That was three points today. Nothing less, but maybe a whole lot more.
That’s what was at stake and that’s what we required. Yet three points in themselves are no big thing, but as everyone knows losing them could have had huge implications. Come the end of the season, what we did today might be massive.
That’s eleven wins in a row in the league. Title winning form. One more will give us a commanding lead at the top going into the second half of the campaign.
In some ways this is all about psychology.
I find the psychology of Scottish football fascinating.
Gerrard is lauded as some kind of genius. They went into the last winter break level on points with us, albeit we had a game in hand. Here, it is entirely possible that the gap will be eight points and that they will have the game in hand.
But the last time I looked that would still put a five-point lead in the bank, which is more than we had when the January window opened this year.
And people keep on telling us that Sevco has improved, of course. No-one ever gives us credit for the run of form that now has us ten points better off already than we were at that time last year, with the possibility of adding three more before the window comes down.
Yes, they’ve got better in terms of their form but so have we … and our form has been more impressive, by far. That was another away tie navigated today, and we keep on hearing how those might be our Achilles heel as this season goes on.
On top of that, the media keeps on ignoring Lennon’s wins to games ratio; there’s a good reason why. Because it does not support all these fantastical scenarios where we suddenly collapse in the second part of this title race.
I said at the start we’d win this league by double digits, and we will.
That means days like this are huge.
Days like this are where titles are won and lost, not in the big matches against rival clubs.
They are won on the grind.
They are won when teams have fought their way through endless games without a break.
They are won in scrappy displays against teams like St Mirren. There is nothing sexy about them, but they make the difference.
When we look back on this campaign we’ll say the league was won in the deadly months of October, November and December. When this team was under the maximum pressure.
The goals today were not world class; they were in keeping with the game. It was a battle. McGregor and Forrest did well to get them though, and they made the second half relatively comfortable. Even when St Mirren scored late you never got the sense of it slipping away.
Things fell flat in that second half; you could argue that things have been flat for a few weeks now. But this team just keeps on doing the necessary. At this stage in the season, that’s all that really needs to be done. We march on. We just keep on winning.
Today is massive. I wouldn’t even try to lie about it. All eyes now turn to Sunday for a game which will set us on the course for that ninth title in a row, and perhaps start the first serious questions about Steven Gerrard’s stewardship at Ibrox.
Job nearly done, Celtic. Job nearly done.
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