I like to think that when I write about the club across town it’s when their behaviour impacts on us, or the wider society in which we live.
I believe that part of the mission for any Celtic site should be to subject them to constant scrutiny, the kind they don’t get from the media, the kind that they are supposed to get but never have and never will.
I have never understood Celtic fans who claim not to care what they do over there.
I have never understood how they can believe that stuff doesn’t matter to us.
Their financial doping, their hold on the SFA, the way they bend the regulations to suit themselves … in case it’s not readily apparent, that was the way the old Rangers behaved and that club cheated us for over a decade, and when they crashed every man, woman and child in the country found out that we’d have to foot the bill. This club is headed the same way.
That matters to us.
So too does the idea of their fans turning Glasgow into a virus breeding ground and fighting pitched battles this weekend.
The closure of our shop and other businesses, lest they be vandalised, impacts on us, so you had better believe that too is our concern and something I will not apologise for focussing on.
This stuff is important, no matter who thinks otherwise.
I know what obsession looks like; it’s more readily apparent across town than it is on our side of the lines.
This was going to be a different article; the news today that Glasgow will be kept in Tier 3 lockdown another week was sufficiently serious to knock down the idea of writing a piece that scorched their plans for the party and the mentality behind them.
But that mentality is evident whether I do a full discourse on it or not.
The whole thing is about us, from the slogans on some of the banners, to the relentless focus on 55, to the choice of their songs for the “occasion” … it’s all about us, all about rubbing our faces in it.
Nowhere is there evidence that it has ever dawned on them to celebrate for their own sake.
The George Square spectacle has become a means of offending people rather than commemorating their own triumph. It is their way of thumbing their noses at the law, the government and, most vital of all for them, at scorning us.
This is not about their achievement, it’s about what they think their achievement has done to the rest of us.
It is frankly pathetic.
And this entire mind-set has been beautifully captured tonight in an article on one of their fan sites, Ibrox News, which I praised before as one of the few voices of sanity over there.
Indeed, their view on the proposed George Square shindig is that it shouldn’t happen.
But even amongst the saner Peepul, it is clear that they are caught in the same overarching insanity as the rest.
Entitled “Rangers troll Celtic with superb Dubai holiday email to fans” it is the perfect encapsulation of how we live constantly in their minds.
The article is about an advertising flier which has been sent out to their supporters offering “deals” on trips to Dubai which their club has arranged with some holiday company.
Even if it were not absolutely preposterous to send such a circular out to working class football fans during a pandemic, when people are worried about their jobs, and during season ticket renewal time and MyGers renewals and everything else – the trips, even with the deal, are offered on a half board basis for the princely sum of £1400 per person for a week –, how can this troll Celtic fans when Ibrox fans are the only people it is being sent to?
If these goons hadn’t highlighted it, how would any of us have ever known about it?
As jokes go, it’s pretty shit, let’s face it, if indeed it’s a joke at all.
And if you’re thinking they haven’t thought this through then you’re quite right; this is either their club having a dig at rival fans of a rival club in a way that few would even be aware of – which speaks to a tragic and pitiful mind-set inside Ibrox, which I wouldn’t be boasting about if I were them – or it’s the writer imagining that it has to be a dig because we live, rent free, in his brain 24/7.
I don’t know which would make me more want to hide under the bed if this was us.
“We’re not sure whether or not this was done on purpose but based on how big a story Celtic’s controversial trip to Dubai was earlier this season, (the club) are bound to be trolling their rivals with a hilarious email sent out to fans this week …” reads this piece of utter idiocy which the writer thought merited publishing.
“Seeing the Gers have a pop at (Celtic), on the eve of trophy day, just makes our week even sweeter …”
No, it makes you all sound absolutely out of your minds, because if this was our first title, or even just our first in a decade, I can assure you that hoping our club had people in it whose primary concern the night before we get presented with the silverware was trolling the opposition … well that would be a concern rather than something to laugh about.
I’d wonder why a professional organisation were employing such bitter and unprofessional people in the first place.
And I’d wonder about anyone who read that into it.
I can sum this up in seven words; these Peepul are howling at the moon.
Honestly, this “celebration” of theirs isn’t about them at all … we aren’t just the unacknowledged guests at the party, they are having it in our honour and many of them openly acknowledge it.
On their so called “day of triumph” their heads will be in the Garngad, The Brazen Head, the Tolbooth Bar, the Squirrel, in Heraghtys and at Celtic Park. They’ll be thinking, all day, about us.
Nothing sums up the warped worldview of these brainless dolts better than that.