As the dust was settling on the match at Pittodrie on Wednesday night, the Ibrox fans in the media had their little moment to try and get them through to the weekend. Aberdeen had come to Celtic Park and managed a draw after being two goals down. And now, they had gone one better, as some of them saw it, and beaten the darlings of Govan.
“Is there anything this Aberdeen side can’t do?” they all asked, clinging to that hope with desperate fingers right through to yesterday.
Now, don’t get me wrong—I am pleased that Aberdeen have done so well thus far. It’s great to see another club in Scotland push themselves, and I genuinely hope they’ll maintain their good form against everyone else for as long as they can.
But at the end of the day, let’s be clear: we are going to win this title. They may push us here and there, but they won’t take it all the way.
And neither will the Ibrox club. The media’s last vestige of hope lay in Aberdeen pulling something off yesterday to show that Celtic might be vulnerable, that there might be a chink in the armour to exploit. But instead, they got a solid demonstration of our strength.
There’s a classic moment in Catch Me If You Can, the movie about the con man Frank Abagnale, where Frank’s father imparts a lesson that sticks with him his whole life. He talks about the New York Yankees and why they win so many games.
“Everyone gets dazzled by the pinstripes,” he says. People see the famous uniform, the historic name, the stadium, and they get overwhelmed before they’ve even started playing. It’s as much about the mystique as it is the skill on the field.
Once upon a time, Ibrox had that same mystique.
The blue jersey held that same power; opponents felt intimidated just by the sight of it. But that’s no longer the case. They might call themselves “Rangers,” but most people in Scottish football know it’s not the same club. This is a much lesser outfit, a shadow of the former power they once projected. And everyone in Scottish football can see that clear as day now.
The psychological trauma of that realisation for some people, especially those in the media, is nothing compared to the trauma we’re inflicting on them week after week, match after match, with every win we chalk up. We just yanked away their latest flicker of hope.
And we did so with utter efficiency, and savage ruthlessness.
It wasn’t just that we took care of Aberdeen yesterday. I think most of the hacks, no matter how much they wanted to believe otherwise, suspected we’d win. But nobody thought we’d do it so emphatically. Nobody expected that Aberdeen, the supposed “second-best side” in the country, would be subjected to such a drubbing. It’s not just the scoreline or the quality of the performance that matters here; it’s the psychological impact. And that impact is colossal.
The people most rattled by this result and that performance are those across Glasgow, who now face their own semi-final today. Many of their supporters are already wondering “What’s the point?” They know that if they make it to the final, they’re staring down the barrel of another hiding, with Celtic lying in wait.
Can you imagine the dread they felt watching that match yesterday, knowing that if they’re in the final, they could be walking straight into a similar massacre?
There are a lot of clubs in this country that come up against us and, to borrow the metaphor, are “afraid of the pinstripes”—in our case, represented by the green and white hoops. But this is the first Ibrox side I’ve ever seen that carries that same fear, and it’s deeply rooted. And nothing they witnessed yesterday will have made them sleep well last night or given them one ounce of comfort about the idea of facing us in a final.
In my years supporting Celtic, I’ve seen teams come to Celtic Park genuinely afraid of the place, of the jersey, of the fans. It hasn’t mattered who we’ve had on the pitch; the fear factor was there regardless. But I’ve never seen an Ibrox side so utterly spooked every time they step onto the field against us, not until now, and with good reason.
We know there are individual players in that side who are positively haunted by their opposite numbers. Look at Tavernier, for example. He must have nightmares about Daizen Maeda. We’ve all laughed and joked about it, but there’s a hard truth there.
He lives in perpetual dread of facing our Japanese dynamo.
And it’s not just him. There are other players in that team who are psychologically scarred by these matches, by the defeats and the humiliation they’ve endured.
They come onto the field with the doubts etched into their souls, not believing they really stand a chance, and you can see that despair play out in the way they approach these games. Many of them would have dared to watch that match yesterday, and wished they hadn’t. They saw a team that is capable of dismantling them without mercy. They don’t believe in their own abilities, they don’t trust the players around them, and they certainly don’t believe in their manager.
This Celtic side is forging a psychological dominance that might be a more potent weapon than the team we have on the pitch. Think about that.
At some point, a team that can do that to even its closest challenger becomes an awe-inspiring Force which teams feel is unsurmountable. We’ve become a side that doesn’t just beat teams but leaves them demoralised and shattered.
And for the club from Ibrox and their media cheerleaders, the reality is dawning that they’re chasing shadows they can’t catch. This team has seen off every pretender so far, and nothing in yesterday’s match suggested that will change any time soon.
For them and for their media allies, and for anyone else clinging to the idea that we might stumble, those 90 minutes yesterday were pure nightmare fuel.
They might make it to the final this afternoon. They might do their job and book their place, but I promise you, they will not be looking forward to it if they do.