Ibrox Can Indulge Its Delusions. When Ange Wins This Title No Celtic Fan Will Care.

As expected, the internet is full of people tonight talking up the arrogant idea that the Ibrox club can win the Europa League.

Can they? In a one off game anything is possible, but it’s presuming a lot when a number of top class clubs still stand in their way.

This Ibrox side is well made for the European game, that much is obvious, but when push comes to shove I reckon quality is going to tell more often than not, and then this little fantasy ends.

The thing about their European run, it’s all built without pressure.

They aren’t expected to win these sort of games and so they can perform without the suffocating stress that envelops them when they play here at home.

Progress in Europe looks nice on a manager’s CV but at the end of it what do they have if Celtic sweep the board domestically?

They have what we had in the Seville season; nothing.

They won the treble that year. We are on course for doing that this season. Let them kid on all they like that a European run will make up for having to watch that. It won’t, and we know it won’t.

They think we’d swap places with them as they march towards the last eight of the Europa League. They are delusional. By the time the title race ends, if Ange is standing holding that trophy there is not a Celtic fan on Planet Earth who will care.

This season is all about us. The media will invent an Ibrox success story based on an extended European run, and I hope they give their Dutch manager the job on the back of it.

Because if we win it this season, with all the obstacles that were in our way, then they simply aren’t going to stop us next season no matter who is in charge over there.

Celtic is only going to get better and better and better.

Ange’s plan is coming more sharply into focus and when all of our players are fit and available, and especially if the boss has Champions League money to finance his ambitions, then we will leave them in the dust.

I think we’re odds on favourites for the title next season no matter what happens between now and the end of this one.

So let them have their fun. Let them embrace the full measure of their delusions.

Celtic has not, as they predicted, collapsed like a house of cards.

We’ve rallied. We’ve regrouped. We have actually come back stronger than we were because now there is a genuine visionary at the helm. That is not a delusional, that is a cold, hard fact.

And it’s the one that will dictate the immediate future of the game here.

This title, and the next few beyond it.

A European run won’t come close to this.