As The Title Race With Celtic Hots Up, Ex Ibrox Players Resort To Comforting Lies.

Have you noticed the number of ex-Ibrox players in the media lately who are pushing a brand-new line? That there is as much, if not more, pressure on Celtic than on them, because our players might not have the mentality of champions?

Is it just me who thinks that some of them need to take a look at last season’s league table, and the one before that, and the composition of the Celtic squad at the moment and how many of its regular starters for those two campaigns are regular starters now?

Hell, this is one of the things we’ve been complaining about most vocally … that there are none of the new signings blazing a trail and holding down permanent positions when our veterans are all fit.

This is the pressure time. These are the months when the title race starts to really hot up. I know why they have resorted to comforting lies like this. It is a hell of a lot easier living them with them than with the uncomfortable facts which form the alternative.

A lot of the players in our squad were blooded, literally, in the first Ange Postecoglou campaign. We didn’t lead that title race until February, so the idea that these players have never had to cope with a tight race at this stage of the season, or with the pressure that goes with it is just doesn’t stand up to even the flimsiest examination.

Yet this idea is being promoted as though it were a fact.

It’s not the only way in which the mentality of this team of ours has been questioned during this title race. But the mentality of this team isn’t why we’ve dropped so many points; too many of our players took too long to adapt to Rodgers’ style of play.

When this team has had to dig deep and fight like lions they have performed more than not … we went to Ibrox earlier in the campaign under immense pressure, and with a crippling injury list, and won.

You can question whether the manager has his tactics right.

You can question whether some of the players who have had to fill in for us have been up to snuff.

You can question whether some heads have been turned (O’Riley claims his hasn’t, that’s good to know) and a bunch of other stuff as you like … but the mentality of this side is not in doubt for me.

It’s a product of wishful thinking across town more than anything else, as so is the other one, which is that this is not a squad of winners. Almost every player in this side has won things; the combined medal haul for our squad would eclipse those of every other player at every other club in this country added up together.

The more of this stuff you see and read the clearer it becomes who really feels the pressure here. Most Celtic fans who I speak to regularly are pretty relaxed at the moment; we know that if Rodgers has finally got his ideas across that we’ve got a right good chance here.

We know that we can’t afford slips, but neither can they … and so we really are eyeball to eyeball.

And you know what? I don’t think we’ll be the ones to blink. Too many players in this team have been over the course before, whatever their media stooges are trying to tell us.