Carter Vickers Latest Injury Is Symbolic Of The Perverse Strange Season Celtic Has Had.

I think every one of us felt the same yesterday when, just before kick-off, we got the news that Cameron Carter Vickers was not in the Celtic squad.

Not just not in the starting eleven, but not in the team at all.

We all knew at once it was an injury.

The feeling was not shock or anger or dismay. It was a complete numbness. A complete absence of surprise or fear. News like that has become the norm this season. News like this is no news at all. It’s just another day at the office, so to speak.

How the Hell has this happened? Injury ravaged seasons are not new; indeed, we’ve had them for the past three or four years. But why do they happen? What is it that we’re doing wrong in terms of our medical teams? Something isn’t right, that’s clear anyway.

Maybe we’re cursed. Doesn’t this whole season feel as if it’s cursed? And that feeling has been there right from the start, hasn’t it? It’s as if we just never got momentum, as if we just stalled somewhere and couldn’t really get things to move. Even when we were getting results something just seemed off. The mood has been subdued and strange.

Everyone I speak to agrees. Nobody I talk to about this stuff can put their finger on it, but all of us I think have felt the same way. The campaign is almost done.

Why does it feel like we never really got started?

Back when we were seven points clear, I heard all the same grumps and gripes I’m hearing right now, and the same heavy feeling was in the air that the club wasn’t quite functioning right. Part of it is the shadow of the chairman; his presence in the building was virtually assured to be divisive and his presence guaranteed to imbalance the club … but that’s not everything, and it’s not even the poor quality of the signings his son made.

This crazy season has had it all, and nearly all of it negative.

We’ve just lost Abada due to a conflict thousands of miles away. Who the Hell could have foreseen that? When Saudi Arabian clubs started spending obscene amounts of money on players, who could have suspected that we’d be one of the first sides plundered, or how that move would turn out?

We lost Carter Vickers for a long spell already. Hatate for two of them. Who knew that a club like Atletico Madrid would come in and unsettle player of the year certainty Matt O’Riley? Or that our club and the two most prominent fan groups in the stadium would have a full-on barney and that it would cast a shadow over the last few months of last year?

It’s easy for the critics and cynics to point the finger and say that a lot of our problems were, quite literally, Made At Celtic Park. Easy and lazy. And a cop-out as some of them have attacked this club day in day out since Rodgers came back and are at least in part responsible for surrounding us with this black cloud of negativity.

Too much of it has been self-inflicted. The summer was characterised by the ludicrous sight of the recruitment team completely ignoring the manager and going all scattershot on the signings; ten players were brought in.

Not one of them would be a first team regular in a fully fit squad. Indeed, one has already returned to the club we loaned him from and two have been sent out on loan.

We retain the services of Lagerbielke only in case of yet another deep injury crisis but none of us can conceive of circumstances where we see him start another game.

Amidst it all, then, we’ve also lost a head of recruitment.

Which just adds to the impression that we are a club wandering in an alien landscape this season, one where anything that can go wrong has gone wrong.

When you throw VAR issues and refereeing into the mix, I think most people will be glad when this campaign is over, whatever the outcome of it is.

That too is a strange place for us, as fans, to be. But that’s this season for you.