Even The Hacks Are Forced To Admit That Celtic Just Might Be Back In This Race.

When I saw, this morning, that Jackson had put up a piece on our game last night, I read it with the usual cynicism with which it is wise to approach everything that guy writes. But he was giving us credit, mostly because he had to. When a team is six up at half time and finishes the game with seven goals, all from different scorers, that can’t be ignored.

Few in the press corps wants to come right out and say it, but the stupidity of writing off a Celtic team which had a dozen games left to turn a two point deficit is now becoming clear to some of them. They know if we’ve hit form, we’ve got a right good chance of retaining our title, in spite of the love they are all gushing over the Ibrox boss and his side.

A lot of us thought, in the aftermath of the Motherwell game, that maybe this was the corner being turned. Last night has further strengthened that view. The Ibrox club is getting the big wet sloppy kiss right now, but that will change if we keep on winning.

Now the hacks have to at least entertain the possibility that this is going to be a race after all, and that Celtic may just win it, and so they have to cover us with the requisite respect, which is what Jackson did today. The usual caveats are all there, of course; we have to beat Hearts, and even that won’t “prove” anything until we’ve been to Ibrox … funny how nobody said that before they came to Celtic Park and lost and nobody wants to mention that since.

Still, it is good, it is amusing, to see them jump through the hoops a little bit. They know that if we continue to play like last night that we’re going to do it, and having spent the whole season attacking us relentlessly that they’ve pushed the fans and the team together in a way it might not have otherwise been during our sticky spell.

Of course, it may not matter. We might still slip and thus hand this title over to Ibrox. But if the corner has been turned right, and we go to Tynecastle and win, and especially if we win well, nobody, not even the likes of Keevins, will be able to deny it any longer.

And some of them are going to look properly stupid if we do turn this around and win this. But they are stupid, and we’ve long known it. To rub their faces in it though … that would be special.