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Here’s What Some Don’t Want To Admit. Here’s Why Celtic’s Win At Ibrox Really Matters.

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If you’ve read the papers in the past week, you’ll have noticed that the game Celtic won on Sunday has hardly featured at all in the analysis.

You have to hand it to King and his board; they know the media here has a short attention span and doesn’t really want to have to write anything too ant-Ibrox, and so he threw them some scraps, a wee piece of “feel-good” and they lapped them up.

But the real story, of course, is that game and how Celtic won that game  and how it will impact on the rest of the season.

Leagues aren’t won or lost at this time of year, that’s what people tell you.

But what happens at this time of year can, and does, set the tone for the campaign.

The media knows this.

They were hinting at it before the match kicked off, when it was going to define the Celtic fans relationship with the manager … negatively.

It was, if you believed what you were reading, going to reopen all the old wounds and put him under incredible pressure from inside the Celtic stands.

They know a win for the home club would have mattered and that it would have made Neil Lennon’s situation difficult for a while, a while in which any bad result could have provoked a crisis.

There’s no point in pretending that wouldn’t been the response of some in our support.

Depending on how bad the result was, I might have been writing some of the harsher things myself.

It was a big test for everyone at Celtic, but I always had the feeling we’d pull it off because of many of the reasons I’m going to talk about in this piece.

But for the press to pretend it’s a result that ultimately doesn’t matter now is disingenuous nonsense and pro-Ibrox spin.

This result matters alright, and this piece is going to examine the reasons why it does, and why, when we look back after securing nine in a row, this will be seen as one of the pivotal days in the campaign which made it happen.

We Made The Media Look Like Mugs 

No matter what nonsense you’ve read in the last week, one thing is for absolute certain; there has been a recalibration in how the two teams were being judged based on their summer business and their ability to win the title.

Celtic was treated like an afterthough; I’ve never seen anything like it.

The media is trying desperately not to focus overmuch on these matters but if you read carefully you’ll see that there has been a re-evaluation. Frankly, we made them look absolutely ridiculous with their pre-match predictions overwhelmingly in favour of the Ibrox club.

What we’ve forced them to accept is that this Celtic team is still far and away the strongest side in the country and that we are capable of going to any ground, even under the most intense pressure, and coming back with a win.

That we were written off beforehand simply makes their reversal all the more noticeable and acute.

Even pro-Ibrox writers on the mainstream blogs – like Jonathon McFarlane – now refer to their own side as “the underdogs” again, although he tried to find a pathetic positive in them wearing that tag. There isn’t one though.

Look at the coverage of the Kent signing; we all know that coverage has been hysterical and OTT, but in that coverage is a tacit admission that their squad wasn’t – and still isn’t – up to par. It’s the closest they’ll come to accepting that the summer of hype was exactly what this site and others said that it was; sheer wishful thinking, seen through the bluest tint.

That single result has erased an entire close season of hyping the Ibrox squad.

It’s only “now” with Kent in the ranks that they truly are “ready”, and everyone knows that’s rank nonsense as well. One thing is for sure, whatever high hopes they have for their own team … none of them is going to dare underestimate Celtic for a while to come.

That’s the first shift that’s taken place.

Don’t think it’s not an important one.

We’ve Halted Sevco’s Momentum And We Clearly Have Our Own.

Momentum is a word often used in football, and in Scottish football its over-used.

In the last few years its tended to be trotted out on behalf of the Ibrox club whenever they’ve won more than one match in a row.

For all the misuse of it, momentum is important in football.

Teams which go on a long run of wins can start to look unstoppable, and that ramps up the pressure on those who are trying to beat them to trophies and titles.

The pressure on them to keep up becomes debilitating, especially teams which aren’t used to having to do that, teams which haven’t been over the course before.

There are no such issues here at Celtic.

All we heard before the Ibrox game was about their team and its momentum.

Celtic’s had taken a major hit with the defeat in the Europa League at the hands of Cluj. I don’t believe the reaction we all had to that was OTT, because it was a massive night and the manager made big, big, mistakes with his tactics and his team selection. I am convinced that’s why we lost.

But consider that for a moment; we didn’t lose that game because we weren’t the better team.

We lost it because we screwed up.

The Dunfermline game – which we were also critical about – was the one we over-reacted to.

Because in hindsight the fact Celtic had to tough that out helped us get over the Cluj result … and we haven’t looked back.

What infuriates all of us, I’m sure, is that the international break got in the way of us capitalising even more on the great result at Ibrox.

I’m sure everyone at Celtic Park would have preferred to get the next game lined up as quick as possible so we could keep the pressure on the other teams, and the one in particular whose own momentum was wrecked last Sunday.

