Greg Taylor spoke over the weekend about the mentality inside Celtic Park; it is the one we would all have been hoping for.
He and the club are dealing with this title race.
The players and the management team are taking it one game at a time.
It is all they can do.
There is a real discipline involved in this.
But nothing is better at relieving the pressure than not to acknowledge it. You don’t focus on your rivals or what they are getting up to. You think only about yourselves and how to get through the next game. The next game is the most important one. There is no other world outside of it.
This is the mantra preached by Gordon Strachan and which I’ve written about many times.
It’s also the Brendan Rodgers method, which is all about focus and keeping your eyes fixed firmly on the prize, which for a league game is three points and for a cup game progress to the next round. The distant horizon – titles, trophies – that doesn’t affect you at all.
So the mind-set is right.
Don’t underestimate the importance of that. It’s a part of the overall battle we’re in, the psychological war.
The ability to put all else out of your mind and just focus on the next task at hand requires great mental discipline and strength.
It’s as if the team has re-found some of the focus it had lost.
I am impressed by the way the players are talking, and doing it on the pitch. I am not changing my mind on the central issues – big changes need to happen at Parkhead from the training ground upwards – but we may be getting back to our true form.
If that’s the case, then it’s not a moment too soon.
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