Rodgers Is Right. Celtic Is The Only Club The Media Won’t Allow To Win Ugly.

Celtic won yesterday. Of course we did. I was there, I saw it. But I feel the need to open with that statement nonetheless. We won a game days after circumstances beyond our control forced us to sell one of the key players from last year’s treble winning side. We won without our best centre back, and boy did that show. We won without our captain.

You tell me what other club in this country could have dug deep and found something the way we did yesterday. None of them could. And yet we’ve won the game by two clear goals and deserved to win by many more. We’re getting stick all across social media and in the press for not having played particularly well. But how much does that matter at this stage?

The days of trying to win every game by a hatful of goals is over. We’re in the trenches now, we’re in the wars, and the only thing that counts is to win. To win every game. To keep on winning until there are no more games left to play, no more points left on the board.

Back when The Mooch was at Ibrox, they weren’t even in a title race and they were getting praise from all corners of the media for an ability to “win ugly.”

It is, the media told us, a critical element of success and something all title winners have to be able to do. I agree. I’ve always said so, and at this point in a campaign all the more so. The Ibrox side is winning ugly. It’s winning with help from the officials as much as anything right now.

Yet they get credit when they do it. We are held to a different standard. A better one? I don’t think so. We get stick for stuff no other club does, we are put under pressure where no other club would be and in ways no other club would have to tolerate or accept.

We got to Hampden yesterday. They are still talking about us as if we’re in crisis. We lost last weekend. So did the Ibrox club. We still don’t get credit for beating them.

I am thoroughly pissed off with this season, and not just about the bad bits. We’ve not been allowed to enjoy the good bits either because there’s always been a swirl of nonsense in the background, and the manager is as acutely aware of this as anybody is.

“There’s probably not another team in the country that’s held up to winning and performing. Other teams will grind it out and get a result, we know we have to win and play well,” he said after the game yesterday. “We didn’t play well today, little patches were OK, but we won and we’re into the semi-final. That makes me very happy.”

At any other club just being in the semi-final would be considered good enough.

Had we scored six yesterday these people would have found something to criticise us for. Rodgers is a man who has just about had it with them. His every presser now involves him having a dig at the treatment he gets or we get. They treat him like contempt and he’s started reflecting it back at them.

And they deserve it a hell of a lot more than he does.