As Celtic Clash Looms Larger, Darkness Starts To Descend On Our Rivals.

Arrogance and ego can be a terrible thing in professional sports. Really, they are a terrible thing anywhere. Sun Tzu recommends irritating an easily roused enemy and feigning weakness to make him over-confident. It takes a supremely stupid opponent to be beaten time and again by a stronger one who still doesn’t realise he’s second best.

Eventually I’ll do that long delayed piece on the cultural differences of the clubs. But for now, it’s enough to say that their overwhelming belief in their own supremacy, as emphasised over and over in their “club slogan” We Are The Peepul, is part of why most of us expect a win at the weekend. They genuinely believe that pulling on the blue jersey makes them special, makes them important, makes them better than others.

We know that all that stuff has to be earned. Like I said, that’s cultural. So let’s not delve too deep into that. Let’s just, for a moment, think on what it means.

Ibrox’s supremacist culture is such that they refuse, utterly, to accept even the merest suggestion that we are just a better team. So that’s why so many of them come out in the papers and tell us about how we’ll see the “real” them next time around.

Yet in that dressing room are players who have to know that they are over-matched, just as there are soldiers in any army whose over-riding emotional state is the fear of the enemy. Some can translate that fear into deeds of great valour and heroism. Others are crushed by it, and nothing is worse for soldiers than having, amongst their ranks, people who are afraid of engagement. It saps morale. It wrecks the unity needed for victory.

Sun Tzu said, “The general who wins a battle makes many calculations in his temple ere the battle is fought,” which simply means that battles, and really any contest, are won before a single player or soldier ever takes the field. They are won by their leaders, in the preparation, in the tactics, in the art of setting out a plan and making sure others stick to it.

The Mooch is fighting for his job. That does not translate well into cold, rational analysis. His second in command is focussed on avenging some perceived slight, which is great. As I said a moment ago, one of the great general’s strategies involves provoking the ire of an easily wound up foe … on the pitch Scott Brown was a pro at it, and particularly against Morelos.

The pressure on their whole club is immense, but on the manager in particular. Some of their players know they’ll be leaving in the summer. They won’t run through walls for the cause because they have one foot out the door already. Others know they don’t have a future under the new manager, as he’s made abundantly clear with his talk of the rebuild. That’s not a great motivator for people either. But more than anything else is the drumbeat of expectation from the stands and from ex-Ibrox players in the media; we cannot lose this game.

With hatred of Celtic at its core, this is the real problem for The Mooch and his side. As I’ve said before, Celtic’s players and their manager play for the glory of us. They put everything into stopping us. I talked about Stephen King’s The Long Walk and the character of Stebbins; his strength came from understanding that motivation is everything.

Working under those dark and threatening clouds, Ibrox’s players need more than just the thought of beating Celtic and stopping Celtic. They need more than just being told that their manager’s future might depend on it. What if that’s not a motivating factor for some of them? What if some of them just don’t care about that at all?

For everything we’re doing right, you can see two things that they are doing wrong. Not just in their approach but in their attitude. Everything their players say or their allies say stokes expectation levels and ratchets up the pressure on them.

In the meantime, we prepare. And prepare. And prepare.