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It’s Time The SevcoNuts Got Over Their Delusions And Accepted That We’re A Good Team.

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Today the media has done something I only half expected, but I am glad to see it for all that. They have given us credit where it was due. They have given us the praise that our display last night wholly deserved. They had no choice really. Everyone watching saw it, and saw how well we did. The Bayern manager was fulsome in his comments after the match.

The press has been very open and honest about last night; I don’t always say thanks to them for stuff but they deserve it, although the day might come when you expect balance and fairness enough that you don’t need to thank them for it.

We live in hope.

But look elsewhere and what you see isn’t praise or respect or even recognition. It’s delusion. Sevco fans have convinced themselves that one of the best teams in the world came to Celtic Park last night and didn’t even try. A team that wants to top the group. That knows it can’t afford to drop a single point in it after losing 3-0 in Paris.

This is part of the wider, and wilder, Ibrox insanity. You don’t have to look far online to find that they labour under one monstrous assertion; that Celtic isn’t really that good a team. That we have it “easy” here in Scotland. That we’re an SPL level side that will be toppled, with ease, when they have the right manager at the helm.

There is so much wrong with this that it’s hard to know where to start. Even our Invincible achievement hasn’t shifted them from this view. In Anderlecht the home team “lay down.” Last season, Manchester City had an off-night at Parkhead and played their reserves in the return leg (25 man squad, morons, no reserves to speak of).

They have no answer (expect sack the manager) for the pastings we handed out to them last season, with such insouciance. They can somehow ignore those in their minds (although discussing the 5-1 game at Celtic Park they were convinced it was a tight game until Senderos got red carded) and spin the rest of the results as they like.

This is a dangerous fantasy to cling to for them. Any team that wants to catch us is going to have to match our results against the other clubs and then actually beat us sometime. As long as they are fixed to this idea that we’re not actually a very good team it is going to hurt.

I remember back in the sands of time, pre 2012, when Rangers actually existed. There was barely a time when I didn’t look at their team with something approaching respect. Even when the likes of McLeish and Le Guen were blowing up there were players in there who could punish you on the wrong day. I never once kidded myself that they didn’t have a good side.

This Celtic team is as good, on its day, as any that I’ve seen in my life. We might not have a Larsson up front or someone as domineering as Balde at central defence or a Holy Goalie, but the way we play and the number of chances we create would make us contenders. This Celtic team would have been more than a match for any of the Rangers sides I watched over the course of the 2000’s. It would have won titles and trophies.

All that goes without saying. But it would also have matched the sides we played and beat over that time; Juventus, Milan, Liverpool, Blackburn, Stutggart, Benfica … none of those teams had the power of the super-clubs now, which is why trying to judge this team on the basis of what those teams did is so ridiculous. European football has moved forward much quicker than we could keep up … my God our transfer record purchase of £6 million was back then.

Today the same amount of money would never buy you a Sutton or Hartson or Lennon; you’re talking five or six times that to get near one of those guys now. Yet, for all that, we have players in this team who would have got into the O’Neill and Strachan teams.

Not all Sevco fans believe this nonsense, of course. A lot of them realise that they are in very serious trouble if the club’s objective is to catch us in the quickest possible time. They realise they are years, perhaps many, many years, from being able to accomplish that goal. They know that we have a very good squad, vastly superior to their own …

If these guys were in the majority, or could just shout louder than their fellow fans, we might have something to worry about in 20 years or so.

But the delusional hold sway.

They will not accept – or at least they won’t admit – that we’ve got a hell of a side here.

I guess we’re just gonna have to teach them that the hard way.

Should be fun, right?

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