Fear & Loathing In Paisley: The boos ring out as their hopes come crashing down.

On the 23rd of this month—just four days ago—Keith Jackson “officially” declared the title race back on. Amazing how little time it took for that prediction to unravel. By the time the full-time whistle blew in Paisley yesterday, everyone with even the slightest connection to Scottish football knew the title race was as good as done.

For weeks, Ibrox fans have been gripped by an orgy of self-delusion. A result against Spurs, taking us to penalties in the League Cup final, and a league-winning run of just four games—that’s all it took. Four games! Yet these people convinced themselves the title challenge was alive and well. They were waiting for us at Ibrox to cut the gap to six points. And then came yesterday, and it was all over.

Standing on that touchline at the end, watching as everything came crashing down, Philippe Clement must have felt like he’d stepped into a parallel universe. Welcome to our world, Philippe. Many of us felt like that after the cup final, wondering if we’d imagined the result given the media frenzy that followed. Some of us even had to double-check we’d won that game.

The reaction from the remaining fans was as predictable as ever. The sound of booing echoed around the ground, a soundtrack that has become the norm this season. For us, those boos were music to our ears. For Clement and his board, they were the sound of doom—fear and loathing manifest in one, very loud, message.

Over the past fortnight, many of us have been astonished by the things we’ve read. Their fans took such bizarre satisfaction, pride, and hope from being the losers in the cup final. It helped, of course, that they convinced themselves the defeat had nothing to do with them—not a result of a poor performance or a poor team—but of conspiracies and external forces.

When you lock yourself into that kind of thinking, you stop looking for the real source of your problems. And if you’re not looking for the real problems, you’ll never find real solutions. As far as I’m concerned, the longer they chase up these blind alleys, the better.

For those among them capable of cold-blooded and rational analysis (and let’s be honest, there aren’t many), the past few weeks should have confirmed their deepest fears. Fear is a very appropriate emotion for a supporter of that club right now.

If I were one of them, I’d be deeply concerned about giving my allegiance to a team whose board of directors clearly thinks I’m a fool. That realisation will have dawned on some of them. They know—some of them, anyway—what “statement o’clock” is all about and what all that foot-stamping actually achieves: absolutely nothing. It’s just a distraction, an attempt to divert attention from the reality.

And the reality is simple. We won the cup. They were left on the loser’s podium. Again.

Those who do realise what’s going on understand that the tantrums and targeted fury are just about finding another outlet for fan anger. The board recognises that, for the vast majority of their fanbase, that’s enough. It always has been. “Give them a hard-luck story. Give them proof that we’re not bad but that we’re being actively conspired against. This is why we can’t catch a break.”

It infantilises their supporters. It treats them like children who must be pacified, coddled, and, above all else, kept from the reality of the situation. Those fans who do realise that their club is in a perilous state have every reason to be concerned. The new chairman and chief executive, despite being in the door just five minutes, are already resorting to the same old tactics from the same tattered playbook.

Those fans must wonder: do these people have any new answers at all? Do they have any original thoughts? Do they have genuine plans? A glance at who brought them in suggests the answer might be no. The chairman himself, whatever merits he might possess, wasn’t even the first choice. The first choice got away, which is a troubling truth to confront.

Even more of their fans must be questioning the man in the dugout after hearing him admit he didn’t see the result against St Mirren coming. That’s alarming because plenty of people did see it coming—most of us included. We might not have predicted that St Mirren would win, but it wasn’t outside the realms of possibility. It didn’t take a great leap of imagination.

St Mirren’s boss, Stephen Robinson, clearly saw it coming. After the game, he explained exactly how they approached it. He knew their full-backs would push too high up the pitch and that the long ball might exploit that. He recognised weaknesses in their central defence and midfield—vulnerabilities that fast, aggressive players could punish.

When I watched Robinson make substitutions shortly after the Ibrox boss made his, I thought, “Well, one of these guys knows what he’s doing anyway.”

Ibrox fan fears about Clement are too numerous to list. And yet, over the past fortnight, they convinced themselves he deserved more time and trust. They amazingly made themselves believes that he could take them forward.

So, what happens to all the talk of recovery now?

It evaporated yesterday, at just the moment all that booing started up.

There’s fear in the boardroom too. The new chairman and CEO have already pandered to the craziest elements of their fanbase. They’ve kept in post a manager everyone must know is a busted flush, and they might even give him money to spend in January if they can scrape together a transfer fund.

But here’s the real fear those directors live with: can they build something, anything, resembling a club capable of sustaining a challenge? That’s the key. It’s not about winning a title one year or grabbing a handful of trophies. A challenge that is sustained over a long period, something that truly shakes Celtic and puts us on the back-foot; that’s what these supporters want. And expect.

And the harsh truth for them is that nobody at that club seems to know how to do it, and I suspect many of them fear that it can’t be done at all.

And then there’s the loathing. We’ve always known about their loathing—it defines them. They loathe Scottish football. They loathe a media that coddles and flatters them. They loathe rivals who’ve got their number. But most of all, they loathe Celtic, the Big Bad in their world.

This season, though, there’s a new kind of loathing: a growing loathing that their fans feel for their own club. Nothing in football is more terrible than knowing your supporters are starting to hate you—not just individual players or a manager, but the entire club. Every reminder of past greatness only highlights how small they’ve become.

Those of us in Celtic cyberspace who’ve lamented the media attitude over the last fortnight know one thing: the final broke them. They turned their loathing outward briefly—towards governing bodies and certain officials. But that loathing is waiting to flood back towards its original target: their own club.

Yesterday it rung around that small stadium in Paisley. Soon enough, it will ring around an Ibrox full house. Their directors should fear that above all else.

The past fortnight has been all about the loathing. After Sunday, the next seven days will be all about that fear. Everyone at Ibrox, be afraid.