Celtic’s Critics Are Shellshocked By The Last Week. How Will They Cope If We Win This?

For many months now, the mood music in the newsrooms has been one of “Celtic in crisis.” We all know this to be true, no matter if they deny it, and many of them will try to. Some of the hacks are at their happiest when they can write about high times at Ibrox, and when they have a managerial pin-up to cheer on. They have well and truly indulged themselves of late.

Of course, the last week has taken care of that. For some of them, a hushed, awed, shocked silence has fallen. Others continue to make positive noises about the league still “being in our hands”, and still more of them are looking at Celtic’s fixture list and imagining where we might drop the points. They are stunned by what has befallen them in a short time.

Not one of them challenged the bizarre nonsense the Ibrox boss talked coming out of the 3-3 game at that ground, where we absolutely dominated them for much of the match. They listened politely and respectfully as he talked absolute garbage about a “moral victory” and ignored the fact that they had blown a chance to deal us a devastating blow.

But in point of fact, the writing was on the wall. The Motherwell victory at Ibrox had shattered the myth of them being invincible (a lie, as we had already beaten them under this manager). The warning signs had been clear in that game, and they were even clearer at Ibrox against Benfica where they barely troubled the Portuguese and went spinning out of Europe.

Remember what we all thought in the aftermath of that one? That team of theirs looks out on its feet. Half of them plodded around the pitch like holidaymakers walking along the beach-side boulevard. I thought they were in bother that night, which is why I wouldn’t have been terribly worried had they gone through and needed to play two more games.

The media chose to ignore that night and the abject performance. Most of them reverted to the same old tired argument about how it would leave them free to concentrate on “winning the treble.” There was a general sense of optimism that they would do just that. But anyone who watched them in that game, with an objective eye, knew they didn’t look right.

The Dundee postponement, which we all assumed would help them, has actually harmed them instead. Coming on the heels of the draw against us and the Ross County defeat they took the field looking bereft of confidence. Even if Celtic were to drop points now, I think in all probability they would too, and outside of the game against us on 11 May.

Some of the hacks are having a hard time grasping that. They are looking for where Celtic might fail without thinking through the implications of the Ibrox side dropping more points and making it irrelevant anyway, and that does look like a genuine possibility.

A key indicator will be Hearts on Sunday. The Edinburgh club must surely smell blood in the air. The Ibrox side looks weak and vulnerable.

This is the perfect time to get them. Those in the media who have spent these past few months talking Clement up probably fear this above everything else. The title race may be slipping away, but the dream of silverware can live on a while longer.

Much of course will depend on how their opponents decide to set themselves up. Naismith might be perfectly happy to toss them some scraps in the league from time to time, but he cannot countenance doing so in a cup competition with a place in the final up for grabs. If he isn’t putting them under severe pressure then he should be under it himself.

Some of our hacks are not remotely ready for a scenario where their favourite club, under the living legend Phillipe Clement, go out of the cup and still need to go to Celtic Park and win to have any chance in the title race. That will devastate them.

Whatever will they write about then? Rodgers being linked with a return to the Premiership probably, especially if he’s a double winning boss and makes it nine trophies out of ten as Celtic manager. There will certainly be an avalanche of pieces about Celtic losing their best players, but that’s par for the course in every year I’ve watched us.

People like Jackson will lose their minds if we secure a double. They will find a straw or two to clutch to, and we recognise this fact; we can even hazard a guess as to how the mantra will go. Clement doesn’t have his own players blah blah blah.

But the truth is, their fans will look at a boss who was briefly top of the league and blew it. Who couldn’t secure the Scottish Cup. Who has a League Cup, yes, but one when they were deep into the tournament and with no Celtic in it to provide the kind of challenge in the final which would have tested him when he took over the reigns. If that scenario plays out after he’s had three league games in which to beat us and hasn’t done it … then he’s in trouble.

And above all else, our friends in the press are in no way prepared for a scenario like that, a scenario where this guy starts the season on Death Watch. Not even Beale or Van Bronckhorst opened a campaign in that kind of trouble, and their heads will explode if they have to contemplate the possibility that he might not be the hero after all but just another pretender, just another in a long line of disappointments. Part of it will be that disappointment. Part of it will be the embarrassment of once again putting their faith in a false idol and being made look stupid.

This is only half the story too. Because aside from making Clement into the fairytale prince who was coming to their aid to take back the kingdom, they also painted Rodgers as a fading power, the man who had it and lost it and nothing will annihilate the cosy little fantasy they’ve locked themselves into than having to confront the totality of that mistake.

But if Rodgers ends this season a double winner, if he bests Clement in the league and then takes the Scottish Cup, whether it’s the Ibrox club in the final or not, he will have established his supremacy all over again. He will be the colossus who stands astride the whole of the Scottish game and some of these people will have to take a knee and kiss the ring.

I’m sure that he will be magnanimous about it all, but in some ways that will make it worse for those who have to cover any victory lap he takes. People like Keevins will offer their congratulations through gritted teeth. Those who have said he’s lost his edge will need to acknowledge how wrong they were. Those who confidently predicted his demise will need to accept their mistake and acknowledge it … and his authority with it.

Even without the Scottish Cup, they all know that the title is the glittering prize which promises access to the Promised Land of the Champions League, something that a Scottish club might not automatically secure for a long time to come. This is the title that matters above all others because that prize is so big and enticing … if we get that and Rodgers gets the backing that achievement deserves it’s not hard to see him leaving this Ibrox club for dead.

That’s their real fear, and that fear is now coursing through them and a lot of them don’t know what to do with it. So, they cling to hope. Good. Let them. It’s the hope that causes the greater pain. Nothing is worse than having hope only to see it snatched away.

The last two weeks have been a searing experience for people who thought that they only had to neatly dispatch us in front of a home crowd, win their games in hand and jog towards the finishing line. A lot of them still can’t believe this is happening to them, and whilst it’s not over yet they do feel the walls closing in.

I badly want this club of ours to finish the job. I badly want us to get this title won, because in so many, many ways it will be the sweetest one of the lot, and that’s because of them, because of the media which has worked so hard to surround our club with unrelenting negativity and talk of crisis, even when we were sitting at the top of the league earlier in the campaign.

On the day Rodgers holds that trophy, if it comes, and I’m sure it will, I will spare them a thought, just one, a little one, no more than a moment, and perhaps even acknowledge their part in it. Because when things were at their worst it was knowing we had to stick together if for no other reason than just to spite them and spit in their eye that helped to get us through.