Lennon Has Shown That He Has The Measure Of Gerrard

This is an important one, and don’t underestimate it.

Managers win leagues. That’s as true as it ever was.

They make the crucial decisions; they make the big calls.

They pick the teams, design the tactics, tell people how to react to adversity.

Remember Rodgers telling us how he used to get Celtic to practice for having ten men in a game against the Ibrox club?

That’s what great managers do.

Lennon is not Brendan Rodgers. But he’s a better manager, by far, with a vastly superior record over the course of his two spells in charge, than Gerrard is.

Don’t ever forget that Gerrard is in his first job and has actually only just passed his coaching certificates. He should never have been appointed at Ibrox in the first place, they went for bling rather than someone who knew the business of being a manager and who could do the job right.

But until this game the record between them at these clubs was one win each, both secured by the team who was playing at home. Lennon has now gone to Ibrox and won. That is massive in terms of the battle between the two bosses. It is a psychological one as well as a statistical one.

Gerrard is under real pressure to even the score again.

It’s just a pity for him that he’s going up against a phenomenally successful Celtic boss.

I keep on writing this and I will continue to; Lennon has the third highest win ratio of all the managers in the history of Celtic. That is astonishing, and so far since he returned he’s lost a mere two games, so his record may actually end up better than those above him.

The simple truth is that he’s got Gerrard beat. It’s not even about the result or the performance; one of the straws the hacks are clinging to is that “Gerrard will learn his lesson …” but really? It was Lennon who learned from the last game at Ibrox … and that’s why we won.

There’s No “Psychological Hex” On Us At Ibrox … They Have Yet To Win At Parkhead

There is a lot of nonsense written about “psychological hexes” and such stuff, but that doesn’t mean that if a club hasn’t won on a certain ground under a certain manager that it doesn’t start to play on people’s minds a wee bit.

Gerrard had played two and won two against us before this game, and it was important to us that we didn’t let that record get any worse.

We had to get something from the match, which is why a lot of Celtic fans said beforehand that we would have been reasonably pleased with a draw.

A win changes the equation dramatically though.

Gerrard now has to do something that none of his predecessors has done before; he has to find a way to win at Celtic Park.

You want to talk about a psychological hex … this is one of the biggest in the recent history of the Scottish game and his record at the moment is played two and lost two at that ground, which is as bad as his Ibrox record was good.

By the time we face them at Celtic Park the pressure of trying to keep up with us may have put them even further behind.

Nobody I know can realistically imagine us losing that game.

For one thing, look at Ibrox right now and how tight they’ve made the pitch. That’s Gerrard’s admission that his side is incapable of playing an expansive game on a big park … I’d fancy our chances 99 times out of 100 at Parkhead or Hampden just based on the way we play.

Should we secure the result we expect at Celtic Park we’ll have played two and won two for the season.

Even a draw at Ibrox in the third fixture means that Gerrard is coming to Celtic Park after the split needing a win … or closing out the campaign having failed to beat us in the league home or away. And that is the stuff that gets managers the sack.

They May Claim Not To Fear Us … We Definitely Don’t Fear Them

One of the headlines before the match was about how the Ibrox club no longer has any “fear” of playing against Celtic.

Had we handed out a proper hiding to them, that would have restored the natural order and left their players in stark terror of coming to Parkhead at the turn of the year … that kind of result was never likely, but on our home ground who knows?

I reckon we will, once again, strike fear into the hearts of the Ibrox club.

The thing is, they were hoping to have the opposite effect.

They were hoping to scare us, to make us not want to face them and especially at their home ground.

But this Celtic team has seen and done it all. This Celtic manager has seen and done even more.

The alleged “white hot atmosphere” of Ibrox barely bothers him these days, even with only 700 of our fans in the ground.

This team is confident it can beat anybody, anywhere, in the Scottish game.

No ground and no club holds fear for this Celtic side and two games at Ibrox last season were not, and did not, alter that one iota. This team has swept the boards and won the last nine trophies in a row … why the Hell would they be afraid to go anywhere?

The Ibrox club hasn’t learned respect from the game … that’s obvious from the nonsense their players are talking in the aftermath.

But we are certainly not scared to face them.

Nobody is concerned about drawing them in the cup, or in welcoming to them to Parkhead at the end of the year. In fact, we’re looking forward to it … and they get it now, they realise that now, and that will eventually start to chip away at their own confidence until it shatters entirely.

