Celtic’s 16 Trophies Have Taken A Terrible Toll On Ibrox’s Delusions Of Grandeur.

From 2012 until 2016, Ibrox fans told themselves a comforting, but ultimately self-defeating, lie.

They looked at Celtic’s trophy haul in that spell and convinced themselves that because we had seemingly underachieved that they would certainly supplant us from the moment their pitiful NewCo got itself into the top flight.

It’s true that our club seemed to have “underachieved” in the four years when they were climbing from their starting position in the bottom tier. But actually, the truth was a little different.

For openers, Ronny Deila would almost certainly have won a treble but for a dire refereeing decision. Their own club won a semi-final penalty shoot-out at Hampden to deny us another Scottish Cup, although Hibs hilariously stopped them in the final.

We could have won trebles in any one of those years. We should have. Ronny was dreadfully, dreadfully unlucky. Some might even say he was robbed, and I agree.

But they preferred to ignore that. They preferred to look only at what the records said on paper. And to an extent you can’t argue with that, because it’s what really matters after all. Still, it is and was a very misleading metric, but one which they clung to.

Then they got to the top flight. Having got to the Scottish Cup Final the previous year, they were sure that they had simply been unlucky but that it proved that they “were back.”

Ha! The four seasons that followed must have been shattering.

I can assure you of this though; the last two years have been worse.

We have won four trebles and a double in the past seven seasons, all with them in the league.

The “underachieving” club has been so successful it’s almost as if we baited a trap for them and sprung it the moment they were confirmed to be heading for the SPL.

Only the COVID year, that weird campaign without a single supporter, where everything was upside down, gave them hope.

But hope is all it was, the cruellest kind of hope there is, the hope that there was light at the end of the tunnel, that they were finally secure in the role they’ve always kidded themselves was theirs by right.

Once again, they underestimated us.

Four trophies out of the last five is the shock to the system that has finally tipped many of them over the edge. They believed, as King did, that they only needed to win one title and their club would be on top for a long spell. Instead it is starting to dawn on them that they are in the midst of the greatest domestic period of dominance in our history.

They have no excuses. They have no get-outs. They have no crumbs of comfort.

They told themselves that our titles whilst their side was climbing the leagues didn’t matter. They believed we should have won more domestic cups. How they would show us once they were able to deal with us from the same league.

They had no idea what was in store for them.

They have been in the league for every moment of triumph we’ve enjoyed. If we win the treble, as looks likely, that will be 17 out of the 21 trophies since they made it to the top flight. St Johnstone have won two of the remaining four.

They now know what underachievement looks like. Or that’s what they are calling it right now.

But in fact, the question that they more and more need to ask themselves is this; is it possible that the title season they did enjoy was the real fluke? And if that’s true – and I very much think it is – what does that mean for them and for their future?

That’s actually easy to work out. What it means for their future is that the trophies they win in the times to come might not be measured against what they believe they should be winning but against the rest of this league. In short, they might consider the occasional Scottish Cup or League Cup to be good times, examples of over-achievement instead.

These are our glory years, and they are as glorious as they have ever been.

For them, this is the darkness, and they are entitled to wonder if there will ever be a dawn.