One Result Doesn’t Change The Trajectory Of This Celtic Team … Or The One Across Town.

Every time we lose a major game, I go through the same routine. I do an immediate reaction piece, I have a few beers – usually more than I have when we’re winning – and then I eat well to cheer myself up. Then I drink large amounts of water, take some headache pills in anticipation of the hangover and then I get some sleep.

That means that when I wake up in the morning I’m tuned in and fresh. I’m fresh right now, as I write this.

What all this helps me to do is gain perspective. That’s why what I write in the morning after a defeat is sometimes markedly different to what I wrote in the immediate aftermath.

When we lose we’re emotional. When that goes we can be analytical.

So, this is where we are.

On 12 May 1865, the Battle of Palmito Ranch began, just outside of Brownsville, Texas.

The Confederate Army won the battle.

But it was already too late for them to gain anything from the victory; the war was over. Lee had been captured in April at The Battle of Appomattox Court House, and on 10 May Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederation, had been arrested and imprisoned. The Battle of Palmito Ranch was a pointless engagement, the last of the American Civil War.

The South started that war in the firm conviction that it would win, just as Hitler believed that Germany could take on the whole of the world.

The North had a vast industrial economy and the ability to raise many more soldiers. Their numerical superiority was more than 2-1 when the war began and that number went up.

Yesterday was the equivalent of that modest Confederate victory; a futile, one-day triumph after the war had been decisively won.

Our war was only going to have one winner from the moment this season kicked off. Our strengths are too great and in Ange we have a master strategist. When the next campaign begins we’ll be well placed.

Victories are good. Sky Sports News thinks that they have the bragging rights for the summer.

Wow. Bragging rights.

Because you’d rather have those than a treble, right?

As Matthew Marr brilliantly put it yesterday, we’ve had days like yesterday before on both sides … who even remembers that game in May 1995 which he wrote about? The Ibrox club had just won their 7th title in a row and were on the brink of closing a deal to sign Gascoigne.

That result mattered a lot less than the game against Airdrie which was to come within weeks, and which delivered us the Scottish Cup. But their fans were not in the least downhearted that afternoon.

They knew their club was still in control.

What we need more than anything right now is calm.

To approach the next few weeks in the same measured manner we have all this time, and to ignore the swirl of noise in which we’ll find ourselves. Ibrox has won a battle, but we won the war.

The next one will be starting soon, and no matter what their fans tell themselves, we’ll still the favourites.

Listen, what a night of rest and recuperation has allowed me to remember is simply this; teams, no matter how good, lose games. They have off-days. They don’t show up.

We missed chances yesterday which would have won several games … more importantly, we have won the ones that matter. The ones that decided the title. The Hampden matches that delivered trophies.

We’re the club on the brink of the treble. One loss won’t change that.

Our club is richer. Stronger. More focussed.

Our playing pool is better. Our footballers can do it under pressure, when it counts. And when we lose we do not look for people to blame or point fingers … we learn. We learn lessons and go again.

We are no poorer today than we were yesterday.

We are no weaker today than we were yesterday.

We are no less powerful today than we were yesterday … and yesterday we were as strong as we’ve ever been.

Believe me, folks, we still are.