Matthew Lindsay’s latest piece on the Celtic fans is quite simply bonkers.

I’ve already spoken a couple of times about some of Philippe Clement’s comments yesterday, but another one caught my attention when I read Matthew Lindsay’s dreadful piece in The Herald this morning.

Clement claimed his side would not fall back on “past glories.” I couldn’t help but laugh—sometimes, the jokes really do write themselves.

Past glories? One league title. One League Cup. One Scottish Cup in 12 years. That phrase is a punchline all on its own.

But to be fair, Lindsay’s entire article felt like a punchline. It read like the kind of piece a blog might reject for being naff and, frankly, daft. An article about “bragging rights” as if that’s something unique to these two clubs, filled with bizarre, nonsensical assertions. I’d love to do a line-by-line critique, but I just don’t have the energy—not when I’m mentally gearing up for tomorrow.

The number of ways it fell short of intelligent discourse is staggering. For example, Lindsay suggested that Celtic fans might soon be singing Simply the Second Best to the Ibrox supporters. Firstly, that wouldn’t even be new. Secondly, he assumes Celtic fans ever saw Simply the Best as uniquely theirs in the first place.

Let’s face it—the idea that they were ever “simply the best” is absurd. The best rendition of that song was at Ibrox and it came from Celtic fans during Martin O’Neill’s treble-winning season. That was the day we went there, won 3–0, and left them shell-shocked. The game started with the usual Ibrox fanfare, but we’d already won the League Cup, secured the league title, and were on course for the Scottish Cup.

When their fans half-heartedly started it our 7,000 travelling supporters took it up instead. And then, something incredible happened: they stopped singing, and we finished the song. I was there that day, and it’s one of my favourite memories as a Celtic fan. That, and the performances of Lubo Morav?ík and Henrik Larsson, who got his 50th goal of a phenomenal season.

The song itself is a ridiculous point for Lindsay to hang his article on. But even more ludicrous is his suggestion that the Ibrox club will continue boasting about being the “most successful club in world football,” even after Celtic surpass them in trophies. They won’t even be the most successful club in Glasgow, let alone the world. Does Lindsay genuinely believe they’ll keep that slogan up at Ibrox? If they did, their own fans would crucify them. They’d never live the embarrassment down.

The claim was always empty boasting. Even if you believe the Survival Lie—and none of us do—there are clubs around the world far more successful. Take a trip to Madrid and visit the Real Madrid trophy room. Look at those European Cups lined up behind the glass, and then try to suggest the club across the road was ever the most successful in world football. It’s laughable.

Even factually, it’s nonsense.

As Lindsay himself acknowledges, an Egyptian club holds the record for the most trophies, and Linfield has won more league titles. So, for years, the Ibrox club has been pretending to be something it’s not, which won’t surprise any of us. The Survival Lie is the ultimate example of that—pretending to be something they’re not.

And that brings me to another of Lindsay’s assertions, which is just as hard to defend: that there’s some “debate” between sections our fans and theirs about the current status of the Ibrox club and whether it’s a continuation of the one that died.

It’s cowardly to pretend this is a debate with two valid sides.

There’s no debate here, just as there’s no debate about the shape of the Earth.

One side knows the truth, and the other is made up of zealots clinging to an incoherent, discredited, and unprovable claim.

Rangers died. They failed to secure a CVA. They went into formal liquidation. The SPFL refused to allocate their league share to the Newco—that’s why the Newco had to start at the bottom. The SFA claims the Newco inherited Rangers’ membership, yet it didn’t inherit their Scottish Cup seeding.

Why? Because they were a brand-new club.

This matter was settled the day it happened. There is no debate here—the case is closed. I won’t debate this issue any more than I would the shape of the planet. Why should I? I know what the facts are. I remember what went down.

Lindsay’s article is so bad, it’s unbelievable.

We’re already the most successful club in Scotland. All tomorrow will do is seal it, putting even the most rabid Ibrox fan in denial to bed. It’ll hammer another nail into the Survival Lie’s coffin and by the end of this campaign it will be utterly redundant.

That lie exists purely to prop up their trophy count.

Without it, they wouldn’t care about their “history” because that’s all it is to them—bragging rights.

Lindsay is wrong on that too.

For a lot of Celtic fans, this is not about bragging rights at all. It’s about reducing the Survival Lie to rubble. That matters more than any trophy count. Cowards like him might want to hide behind obfuscation, but some of us will say it plainly.

I’m looking forward to the day the Lie longer matters.