Celebrating Taking The Odd Point From Celtic Is Why Some Other Clubs Are Nowhere.

About a fortnight after getting an inbox of abuse from Hearts fans for pointing out the obvious – that their club is taking the piss out of them – yesterday’s inbox was filled with abuse from the Hibs fans.

Which is slightly more annoying in some ways as I have a lot of time for Hibs, a point I’ve made on this blog several times before.

The one match report – or match reaction if you like – in the history of this blog that wasn’t about Celtic (or Scotland, I’ll grant you that) was about their Scottish Cup triumph at Hampden over the Ibrox club.

It wasn’t just the opponent; I was genuinely glad for them and for all the Hibs fans that I know throughout Scotland and who I consider friends.

In fact, my article on the game professes my frustration at watching a team that used to be known for playing really good football, reduced to one playing for a point at home. I was genuinely pissed off by that and I’d have written the same piece had we won.

I would say to those Hibs fans yesterday and today exactly what I said to their Edinburgh cousins; don’t shoot the messenger.

The problem isn’t with the people pointing out what’s wrong at your club, it’s with the people inside your own house who can’t give the club a coherent vision or put it on the right road. At the time of my writing this Hibs are eighth.

If you’re a Hibs fan you’ve got far more to worry about than what some Celtic blogger is writing about you.

Neither Hearts nor Hibs is up to much really.

Today, Aberdeen lost 2-0 to Kilmarnock.

The three biggest clubs outside Glasgow are on the bones of their arses, none of them capable of sustaining any sort of challenge at all.

And please, don’t give me all the nonsense about how “competing” with the Glasgow sides is impossible because of the money.

Nobody is suggesting otherwise.

Over the course of a campaign, ourselves and the lot across town, as bad as they are, will have enough to finish first and second more years than not.

But don’t tell me a challenge is impossible either because I don’t believe that’s true and so when I see these clubs make mistakes it concerns me.

Too many people presume that Celtic fans are, by and large, content to just turn up and beat teams. But it’s garbage.

We want games to mean more than just three points.

When we go to Hibs or Aberdeen or Hearts and win, we want that to be about denting a challenger’s title tilt and you’re a fool if you don’t believe that.

I’ve been longing for a team to emerge as a genuine threat from outside Glasgow for years … why wouldn’t I?

That makes us better. That makes us stronger for when we play in Europe. That elevates the standing of the game.

It makes the league more attractive. It makes it easier to bring money into the domestic football environment and all that does is help us.

That’s what stops clubs from operating on the basis that winning is an entitlement – as they do at Ibrox. It stops clubs from believing they can fill the squad with projects and coast – that complacency is a continuing problem at Celtic.

The problems at Hibs, Hearts and Aberdeen are easy to diagnose. Lower case ambition pretty much sums it up, and it’s not just those clubs.

My old man was coming out of Kilmarnock after they beat us in the cup and spoke to a couple of fans for whom simply knocking us out was the highlight of their season. They didn’t expect to win the cup and didn’t care.

That, right there, is what I’m talking about.

A single result against a team from Glasgow should not be regarded as your major triumph in a campaign. If that’s the attitude in the stands why should the clubs themselves care about serving up mediocrity?

Some of the stuff in my inbox is so ridiculous, and refers to us being unable to take a bad result. Absolute nonsense.

Hey, I fully expect us to be crowned champions this year by a double-digit margin and I suspect we’ll add the Scottish Cup to the league.

When that day comes no Celtic fan will be any more concerned about that result than I care about losing to St Mirren in the league last season, whereas a club sitting in eighth right now could well see a single point at home, on a day when some of our players started the game leggy and were out on their feet by the end, as a minor disaster.

Today that second rate Hearts team couldn’t even hang on at Ibrox with a 1-0 lead and two minutes to go.

Sure, the Brotherhood did its bit for them in making sure the home side was awarded not one penalty but two of them in the match, but Hearts concession of the second almost as soon as they lost the equaliser is exactly what you expect from a team with a managerial novice at the helm and who doesn’t even take 30 seconds after the re-start to reorganise his team.

That’s the first thing that these sides need to learn; rookie managers are for mugs. We tried it with Lennon and I am still aghast that we did.

Every club in Scotland which has experimented with it, bar the one with the greatest resources, has paid a high price for it and we didn’t exactly dodge the bullet. Aberdeen and Hearts are paying that bill right now. Hibs have paid it in the past and although their managerial choice was quite adventurous it was also crazy.

Here’s the thing; the team which emerges as a genuine challenger does not have to beat us and the club across town regularly.

But they cannot see it as their whole reason for living.

Instead, those results when and if they come should be regarded as validation that the run of form against everyone else isn’t just a fluke but part of a pattern.

In short, the challenger will only emerge when they can beat the teams around them on a regular basis, regular enough that the league table doesn’t have us fifteen points ahead of that hapless Hearts team which surrendered a lead at Ibrox today after only ten games.

What does that side want to be?

What do Hibs want to be?

Aberdeen, sitting in tenth with Hibs only two spaces above them?

Their fans can come on here and moan at me or they can demand better from their own clubs.

Naismith’s team has eleven points out of a possible thirty; at a club which took itself seriously as the “third force” that should be a sacking offence.

So should Robson’s nine points in nine games at Aberdeen.

Hibs have ten in ten, one less than Hearts.

And yet yesterday they considered that single point like it was a big, big event, and their fans came on to have a go at me over my article on it.

Save your anger and direct it where it belongs. You are the ones who have to live with the mediocrity, not me. Celtic fans, watching teams put eleven men behind the ball every week, only have to endure the occasional frustration.

So either grow some balls and confront the issues in your own house, or accept being also-rans forever. I personally don’t want a league full of teams like that.

For obvious reasons, I hoped Hearts would get their point today although they scarcely deserved it for the tactic of putting every man behind the ball for most of the game … but there are other reasons which have to do with wanting somebody, anybody, to emerge as a threat, a team which believes it can go to Celtic Park and Ibrox and win and which doesn’t, at home, play for a point.

And the wait goes on.