On the Sevco fan forums, they are clinging to increasingly frail hope that their team can do something at Celtic Park when we meet them there. Things can change. That’s the straw they clutch to madly, as if it can save them.
They are right. A lot can change in the next four days. The weather might turn. Enough to have the match abandoned. That could buy them time. Time to ship out the deadwood, buy new players, realise the manager is a dud, bring in some investment, get a new boss bedded in, give him the money he needs and then, yeah, bring on the Celtic.
When Celtic was trying to stop ten in a row we had a bit of luck like that. Not on that level, but it was a fortunate chance all the same. When Diana had her wee Paris tunnel smash the resultant public wave of insanity saw sports fixtures across the country wiped out; the game against Rangers was one of them.
The ridiculous comments that came out of both clubs at the time about players, – even foreign ones – being unable to concentrate on the match was frankly bonkers, but the postponement was a decision which, in hindsight, helped us out.
I didn’t feel we were ready for that game. It was later played and we snatched a 1-1 draw late in the day, courtesy of an Alan Stubbs header. We hadn’t beaten them in 9 games. That changed when we played them in January the following year. The break gave us a chance to gel the team. Had it happened in August, when it was scheduled, who knows how history would have turned out?
Perhaps we’d still have won the league that year anyway; I’ve always thought there was something in the air that year, and we were heading for it anyway.
We were in better shape than they are in right now. They are in the worst place I’ve ever seen an Ibrox team. They look demoralised. They look one punch from a knockout. I don’t know how they will get on tomorrow against Motherwell but the pressure on them is enormous, more so than any of them can probably remember. Lose that one and the club is in a seriously dark place. Lose that and then come to Celtic Park and lose and it’s over.
Murty cannot survive losing four on the bounce. It will throw their club into complete turmoil. They will have the two-week long winter break to sort it all out. Two weeks isn’t nearly enough. They will have little option but to appoint a new boss in that spell and can you even imagine what they will come up with in that timeframe?
Murty was being lauded for the 1-1 draw he was able to snatch – in the last minute – the last time he was at Celtic Park but time has marched on and this time he’s coming up against a treble winning team that has its swagger back after losing to Hearts. This team knows it can close out the year with a big victory, and take us into the next buzzing.
Darkness will descend over Ibrox if they lose that game, and dropping anything tomorrow will simply make it a deeper version of night. But a much more nightmarish scenario is likely; that they don’t just lose at Celtic Park but suffer another serious, punishing day which sears the soul of their supporters for a lifetime.
They fear that above all. That fear must be suffocating. Murty knows he cannot afford it.
But I don’t think he has the first clue as to how to stop it.
One thing would, albeit temporarily.
Snow.
Get on your knees, Murty.
Start praying.