Celtic Under 21’s Were Witness Yesterday To Ibrox’s Spiralling Loss Of Control.

At what point do we need to start worrying here? At what point is the concern over the conduct of those within Ibrox a genuine, and obvious, cause for alarm at every level inside Celtic Park? As I will write later, there is already a mounting sense of dread about the fixtures that we’re hurtling towards, three of them in a short space of time.

One of those games is at Hampden, where 25,000 of their fans will be raging furiously at every bad break of the ball.

One is at Ibrox, in front of nothing but their supporters. Our club has taken the extremely wise decision not to accept tickets for that game because the safety of our fans cannot be guaranteed.

And of course, the first game is at Celtic Park.

But we know now that even this game isn’t exactly a “safe space.”

One of their coaches attacked our women’s manager last week. This week has barely begun and it has started with three of their players sent off in a single game against our youth team.

The loss of control of all involved in the Ibrox operation has leaped from the stands to the coaches and now out onto the pitch.

Their whole season is going to come down to the cup semi-final. In their shoes you might not even need to be possessed of a barbaric temperament to see the Celtic Park game as an opportunity to leave carnage in your wake, to try and put as many of our players out of the Hampden match as possible.

Their league hopes have been virtually erased. They know that.

People like Lundstram and Goldson can talk all they want about still being in it.

We’re simply not going to lose enough games in the nine which are left. So they know what’s what here. It’s out of their hands, and that means it’s a forlorn hope. They have exactly one thing left to fight for.

And they are a club which is more than ever lost in its own warped worldview. They have a manager who, in spite of a good record, is under the most intense pressure and even those who wish him well seem pathologically determined to add to it.

He can feel the walls tightening around him. What would you do in his shoes, even if you weren’t the kind of person who enjoyed the smell of blood? Anything. Everything. And at Celtic Park they might just opt to do exactly that.

When a coach cannot contain his rage at a last minute goal in a ladies’ game, and when their players fume and descend into lunacy at an under 21 match, is there any reason to think that they won’t react the same way, or worse, in a match on which season ticket sales and thus the immediate future of the whole club might rest?

What we are witnessing is a club in the throes of a genuine crisis behind the walls, something unseen but clearly ugly, and which could boil over at any time. Twice in the last week, it has boiled over and both of them in matches against us.

TI fear for our footballers in all three of the games to come, but oddly at Celtic Park most of all because it is the first of them and what happens in that one will set the tone, and perhaps the options, for the others.

It is a troubling thought as we go into this big week.