Next Sunday, Celtic Will Destroy The Phony Narrative Surrounding This Ibrox Team.

Keith Jackson’s latest screech from the depths of his soul suggests that one of the two managers who rolls up to Hampden is in for a shock, and that the fans of the beaten club will turn on him. What he means is that he reckons Ange is in for a shock and that we’re about to turn on him. He is wrong, as per usual, and on both counts.

Celtic fans know what we’re watching. We know that ours is a better team than the one across the city, and by a considerable distance. The idea that we’re about to turn on the manager who has made that happen is frankly ludicrous.

He, as others have, raises the spectre of the “car park protests” of some years ago. But as always with these people they never place things in their proper context. Many of us had deep seated reservations about Lennon, and we could see clearly that the club was on a downward trajectory with him in the manager’s seat.

Those protests were a response to where the whole club looked to be headed at the time. Things have changed, and changed utterly. No-one doubts Ange, and a one-off football match is not going to be the catalyst for a revolution.

He thinks we’re “kidding ourselves” that they have changed under The Mooch. But as one publication pointed out, he’s only just got in front of the “unbeaten run” Van Bronckhorst went on when he took over at the club … and I see no signs that they are any better than they were under the Dutchman. In fact, I think their football is awful.

Believe me, if they were playing spell-binding football I would have to admit it. And you would see it in their results and performances. But they aren’t, and no amount of Daily Record spin can convince us of what is simply not true.

The last time we were at Hampden against them we allowed them to dictate too much of the game and although we should still have won they got the result. They then spent months trying to convince themselves that it meant more than it did.

We dissuaded them of such of a foolish notion at Celtic Park at the start of this campaign.

Now they’ve done it again because they had a reasonably good performance at their home ground. I think full strength team or not, against whatever they turn up with, we’re going to dissuade them of a few more of their crazy ideas.

The Record today has The Mooch “unbeaten in the last eight” against us. What garbage. What arrant nonsense. This is the first time I’ve heard an assistant manager getting so much honey poured on him by the media for something his former boss did. What’s even more incredible is The Mooch himself has boasted of the same record.

Well, this is why we’re going to get all the greater pleasure out of silencing this guy for a while, and all of his media acolytes too.

We are entitled to be confident. It is not “presumptuousness or complacency” as Jackson woodenly put it. We watch our team every week. We know how good we are. We know how good we’re capable of being. There is nothing arrogant, presumptuous or complacent in believing that your side is good enough to beat its rivals when we know we are.