Celtic’s Relentless Football Turnaround Has Driven Some Peepul Mad

When a team racks up a nine goal victory, that’s usually a sign that they are doing everything right. How is it possible, then, that so many Peepul can think that some bizarre confluence of luck and malign influence is the reason for our success?

When we face Ibrox’s side at the coming weekend, a draw would be enough to complete a remarkable turnaround. I don’t expect us to draw. I think we’ll win and with plenty of room to spare. But the draw on its own gets us to a milestone nobody on the other side of the city saw coming, and which nobody can realistically deny.

We will have gone 38 SPFL games without defeat. A full season. An Invincible campaign. It won’t be, of course, because it’s spread over this season and last … but considering where we were after the first six matches of last season it is nearly miraculous that we are on the brink of completing such a feat. But to read their forums, none of this is real.

It’s the level of the opposition, they say. Which makes me wonder where their big wins are. Where is their equivalent of the doing we handed out yesterday, if it’s simply that the opposition is so bad? If it’s referees, they are going to have to point to the decisions we are getting which lead to us racking up such big performances and cricket scores.

Press them on this and they have no real answers, just vague nonsense about how our team is built to “beat the dross” every week. Which, maybe I’m crazy, but I rather thought was the point of assembling a football team in the first place. Win more games than the rest and you win prizes, after all? It’s as if they’ve been watching a different game every week and have only now twigged to what the strategies behind winning in the actual one are.

Read their forums today for evidence of madness on the rampage. And denial. No team which is about to go 38 in the league unbeaten can possibly be a bad side … yet they are sticking to their guns on this, they are determined that we are.

No team which goes on a run like this should be underestimated. No team that goes on a run like this should be so casually dismissed. But the hatred and bile that is pouring out of their forums today has left no room for rational analysis.

This team has shattered the sanity of some of these folk, it really has. Bear in mind that this time last year everyone in their circle was predicting that we’d be lucky to finish third, far less maintain a title challenge. We were two wins from five and it was about to get worse … we weren’t to know then that the low point was coming and it was all uphill from there.

But more importantly, perhaps, they weren’t to know that … and they believed they were on the ascendant as we continued to spiral. It hasn’t been like that at all, of course, and the experience of watching Celtic’s ascent has honestly broken some of these Peepul.