Celtic’s Critics Are Having A Field Day Today, But He Laughs Longest Who Laughs Last.

European football is an adventure. It is not the bread-and-butter stuff, although it lets us afford the jam. The bread-and-butter stuff is domestic football and that’s where we stand or fall.

I love that our critics are mining the stats pool today for as much negativity as they can get. They are welcome to. In the end, we’ll have the last laugh and you know what they say about that.

There are people who think the result is the only thing that matters, but as fans we’re not daft.

We know what we’re watching and we know that was a much-improved away performance last night, one that might have gotten us points on another day. The media knows that Feyenoord are a damned good side. They pipped the side which recently hammered our rivals to the title, their manager was the first choice at Spurs.

Today you’d think we’d lost to European minnows.

I am not going to fall into the trap the media has set for us here, in which we should be rending our garments and gnashing our teeth and considering the campaign a write-off and a disaster. They go through every one of our European performances and use them to judge the guy in the dugout right now. Is it fair game to use Rodgers’ previous record here against him?

Maybe it is, but his record was used against Ange Postecoglou as well, and the records of Ronny Deila and Neil Lennon were thrown in there for good measure.

That’s why I find al the stat quoting today to be absolutely abysmal. None of it means a thing except to remind us that no Celtic boss will be judged on his own merits; always the “overall” record will be thrown in their face. And whilst it is up to someone, at some point, to change that it is scandalous to throw it at Rodgers as though every single bit of that history is his fault.

There’s a guy at Celtic Park who bears far more of the responsibility; we know his name, and what position he holds. He has presided over a collapse in our co-efficient and European standing which is frankly shocking, and left us in a Hell of a place from which we must rebuild our credibility entirely. And the policy he imposes does not make that easy.

But in Scotland we are, without question, the ruling power, and those phenomenal accounts from the other day demonstrate that even if the trophy haul in the last decade isn’t enough for people. The reason they focus so much on our European form is that they have no means of challenging our supremacy here at home … and it’s here their hypocrisy is best expressed.

At home we get no credit for our momentous achievements, and the reason that some of these folk won’t give it to us is that we earn more and can spend more than other clubs.

Yet at the same time, they write as if we should be punching out sides who can outspend us sometimes by ten or twenty times. Their decision to focus on “50 games record” in the Champions League is pathetic. What if they compared the last 50 games Ross County have played against us and used that against their board and their players and their manager?

No, this is their game and I refuse to play in it.

This is why I try to keep a realistic sense about where we are in Europe, and what we need to do in order to improve. We could push the boat out a little further, but it would be better if we simply spent the money we do spend better, with a blend of experience and quality with youth and potential, and then reversals like last night would not be so regular or painful when they come.

In the meantime, we focus on the weekend because that’s the stuff, that’s where the trophies are and where the access to these tournaments and their big money will be decided. And it just so happens it’s where we’ve got a four point lead over our biggest rivals … and where we can extend that to seven because for once we kick off first.

It’s easy to see what they’re up to. What a joke … but the last laugh will be ours.