Yesterday, when the full time whistle blew at Hampden, a little government-style text message from the SPFL should have appeared on all our smartphones saying “Repairs are now complete and normal operations have been resumed.”
There has been some amount of utter bunk written in the media over the last 12 months, about how we had been supplanted at the top of the game here and how we could find ourselves years behind the mob across town and blah blah blah.
Throughout all of it, the facts have been roundly ignored.
No club built on debt is sustainable. Celtic’s fundamental strengths remained. The problems which afflicted Celtic were about leadership. Once we fixed that we were always going to pick up where we left off.
The hacks don’t want to get this.
Our rivals certainly don’t want to see it clearly, but Celtic has been the biggest club in this country from at least the time Martin O’Neill came in and won a domestic treble in his first campaign.
You could go back even further and say that we’ve been the biggest club in the country since McCann left with the season ticket base built and with Celtic Park looming over the home of Rangers, and you wouldn’t be entirely wrong.
Certainly, there has been no doubt since the liquidation of the first Ibrox club.
The second remains a pale shadow of that one, and wouldn’t have been able to touch us, in spite of our bad decisions, had it been run on a stable, sensible basis.
Even with their colossal overspending, it took a season of near total collapse from us and one in which they were the recipients of truly extraordinary luck before they won a single domestic honour; sadly, for us, it happened to be the title.
But the idea that they had supplanted us as the biggest team in Scotland was, and is, sheer fantasy. They remain miles behind us on every business metric.
Their squad remains behind ours in terms of its overall quality, and I maintain that no matter what the hacks think.
Yesterday was a great day for Celtic, the proof of what happens when the leadership is in the hands of someone who knows what he’s doing, and whose singular visions is backed by the board.
That was not some stroke of good luck we had yesterday; that was our thirteenth domestic trophy out of the last sixteen. How can anyone sustain the argument that we aren’t the biggest club in the country?
We have the best manager, the best players, the biggest stadium, the most money, the largest season ticket base, the best shirt deal and the best sponsorship.
So precisely what metric is being used to calculate this for anyone who argues otherwise?
One league title in the last ten?
Surely, in any other field of endeavour, that would be seen as an aberration rather than something which fundamentally alters the landscape?
Their only argument seems to be that they are still at the top of the table, but that increasingly looks like a temporary arrangement. This Celtic team is improving all the time, and not just steadily, but at speed.
When the January window shuts and the full scope of Ange’s first season rebuild is clear, the picture might look a bit different than it does right now.
Let’s see if The Board give this exceptional man the backing he so richly deserves in January.
Why do I feel nervous?
The new club out of Ibrox would likely have gone into Administration had Celtic not imploded on-field last season. Should the new club fail to achieve the automatic Champions League qualification this season it is likely that process was only delayed. Had the SFA checked their books under Fair Play regulations they would have doubtless agreed there have been and remain ‘ongoing concerns’.
In terms of Worldly support, Celtic are light years ahead.
Last season was an anomaly; a freak season. A once in a hundred years pandemic coincided with a once in a hundred years outcome in Scottish football where the reigning champions and domestic cup holders were afflicted by an unimaginable set of external circumstances together with a series of self inflicted damages, which resulted in them ending the season without a trophy and St Johnstone winning the two domestic cups.