Ibrox Crashes Out Of Europe, So The Media Makes It A Negative Story About Celtic.

“The future’s not set …” the saying goes. “There is no fate but what we make for ourselves.” Who out there remembers the quote and where it comes from? I retain all this stuff; I have one of those brains which just soaks up this kind of thing and files it away in a box for another time. I always liked that one, and I do believe it of course.

Nothing in our lives is mapped out for us, and it’s because of these things that I cannot say, with any surety, what I will be doing, or where I’ll be doing it, or who I’ll be doing it with when Celtic win next season’s SPFL title race and certain Peepul are back in their wee box.

Yet I feel sure that I will not be spending that night worrying about the co-efficient and how we might have to play in a Champions League qualifier. That much I’m pretty certain about. I use the words “pretty certain”: I can’t say definitely.

I could be sleeping in bed that night and sit up suddenly, wide awake, screaming about the co-efficient like someone who has realised he went “for a lie down” hours ago and left a half-eaten takeaway in the oven. (I wish I wasn’t speaking from experience.)

But I have a feeling I’ll have slightly happier thoughts in my mind.

It’s funny, then, that last night and this morning much of the Scottish sporting press has chosen to focus not on what last night’s European exit means for Ibrox and how it dents their confidence further in the wake of the Motherwell defeat (two losses at home in a row; tut tut) but about how bad that result might be for Celtic if we do win next year’s title.

Read that again; last night’s result could be a disaster for Celtic if we win next year’s championship. Don’t peer into the coffee mug or the tea … nobody has drugged you; you are not hallucinating. The papers actually are running variations of that story today.

You could not even make up something as absurd as that, but absurd is what our media does best. It’s what our media thrives upon. Football Scotland has Celtic “in a sweat” over the result last night. I didn’t know laughing could make you sweat, because I’m sure that’s what most people of a Celtic persuasion were doing last night as that unfolded.

“(Ibrox) Europa League loss a coefficient blow as Celtic sweat over UCL spot” is their unintentionally hilarious headline. The Daily Record itself went for the following; “Celtic see Champions League shot hang by a thread as Scotland need mammoth coefficient favour after (Ibrox) defeat.”

Tell me this, if we’d blown the home leg of a European tie after getting a 2-2 draw away from home, on a night when we mustered barely an attack worth talking about or troubled the opposition goalie not at all, would anyone in the media be talking about some hypothetical negative impact on Ibrox? To do this stuff the way they do it, day after day, takes some imagination. It also takes a brass neck that Donald Trump himself would be amazed by.

Last night was an amusing and entertaining evening, but far more amusing is watching people scramble in the aftermath. Suddenly, this Ibrox team is a mere “work in progress” and not one that was being talked about in the context of a quadruple. Their manager is “proud” of the strides they have taken, although they had the tie in the palm of their hand and only had to show up on the night to put away a Benfica side creaking more than Di Maria’s knees.

Celtic wouldn’t even be allowed the hard luck story far less this “it was a victory which only looks like a defeat at the moment” garbage; no, our narrative would be about how we’d blown it and they’d be sifting through every negative record they could find. This is the way they work, the way they operate and always have. And especially this season.

This time next year, when we’re on the brink of a title and in a far better place than we are right now, I may, if I remember to, spare a thought for the hacks who were reduced to pushing this shabby little line last night and this morning, and I will raise a glass to all them.

I’ll be saying “GIRFUY” mind you, but you probably guessed that already.