If you were to poll everyone on how much they are looking forward to our game in Aberdeen tomorrow, I’d give good odds that the media would be over-represented in those who cannot wait for the kick off.
An entire industry is sharpening the knives in anticipation of it.
They are getting ready to declare our title challenge in mortal peril if not dead outright. They are preparing to write the career obituary of our manager. They are readying themselves to consign Scott Brown to the ranks of the has-beens. Other players are in their gunsights too, like Barkas.
Don’t mistake any of it for scattershot either; these people know exactly what they are doing and they have had all week to take aim at the targets.
The restraint they’ve shown since Thursday is not a real measure of what they want to do next … they know what matters is the domestic game and they’ve been prepping themselves for that since full time last Saturday.
Our title challenge will be decided by how well we respond to that setback.
The hacks have concluded that we won’t. They think we’re a busted flush, that the combined weight of the pressure of this campaign, bad strategic decisions, unhappy players and the absence of the fans has done for us here. That this squad has peaked and is on the downslope.
Is this true? On the surface of it, it might appear so.
But appearances can be deceptive and you only need to look across the city to know it; theirs is a club which is touted as strong and stable, yet they are dependent on emergency loans to get by and their manager has been given a fortune and thus far won nothing in two campaigns, campaigns in which he’s assembled the second most expensive squad in the league.
The picture of Celtic at the present time is no less false or misleading. We are better than we seem, stronger than our performances suggest, and this team has handled everything that has come their way over the last few years … no-one does pressure like them.
I still believe in this team. I still believe the manager can turn this around.
I still think the Ibrox club isn’t nearly as good as all the hype which surrounds it would have you believe.
They had two shots on target against us and scored them both.
All the hysteria surrounding their second goal in midweek obscures the fact that they were riding their luck against a poor team suffering a crisis at the time he scored it. I wasn’t as impressed as many seem to have been.
There are members of the press who are dying for us to lose tomorrow, and they make up a broad coalition of the Sevconuts, the ex-Celts with axes to grind and those who pretend not to be either but who thrive on chaos and drama and love nothing more than when it’s happening to us.
We can silence them all.
Come on Celtic, it’s time to wake up … and shut these people up.
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