s popcorn time again, people.

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