Today at the presser for the manager and the captain, the most obvious and stupid question was always going to be put out there, the question as to what people inside our club think of the “rebuild” at Ibrox. And the obvious answer followed it, and straight from the captain himself; nobody inside Celtic is in the least bit interested.
He said it was “irrelevant.” And just in case the media were in danger of missing the significance of that word, he repeated that word again, and again, just so they didn’t miss it. The message could not be any clearer if he’d written it on the wall.
“It’s pretty irrelevant,” he said. “Listen, we know that everybody will be trying to strengthen, every manager and every club will have sat down at the end of the season and tried to pick areas in their group where they can improve. We’re no different.”
I am particularly pleased that he emphasised that point, because to hear our hacks you would never know that we had brought in five players of our own with more to come. We must be the only team ever to add personnel to an already formidable squad and get accused of not having done enough. It’s pretty pathetic, but that’s our media for you.
Callum went on; “We understand that everybody is trying to beat us, so we have to try to stay ahead of the chasing pack. But it becomes irrelevant what everyone else does. If we come and we prepare ourselves to work as hard as we can every day – try to produce as good a level of football as we possibly can and show that hunger to win – then all of it is on us.” And then once more, just for added emphasis; “It becomes irrelevant what the rest are doing.”
This is how we won the last two titles. It’s why we won five from the last six. It’s why we’ve eleven of the last twelve titles with five trebles and a handful of doubles along the way. Because we focus on what’s going on in our own house, recognising that this is all about us, that we’re good enough not to have to be looking over the city in trepidation.
The focus at Celtic is extraordinary. The manager knows that as long as we’re looking after ourselves there is nothing – literally nothing – that anyone can do to stop us storming our way to another league title. This is the attitude that permeates the whole club.
Quite literally, that’s why we’re champions.