Celtic Should Get An Ibrox Guard Of Honour But They Are Too Bitter To Grant One.

Now that the title has been secured, the debate moves on to the Guard Of Honour.

That we should get one is without question.

It is also an historical fact that both their club and ours have refused to give one before. Their failure to give us one when we clinched eight in a row saw us refuse them one two years later.

Two years from that, what will happen?

I think we all know what will happen.

Their club doesn’t have a shred of class.

The idea that they would do this for us, especially on a day when there will be no Celtic fans in the ground and thus would generate immense fury from their own supporters, is for the birds.

Their club fears its own fans and panders to them. And its directors? Don’t even get me started on the We Are The Peepul brigade who have their hands on the controls over there. The idea is ridiculous.

Yet it shouldn’t be.

These things should be a matter of course. They would help to leech some of the poison out of a fixture that has way too much of it.

Had they given us a guard of honour for eight in a row, why wouldn’t we have been cool with giving them one in return?

At some point you either break the cycle of hate or you keep on perpetuating it.

This is their chance to mend some fences.

Not that they’ll take it.

Someone asked me recently if it should be a right.

I don’t think so.

Because then it is something forced on clubs, and if it’s forced then it loses all its meaning. The beauty of the guard of honour is that is given by an opponent as a mark of respect. If the respect does not exist, then what would be the point?

Does the respect exist in this case?

Absolutely not, and I would rather not have The Mooch mouth phony platitudes as he did at the weekend and applaud our team grudgingly. Save it for the media and your own gullible fans.

Don’t try to get your nonsense past people who know better.

This team deserves the highest credit and the utmost praise.

But we’re getting it from neutrals all over the world, and plenty of it here at home.

At other clubs, Ange commands that respect and even a lot of affection because he is generous with praise and fair minded. That reflects well on our club too and I believe any other side in the league would give us the guard of honour without a second thought.

And that matters more than what would, in many ways, be a self-serving gesture from the Ibrox club.

We do deserve it, but I’d rather not get it if the media is steered to praise them for it rather than us for the brilliance which earned it.