Yeah Celtic Is A Mess RIght Now. To Fix It We Need To Acknowledge It.

Let’s keep it simple, let’s not get into the big debate tonight, although let’s acknowledge a few obvious facts. The first of which is this; we’re now in a lot of trouble. The Ibrox side is not just very much in this race now but they are in control of it. It’s now in their hands, with us having turned our seven point lead over completely. If they win their games in hand they’re top, that’s where this currently stands and that’s the position we’re currently in.

Blame? Take your pick. The manager. The board. The players. The fans. There’s enough of it to go around, and all of it has contributed.

We have a supporter group at war with the board when all they’re being asked to do is behave like everyone else. We have players who look like they’ve chucked it, actually chucked it entirely. We have a board which took responsibility for the transfer policy away from the manager and squandered the summer … and we have the manager who has allowed that. This is the perfect storm. This is why we’re here. But now we face the question;

How in God’s name do we get out of this mess?

Oh I will fill pages, and run this into many thousands of words, as we go ever every single one of these factors over the next few days. The week ahead of us is empty; tomorrow we’ll probably watch our rivals claim the first domestic trophy. In midweek they’ll cut our lead to just two points and they’ll still have a game in hand.

So we can devote this week to feeling pissed off or we can spend it constructively and trying to work out what we need to do, as supporters, going forward. Don’t ever think we don’t matter, we do and that’s a fact. Even directing the blame where it belongs can be constructive and there will be plenty of that to go around in the next seven days.

It is important to stress than nothing has been lost today which cannot be won back. A football season is a marathon not a sprint, but let’s not lie about this; we look terrible and false bravado is not called for and false hope does us no good whatsoever.

When a league title race shifts as dramatically as this momentum shifts from one team to the other and right now it is with them; if they keep on motoring we’ve got to do everything right just to keep up. February is already causing me sleepless nights; the title race could be over by the time it ends if we go into it under strength, especially considering how bad we are at the moment.

I’m holding back here, obviously. If I write what I’m thinking tonight, all of it, if I let it all pour out, my anger is going to erase any opportunity to properly explore these issues at another time, and this moment requires cool heads and not knee jerk reactions.

But yeah, we’re in a bad place tonight and a lot of trouble and you can feel this whole campaign starting to unravel around us. There are reasons for it, and we have the good fortune of being headed for a month where we could, in theory, confront some of these problems and emerge from the end of it with more focus and a clearer path … but I have to be honest with you, folks, I don’t have a good feeling about it at this moment in time.

Tonight I’ve got nothing good to say, not one thing. I have nothing positive to offer, not one word. I have no praise for a single person who was involved in that today except for those who sat until the end in the stands and tried to give the team some encouragement … we are still the best thing about Celtic, and I say that at the end of the ugliest atmosphere I’ve sat in for a long time, and I cannot blame a single person who gave vent to their feelings.

Those us of who were there today can take comfort from two things; we aren’t responsible for the multi-layered shambles this club has somehow gotten itself into and we are heading into a window where we can radically change our situation. Nothing has been lost here today that cannot be won back. It’s shocking that we’re even talking like that, but this is where we are.