Ex-Celtic Players And Ex-Ibrox Players Can Trade Blows, But The League Table Doesn’t Lie.

It is always amusing when the ex-players are having a go at each other in the media.

What exactly does it mean?

It means nothing at all of course.

So when McCoist talks about The Mooch closing the gap it is easy to dismiss it as insanity. When Stubbs chips in and says that the Ibrox club aren’t in our league that makes great headlines … but changes nothing.

How does it affect our understanding of the situation? A spat between two former footballers, one from our side and one from theirs? The answer is simple, and obvious of course; it doesn’t change a damned thing, not in any way, shape or form.

We have our data points and the evidence of our own eyes. We can see that this is a great Celtic team, one that leaves theirs in the dust if it turns up for business and is on its game. We can see that Ange is continuing to tweak us and work us into something that is even better. And our data points are obvious; the form guide and the trophy haul.

Four trophies out of the last five, if you presume the league is won.

Look at the biggest data point of all, the league table.

That strongly suggests that it’s as good as over. We have nine games left. Even if we lost three of them we’d have a sufficiently strong goal difference that if we won the others we’d be champions.

Three losses in nine, when we have one in the last 29 in this campaign.

That’s the data point that matters, that’s the only thing that should be worth discussing.

The Mooch will hold up his own form since he came in; there are a lot of scrappy games in there and he’s failed in the two that matter most, the one at Ibrox and the one at Hampden against us.

That’s our argument. That’s our case. Those are the proofs of where we are as opposed to where they think they are, and the press might like the gossip that a debate between two ex-players generates but it really doesn’t change anything we know.

We know the hard numbers, and they are all that matter.

We know that our consistency is outrageous and that if they want to catch us they’re going to have to be damned good because as the boss says, “we never stop.”