Of The Pundits So Far Just One Has Actually Tipped Celtic To Finish Second.

I always love the pundit predictions at this time of year.

Many of them so obviously indulge in wishful thinking. This year, with Rodgers at the helm at Parkhead at the head of a treble winning team, there is a little bit more realism in the air.

Two organisations – The Herald/Evening Times and the BBC – have released their pundit picks so far. Not surprisingly, almost every single professional pundit has tipped Celtic.

There is one hold-out; Chris Jack, who wouldn’t tip Celtic if every Ibrox player was taking the field with a missing limb.

That’s part for the course; his article on the ticket standoff was so bad it led me to write a piece proposing a “three strikes” policy for hacks who lie about our club. Yet even he’s not sure … he hedges with the word “could”.

The only other guy who is sort of holding out is professional idiot and former player Kenny Miller, who at least admits what Jack won’t; his heart wants to say the title will end up at Ibrox but he fears that it won’t. He doesn’t say that it will go to Celtic – he’s not quite willing to go that far – but he can’t say confidently that it is going to go to his favourites either.

Overall, we’re the favourites and we deserve to be.

Whatever the hacks might want to kid themselves about our squad being weaker because we’ve lost two players in it, we’ve retained the bulk of our firepower and some of our new boys look very promising. With the team at our disposal we’re going to win almost every week … and Rodgers, of course, is the Invincible boss who went through a full domestic campaign without losing.

They know Rodgers makes a huge difference to the overall picture.

They might want to sow seeds of disharmony, but that’s only because this guy scares the life out of them. The hacks, in the main, know what the rest of us do … he’s a winner and he has inherited a finely tuned winning machine.

That’s why most of them, when they’re being honest, can’t see past us.