Celtic Slipped Yesterday. Cue Days Of Over-Reaction From The Hacks.

If you spend long enough in this job, you get to recognise all the familiar patterns of behaviour. Scotland’s media landscape has evolved, but the media itself has not.

Oh, they’ve learned to use a lot of new toys and buzzwords but those who’ve been doing that gig for the past couple of decades have got dumber and lazier and ever more predictable.

I stayed off social media last night, partly because we had a party here for Halloween and partly because I just couldn’t bear to look at press coverage praising a negative, backs to the wall performance by the home team because they held out for the point they played for from the kick-off. I will read some of it today but I already know what it’ll say.

That our crisis is Ibrox’s opportunity.

As if one result had suddenly changed the dynamic of the campaign, or the trajectory of these two clubs. It hasn’t. Not one iota. We’ve come out of the tough run of away fixtures which I suspect was supposed to get our season off to a calamitous start with the Ibrox team on high gear and us struggling to find our feet.

Let’s keep one thing in mind; if Ibrox closes the gap later today it will not be because they’ve suddenly become brilliant.

It’ll be because we’ve stumbled. They didn’t just get stronger, or faster, or better. We’ve shown that our players aren’t automatons. They are human beings and human beings get tired and slow and make mistakes.

We’ve faced a gruelling schedule of late.

Now it’s their turn to feel what that’s like, and I suspect they will struggle to get a grip on it. Both teams play in midweek. We’re at home for once.

Unfortunately, we follow that up with yet another away game, but this run of them is almost at an end and then they head straight into their version.

We’ll see who is still standing at the end of it.

But because they have a chance to close the gap today a lot of our stupider hacks are already rubbing their hands with anticipation. I know what some of the dafter critics of our club are saying today, the professional Celtic haters whose reason for living is to wish us ill. With a new manager at Ibrox, they are convinced that our collapse is imminent. They will believe this is the first sign of it.

But this is what they do. This is what they’ve always done.

They believe in the fairytale, they convince themselves that it’s real.

Keevins, for one, believes that we are always one day from a crisis and that our fans are incapable of processing the idea that we might not win every week.

He’s not alone in holding that view.

Football fans aren’t daft, by and large, and the stereotype of us as mindless nutters is not lessened by those amongst our number who are … but that stereotype is exactly that, and its garbage. Football fans are smarter than they’re given credit for, and we’re more in control of emotions than some of these idiots seem to think.

I’m with Callum McGregor on this; the “doom and gloom” is not something we’ll fall into. He’s right to point out that we’re sitting on a decent lead in the league, and that we’ve come to all the toughest places and so there are no alarm bells ringing at Celtic Park although some people most definitely wish that there were.

“If you look at it over the course of the season you will probably drop points in one of these games which is fairly normal for the team,” he said.

Of course, it is. We lost at St Mirren, in a far less strong position than this last year and nobody panicked. Nobody panicked when we drew at home against St Johnstone earlier in the campaign.

“It is disappointing as you want to win every game, of course you do,” the captain said. “But it could be a good point come the end of the season.”

Depending on the results today, it could be a good point right now. But with Naismith virtually waving the white flag at his presser on Friday I don’t expect it. So, the lead will probably be cut.

That’s okay.

The thing about this Celtic team is that when they get on top they tend to stay there. Let those with delusions of grandeur indulge them for a time … a brief moment in the sun is all they get, and if they want to get carried away … well they’ve done that before and the abiding characteristic of this people is that they never, ever, ever seem to learn.