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Why Should Celtic Fans Hope For An Ibrox Slip? Because There Will Be One.

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No on-form side ever looks like dropping points. Until they do.

It’s one of the truisms of football, and it’s the reason there are so many rags-to-riches stories from all around the game and why you never know whether your BetRegal bonus will come to fruition.

Teams get into the habit of winning.

But as history has proved – and the last two years have provided us with twin examples on both sides of Glasgow – they can get into the habit of not winning just as easily when the heat is on and the pressure goes up.

I refuse to blame pressure for where we are right now.

Whatever else has happened to this team, we didn’t crack under the weight of expectations or the need to succeed. This team has been hammering all comers for long enough. They know how to thrive under adverse circumstances.

They simply look directionless and without purpose right now … these things come from the coaching and fitness and match preparedness and all the other areas we seem to be lacking.

One of the things we are lacking is a little confidence.

Lennon is correct about this element of it even if he’s got nothing else right.

When this team rediscovers winning form it is likely to go on an extended run whatever else is going on.

Because, like I said, winning gets to be a habit and it’s a habit we’ve been in for a long, long time.

Indeed, we’ve been doing it so long let’s call it an addiction rather than a habit.

These players don’t want to stop winning. I have no doubt they still crave success.

They have a swagger about them at Ibrox right now.

They doubtless feel invincible, and some of the press are talking about them as a team capable of going on that kind of run. I think that talk is for the birds.

I remember other Ibrox teams which didn’t look like they were going to drop points, until they started to.

I remember Celtic teams like that as well.

So where will these points be dropped? I’ve written here about the poverty of most of the clubs in the league this year; that’s a major issue, and a problem. You think about the current squads and you wonder which of them will score goals against the Ibrox club?

Not many, you’d think, except it doesn’t take that many to stop a winning run dead.

They’ve dropped points twice this season already to teams which held them to draws; in one of those games they conceded twice. Both of those games came away from home, once in Livingston and once at Easter Road. They face a run of tough away games in December and January, on top of a possible fixture backlog which I wrote about yesterday.

We shouldn’t forget that the global health crisis is yet to deal them a bad hand.

You have to think that will happen at some point.

They are the luckiest club on the planet at times, but this crisis is so all encompassing that it will eventually hit them.

All this is to say, as yesterday’s piece did, that we should not give up on this title.

There are going to be a lot of twists and turns along the way here. I feel that all it might take is one reversal, one defeat, for the Ibrox club to take the gloss off, to remind them that they aren’t invincible at all, that they’ve simply started well and are on a good run.

If we can finally hit some form at around the same time then I think we might see something very interesting start to take shape.

A lot of if’s, of course, but this has happened before.

Nobody at Ibrox should be looking to employ a trophy room attendant just yet.

All this, of course, depends on one thing … us taking care of our own business and eating into their lead one point at a time.

Well, let’s see what the manager chooses to do to tomorrow …

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