Since the day and hour he walked through the doors of Celtic Park, Ange Postecoglou has talked nothing but old fashioned common sense about the issues which face him as a manager, and one of those issues is the way the media tries to create sensationalist headlines even on those days when they already have plenty to write about.
So it was yesterday, when Ange got a question on whether or not we pay much attention to what is going on elsewhere … i.e. over at Ibrox.
In every possible way, that is a daft question because of course people at Celtic are aware of what’s happening over there … but they don’t dwell on it or overthink it, or even spend too long on it.
Because, as Ange has pointed out, then you aren’t thinking about your own game and your own results and your own performances … and that’s when you stop winning and start dropping points.
Had we done that earlier in the season, this race would have been over and not to our advantage.
We are top now because we simply shut that stuff out.
“If you start thinking that way … what we have done really well is focus on ourselves. It’s not long ago we were six points behind,” he said. “If we start thinking about other teams and what they are doing, and sweating on other results, we wouldn’t be where we are.”
And this is the perfect answer, not only in that it shuts down this idea that we should be forever focussed on them but on the media’s vain hope that at some point we will take our eyes off the prize, or that we’ll cave in to “pressure” – as though fighting back from six points behind at one stage wasn’t actual pressure, or didn’t put you under any.
The press narrative over us is just daft.
We have withstood the worst kind of pressure there is, the pressure that comes from chasing, from knowing that any slip will probably be the decisive one. It is perhaps worth noting that the same people who were talking this junk in the aftermath of the game at Parkhead already have the answer they were looking for.
Far from cracking under the pressure of being a point ahead, it is Ibrox who blinked first which is why the lead is now three points instead.
I think it might even grow before we roll into Ibrox next month.
Ange is right; we focus on our own games and everything else just falls into place.
Let them worry what we’re doing for once.
One game at a time.
Sweet Jesus!
It’s just the press trying to keep the “O** F*** narrative relevant. We watch them, they watch us, absolute bo**ocks, but it gives the Blue blooded a reason to live. The Glasgow Derby is what it is, Partick Thistle v Queens Park, Celtic v Queens Park, Partick Thistle or the Ibrox Tenants, that’s what riles them the most.