Celtic Must Aim To Win This Title In Style, And Deny Ibrox An End Of Season Fig-Leaf.

Earlier, I wrote a lengthy piece about the staggering re-evaluation some in the media are facing if Celtic wins this league title. But I knew I had forgotten to add something, and in fact it was a significant enough miss that I thought it merited a separate piece. We need to win this title in style. We do not want to give the media a single shred of hope to cling to.

I know exactly what the media is going to say if we don’t win all five games but we still come out on top here, and it’s the bell they will be ringing all through the summer; they will say that this is two bad teams and the winner is the one that has managed to scrape its way across the finish line.

That’s the narrative they will spin, but with one twist; that Rodgers will face “a different animal” next season when Clement has his own players. They will choose not to acknowledge that Rodgers will be more formidable when he has his.

We should seek to deny them even that fig-leaf to cover their embarrassment. If we finish this season strong, as strong as we’ve looked all season, they will have no choice but to acknowledge that over the course we’ve earned it and proved we’re the best in the country. If we contrive to make this harder than it has to be they’ll simply claim that nobody won it, that it was thrown away and that only at the end someone managed to scramble across the finish line.

And look, yeah, history won’t care. Their pathetic rationalisations won’t ultimately matter, but I’m going to be honest with you; I can do without a summer of their nonsense. I can do without another close-season like the last one, where it was all full of the media drooling with anticipation of what The Mooch and his newly assembled super-side would do.

If we are champions, we will be entitled to a Hell of a lot more respect than that. We’ve had to put up with a ton of garbage over the course of this season and our players have been playing under dark clouds under unfriendly skies for the whole of it.

So, I think it is crucial that we don’t just win it but win it well. We don’t need five wins out of five; if we win the next three, we’re champions because we certainly won’t lose the last two.

But the fact is, if we do beat them at Celtic Park we can win this title with three wins, a loss and a draw … but we’re better than that, we’re a better team than that, and Rodgers is a better manager than that. We should be looking to demonstrate that fact clearly in what is left of this campaign.

It is five wins out of five and two out of two in the cup, to win the double, that will erase their last shred of hope and send them into the summer despondent. We will need to be at our very, very best to do it … but this is what Rodgers has traditionally done.

And I have not the least doubt that this team is good enough to get us there. The final push starts tomorrow. Get us to the final, Celtic, and then five wins out of five in the league to send us to Hampden with the swagger not just of champions but deserved, undisputed champions. We will deserve it. We will have earned it.