Celtic Is Now “Going For 55” As Some Dark Truths Finally Start Dawning Over At Ibrox.

Of all the miscalculations in the history of the world, the one Adolf Hitler made when he decided to invade the Soviet Union was perhaps the greatest. He had not the slightest doubt that the invasion would succeed. He famously told one of his generals that “We have only to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down.”

That’s the first comparison that always comes to mind for me when I think of Dave King’s own prophesy of May 2018, when he said that it would only take the club at Ibrox winning a title and the whole of Celtic would collapse. “We only need one league. We don’t need two or three. We need one. Once we take one away, it’s a pack of cards,” he said.

In 2021, they won their solitary title. Celtic did not collapse. Celtic simply rebuilt.

King’s rationale for this mad prediction, that our cost structure was too high, that we couldn’t cope without Champions League football, that fans would not want to renew season tickets if there was no longer ten in a row to chase, was proved to be as daft as his constant battles with the courts. King was never the sharpest tool in the box but even by his standards that one has not aged well. Which is precisely why we love to highlight it.

The truth, then and now, was much simpler; it was King himself whose club was way out on the limb. In order to catch us they spend more than they should. They never stopped, even after his departure where he was able to goad the club into the ever-evolving insanity which now has them with the largest wage bill in the country. Their earnings are up, but if they post a profit in relation to this campaign, I’ll eat my Celtic title winner’s t-shirt.

Every year they make a loss without a title to show for it – that’s twelve out of the last 13 years in which an Ibrox club has done so – the water around them gets a little deeper. Celtic has won the title for the third year on the bounce whilst operating at a surplus; that’s incredible to consider, and should scare them to death over there.

It means that our success is sustainable. It proves King’s prediction of 2018 to have been no more based in reality than Hitler’s view of the Soviet Union was. He based his prediction not so much on an incomplete understanding of Celtic position and strength, but on a fantasist’s delusion. Dave King saw what he wanted to see. Fans of his club saw only what they wanted to see, and especially when they won that title. They’ve been waiting for our collapse since.

The strength of Celtic must be terrifying to behold for those of them who do look at this rationally. What must they think of the other fans who thought that their club was on the verge of a generation of dominance when they won the Covid title?

As Matthew Marr and I have already explored, there was no actual evidence to suggest that this was in the offing; in fact, everything pointed to that title being a one-off and so it has proved to be. Even if we don’t win the Scottish Cup, we’ll have won six out of the nine trophies that have been competed for since, including all three of the titles.

We’re now “going for 55” and beyond that we’ll overtake the Lie in terms of titles won. Their “most successful club” claim is already in our sights; we can equal their alleged record by winning the Scottish Cup, and then it’s all in front of us to grab in the next campaign.

How long can they sustain their club at the current level?

The easy answer is that they can’t. You cannot indefinitely keep posting losses. At some point whoever is paying the bills will simply stop doing it. Yet if you take a look at their forums today they are filled with demands – yes demands – that their board ramp up the spending to ridiculous new levels. That UEFA will come down hard on them if they do hasn’t dawned on them. That their directors simply cannot do it hasn’t dawned on them either.

Celtic could continue to win the SPFL title far, far into the future. Their club will have the second biggest wage bill come what may; they are certainly large enough to support that if it is done at a sensible level. Because they have the second biggest wage bill they will win occasional trophies; it only takes for us to have one bad afternoon and we crash out of a competition. That’s what happened at the start of this campaign at the ground where we won so emphatically last night.

But their fans do not buy season tickets to win the occasional League Cup. They expect titles, and especially those of them who drank the Dave King Kool Aid and cannot bring themselves to accept that he was wrong. Instead, they believe that there was something their club could have done and which they failed to do … and that might be the maddest delusion of all, and whether King realises it or not, he has put them in that dire position.

If their fans turn against the board, what happens next over there? The Peepul are not going to be receptive to any suggestion that they cut their cloth to suit and that they try to do things better, instead of trying to solve the problem by throwing money at it, which an entire generation of their supporters still believes is the answer to everything, instead of learning from what happened to Rangers when they were unable to break that habit.

Yet, that’s where the biggest problem these people have still lies.

They still prefer to delude themselves about the fate of the first Ibrox club.

As I said in a previous piece, it is one thing to ignore the lessons of history.

It is another thing entirely to base your understanding of history on a false prospectus.

How are you supposed to learn from that? How are you supposed to make progress from a shoddy foundation? To know what Sevco is, you need to understand what Rangers was, and they don’t.

Too many of them still don’t get this; Rangers never was a super club.

For almost all of Murray’s time there, they were spending money they did not have.

Their “glory years” were built on accumulating debt, and on the largesse of a bank which itself later went bust. Without that steady flow of Other People’s Money there never would have been a nine-in-a-row over there, or the big name signings or the hubris they can’t seem to shake.

Without that money, they would already be behind us in the trophy count. That there would also still be a club called Rangers playing at that ground is of no consequence to those of them who cling to the Survival and Victim Lies like a comfort blanket.

Celtic has been the bigger club since Fergus finished the stadium.

The Ibrox age of unreality, when they were able to present themselves as a European giant, is already in the past. What they are steadily having to come to terms with is that Sevco is Rangers without the sugar-daddy owner or the bank writing the cheques.

Much worse, from their point of view, is that Celtic is stronger and richer than ever.

We are, in many ways, the club Murray always wanted them to be. Five trebles in seven years … that was something that he never managed, even in his pomp, even at the height of his alleged strength. It should be obvious to those who can be objective how overmatched they are.

The way we destroyed Kilmarnock last night wasn’t just about putting this league title to bed; that was a warning for next season.

A Brendan Rodgers Celtic side, with his own players, with his vision driving it, will be much more powerful than the one that finishes this campaign, and the one that finishes this campaign has left them flailing in the dust in spite of a slow start, in spite of stuttering form, in spite of some self-inflicted wounds.

We’re not the ones who are a good kick away from crashing down.

Over the next 12 months, Celtic should be going all out to deliver that shattering blow.

Once we take away their “most successful club” claim they’ll be the ones struggling just to hang on.

We know what we’re made of.

We’re going to find out just what the House of Sevco is built on.

I suspect that their supporters are not going to enjoy that.