This is how it ends, then. The title race. The fabled challenge.
Not much to it really. I’ve had Crème Eggs that lasted longer.
What is it with this lot?
All that big talk, and what did they deliver?
Some minor resistance and that was all. They had the lead twice due to our shocking lapses at the back but in the end, there was never much doubt about the outcome. Celtic has secured title number seven on the bounce.
Tomorrow I will write about courage. It is the story of the day. To be honest most of this was written last night and so my reflections on the game will have to wait but to call what I’m feeling right now elation is putting it mildly.
The implications for Sevco are all too apparent. Murty has now lost as many points in his tenure as Celtic has dropped in the whole campaign. Anyone who thinks he’s improved them has to be kidding; the numbers don’t lie and they are horrendous. The arrogance of their supporters blossomed in the last few weeks. It will be interesting to see how they respond to this … not with rationality, not with sanity, not with good grace I’ll bet.
His team lost today in spite of being ahead twice and having had the benefit of a lamentable decision by the officials that was as corrupt as you’ll ever see.
Murty’s hopes of keeping the job now hang on what happens at Hampden.
Only the stupidest Sevco loving hack would take anything other than a Celtic victory.
But I’m sure that Brendan will not be complacent, and nor will this team. We won today because we prepared properly and approached the game in the right frame of mind. I thought the decision to play Boyata was risky; it might have been catastrophic. But the team kept calm and working hard.
Rogic scored a beauty. Moussa … well what can you say? So much for the barren spell right? The manager made the perfect substitutions at the perfect times and Edouard scoring the winner is just poetry.
I could write about what this means to everyone at Celtic Park but that’s blatantly obvious; it’s just another game, just another win, just another step towards that seventh consecutive league flag.
What it means for Sevco is far more newsworthy.
Because this is all they’ve been clinging to, this illusion of having put up a fight, of having mounted a challenge, of having “run us close.” You have to think that now they’ll drop even more points, fall even further behind. We could win the league before the split.
Where does this leave them? Not anywhere good. A squad of loanees and players no-one else wants. Including Morelos. Did you see a £6 million in their side today, far less one rated at twice that? Neither did I.
They don’t have enough money to get through the current campaign; it was all well and good asking their fans for the cash when they were on the crest of their wee wave … now that the bubble’s burst and that’s all over, will they realistically get cash from that quarter?
Without it, they are done, and perhaps literally.
The thing is, this didn’t have to hurt like I’m sure that it does.
Had they simply accepted what must now be painfully apparent – that they are miles behind us and with no end in sight – this would be just another setback along the way … what will make this one hard to take is this notion they’ve been harbouring that this might be “their year.”
Fools. And today they must know it.
You know, when I started writing this series of articles way back when Pedro was still in charge, I called it Fear and Loathing after the superb pieces from the late, great Hunter S. Thompson. I lack his way with words, his flair, his genius, but the name summed up the twin feelings at Ibrox so very, very well and in the next seven days we’re going to get a case study in why.
They are scared and they are angry, and if you’ve checked out their forums today you’ll know part of that is a very real hatred for their own club. That’s been bubbling away for a while now, but today, as their faint hopes were snatched away, as their dreams withered on the vine, as they died in that 90 minutes, that feeling has probably never been stronger.
Fear and loathing stalk the halls over there. It is a club at war with itself even more than the wider world.
And for a few weeks there they were able to put that aside and forget about it, or at least pretend things were better than they are.
Today all they have left is the truth, cold and hard and tough to face. They are nowhere.
They are spinning downward into a great black hole of crisis, whilst Celtic strolls off into the sunset. On our quest towards ten in a row, we are not uncatchable. But it becomes more apparent with every new crisis that bubbles up over there that this lot aren’t the ones who are going to stop us.
They better pray for good times in Aberdeen.
The future is definitely not orange.
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