We’ve Shown We Have The Big-Game Players … Theirs Cannot Handle Pressure

That our players are capable of handling any kind of pressure or any kind of scenario was never in the slightest doubt, but it’s good to be reminded every so often that when the chips are down that these footballers rise to the challenge. Always.

Do you know hard it is to build that kind of winning mentality?

And it doesn’t just affect individual footballers either; this attitude permeates entire clubs. The minute a new signing walks through the door he’s part of a side that knows how to get big results, at a team that does nothing else, a side that has become a kind of trophy winning machine.

Great managers like Alex Ferguson infuse that attitude into the DNA of the club itself … whilst at Old Trafford he rebuilt teams with some regularity, but it didn’t stop those teams from winning games and winning trophies.

Every new player was quickly integrated into the team, and all knew the minute they were signed what the expectations would be.

Their club has existed for eight years.

It has never won a major trophy in that time.

That club has no frame of reference for what winning when it matters looks like.

Their one cameo at a cup final was under Warburton and it was a complete disaster.

Celtic has won nine trophies on the trot … and if we win the League Cup there is nobody sane who would bet against us winning another treble.

How many times have you seen Gerrard’s side lose their bottle when it really counted?

Their players cannot handle pressure.

Our players thrive under it.

We’ve Forced Them Into A Panicked, And Dangerous, Cash Splurge

Nothing epitomises the size of this result more than their response to it; they know exactly how huge, how consequential, that match and the score-line was. We can surmise that from their panicked over-reaction to it, the £7 million signing of a Liverpool reserve.

That is act of supreme folly, and it will have repercussions beyond the here and now.

They might be doing this in instalments but it’s money they don’t have and had never intended to spend.

Do not believe a word that comes out of Ibrox about how they intended to do this anyway, about how it was paid for by the European run … they did what we failed to do this summer; they spent with European qualifiers in mind and it paid off.

But every penny they made from that had already been “invested” in the team … the signing of Kent had already been dismissed by the club several times during the window, most recently the week before the match when Gerrard admitted that he was out of their financial reach, and this after they had secured the Europa League Group stages.

Then, all of a sudden, they went out and did it?

Celtic wins, Ibrox reacts.

What else changed in the interim?

A single result made all the difference.

The exposure of Gerrard and his side as miles short of this Celtic team.

The purchase of a fan favourite, who did one thing of note last season … punching out Scott Brown.

It would be different if they’d put that money to good use, but look what they spent it on?

The Result Leaves Gerrard And His Players Virtually No Room For Error.

Let’s assume that the media is correct and that Gerrard has improved the Ibrox club to the point where they might have made a challenge to us.

Now let’s look at the stats on Lennon’s win ratio and what do you get?

Two teams who will win almost every week, and where the campaign might well come down to the matches against each other.

Now, I never believed that would be the case. I believed and still do that we will win the majority of our matches and that they will drop points here, there and everywhere. I don’t believe they have anything like the necessary consistency to keep up.

But let’s give them the benefit of the doubt, as the media has, and bring this down to the four game theory.

They are already in big, big trouble.

Because if, as expected, we win at Celtic Park at the turn of the year our record is played two, won two … and we need only a draw from the remaining two games … and this depends, of course, on them keeping up in the meantime.

Presume that our team will maintain its winning record until then.

Any point dropped for them is nearly fatal if they have to go to Celtic Park before the end of the year.

It’s three points today; if Celtic Park were tomorrow the gap on Monday would, in all probability, be six. But if they go to Parkhead more than three points behind our league lead could be in double digits when by the time the Bells are being rung.

At that point, it’s game, set and match and Happy New Year.

Nine in a row, thanks for the memories, I’d like to thank everyone who lost.

That’s a heavy weight for any team to carry, and Gerrard’s team isn’t built for it.

You’ll see big cracks start to emerge now, and it could all fall apart fast.

And That’s Why We’re Champions … 

There’s no point in looking to the media for this kind of stuff; they’d rather not consider the widespread implications of that result. They want the Ibrox fans to believe – they want themselves to believe – that this is a one-off, a minor blip, a result that doesn’t matter.

But you all know how they would be spinning this if we had been the ones who lost the match, and you know the pressure we’d already be under because of it.

In the race for nine in a row, this is a huge moment, a pivotal one for the team in this campaign.

We’ve done what nobody thought we were going to do, under immense scrutiny and immense pressure. What a blow we have struck against the Ibrox side.

Everyone at Celtic Park should be feeling supremely confident without being arrogant.

We have already, quite literally, put this in our own hands. There’s a long way to go, for sure, and leagues don’t get won at this point in the campaign … but the blows which eventually bring another club to its knees sometimes do get struck this early.

They’re not laughing anymore.

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