Tonight, the headlines are dominated by the “reaction” from Ibrox to the epic skelping that they got in midweek.
What a predictable development in more ways than one.
First the idea that Hearts might put up a proper fight was always for the birds.
When a team loses a big match, their next opponents can either view them as vulnerable or brace for their response; Hearts chose the latter path and that assured the final outcome.
But as Ibrox already knows, and which the media recognises all too well, when you are talking about a “reaction” you’re not averting disaster, the disaster has happened already, and as much as their club might want to convince itself that it has gotten its groove back, the truth is that they are now trailing us, and as long as we continue winning all they can do is hope to keep up.
This is all about Celtic now. We’re the headline act.
The simple fact is that there are 13 league games to go, and if we win 12 of them we will be champions regardless of what Ibrox does. And to understand why that’s significant I’ll tell you; out of the last 13 we have won 12, and we look far more formidable at this point in the cycle than we looked when we started it. We have hit our stride.
We have players to come back.
We have others still finding their fitness, which should scare every other club when you consider who those players are, guys already making a major contribution to this season.
There is ample proof that we can still get better.
There are a lot of games to come in a short space of time, but whilst Ibrox’s squad suddenly looks weak ours has not looked this strong in years and we can rotate.
That’s why we were able to take off two of our most potent attacking players at half time today.
The options we brought off the bench were strong too … in fact, I can barely remember a stronger bench.
And that’s without Kyogo or Turnbull being available because of their injuries.
Can you even imagine the competition when they are back?
This is now our show.
Today we hammered Motherwell, absolutely hammered them, dispelling any of the nonsense that our win in midweek was down to a “bad day at the office” from our rivals. The truth is, we’re just a very, very good team now.
And as long as that’s true, our results are the only ones that really count.
As long as we keep winning then nothing that happens elsewhere is anything but white noise, and Ange will tell the players to shut that out and just keep on doing what they do.
Delighted with performance and result today. Great reaction from us to keep turning the screw. Also a great reaction to from our rivals 5-0. We are in a proper title race. I still recall 2011 when we threw it away after beating them 3-0 in April. Had we not lost at Inverness we’d have already won 10 in a row. Let’s just keep turning the screw. Aberdeen away if we win that it’s another huge step.
Fair enough. An excellent performance at Fir Park.
Still, not entirely unreasonable headlines you reference at the start.
To be fair to the huns (as I never am, usually) – they did what they had to do. If they dropped points today I think the end was nigh. They’re not going to hand this to us like we did to them last season. So we have a battle on our hands and it will be an exciting one.
I think we can do this. Today really put a lot of my fears to bed. The manner which we totally destroyed Motherwell then had the gall to take off two of our best players to rest them for Wednesday at Half Time – well, that tells you all you need to know. If we can avoid the injury avalanche that we are too used to seeing, we will be a very tough nut to crack. And I mean that domestically and in Europe.
BTW fellow Celtic fans. I don’t know if any of you saw any of the Notts Forest v Leicester match today but Brendan’s boys got absolutely clobbered 4-1. To be fair to Forest, they were magnificent but it has to be said that the main area where Leicester struggled today (and apparently this has been the case all season) is …. yes, you guessed it – set pieces. The defending was spectacularly bad. Laugh? Yes. Yes, I did.