Ibrox fans still cannot come to terms with a simple truth: Celtic is the bigger, better run club.

One of the things that always amazes me about the Ibrox support is their sheer inability to accept the reality of a good Celtic side.

We made ourselves into a good side. Of all the illusions they labour under over there, the greatest by far is this idea that we are just a lucky club, somehow the beneficiaries of a gigantic conspiracy, and that we are always just one slip from disaster.

I believe that the fetishization of the balance sheet, which characterises how some of our fans view the club, is largely negative.

The team sheet is more important, and it always will be. But the balance sheet is not to be ignored. The fact that we have managed to keep winning while also posting profits is nothing short of extraordinary. I will slate this board when it gets things wrong, but I also like to think I give them credit when it’s due.

And the truth is, credit is due more often than some might like to admit. Over the weekend, I’ll be writing a few pieces about 2012—what happened, what has happened since, and how it continues to shape our club and the one across the city.

One of the reasons Lawwell thinks he’s a genius—and why a large number of our fans believe the same—is that he had his hand on the tiller when we won the war. I’ll talk about that war in detail later in the weekend, probably on Sunday, but for now, let’s look at it in broad terms.

Their club won the last three league titles before the events of 2012. That’s an historical fact. But a lot of the seeds of their downfall were sown in those three years. The truth is, they only lasted those three years because of those titles, and we virtually handed them those titles by sticking rigidly to our fiscal policy.

Now, you can say whatever you like about that policy, but I am completely convinced it handed Rangers those three league trophies which in my view they should never have got, along with Champions League money that helped keep them afloat a little longer. The consequences of not having that Champions League money were laid bare in the 2011/12 season when they were knocked out of Europe entirely after quick exits from both the Champions League and Europa League. At that point, there was no stopping the runaway train.

Had we pushed a little harder, we could have put them out of business sooner.

That’s the truth. But it’s still hard to deny that having a strong fiscal policy is the reason we won the war. We could have chased them all those years, overextended ourselves—none of us ever advocated for that approach—but we didn’t. We chose not to go down that road. We chose not to rack up debt. And we suffered for that choice, right or wrong. We paid a price for that choice.

But it’s not an accident that we’re here. It wasn’t the result of some conspiracy. We made decisions. We made sacrifices. And we are the only one of the two clubs still standing as a consequence of those choices.

Say what you like about the current transfer policy—and I’ve said plenty, and I’m still not happy that it is largely built on selling before we spend—but at least it makes sense as a fiscal strategy, as long as the bulk of the money is reinvested in the team.

On top of that, we make good decisions when it comes to managers.

We’ve had two elite-level bosses in Ange and Rodgers. Our pursuit of Eddie Howe was unsuccessful, and in its own way, a little embarrassing. But at least we made the effort. We tried to bring him in, and we offered him a pot of money to come. We pushed the boat out for Eddie Howe, and had it not been for a decision made by his assistant, we would have closed that deal.

Our trading strategy has been broadly right.

It went off the rails somewhat with the disastrous Mark Lawwell experiment, where only Alistair Johnston emerged as a player of real note. And yes, we may have got lucky with Ange in a sense, but I will always give this club credit for giving him total control of the transfer strategy after they decided to hire him. I will always give them credit for allowing him to build his team his way, without interference.

Once he was in place, we doubled down and backed him.

And nor did his appointment come out of nowhere, as some have suggested. I initially got it as wrong as anybody could have. What turned me around wasn’t just listening to the man himself—it was listening to my peers in the Celtic online community, who told me to give it a chance, who said I’d like what I saw, that I’d end up embracing the guy and his ideas. And all of us did.

But people at the club knew what he could bring, and they were right.

Nor were his signings the result of pure luck. That man knew exactly what he was doing, and we backed his judgment.

The Ibrox fans refuse to accept that we actually work very well within the parameters of our operational strategy. They refuse to accept that it was not by chance that we have found unpolished gems and made good players even better—something their own club has no interest in doing. They believe the answer to every problem is just to throw money at it. We, on the other hand, put a premium on development.

Celtic is a better club than them in every way—from how we’re run, to the players we have, to the money we can spend. Over on their forums, there are a handful of them who are willing to accept the evidence in front of their eyes, which is that we beat the domestic opposition with such regularity that any team wanting to catch us needs to win 30 games a season on average.

Still, it is only a handful of them who get this. The others don’t. Some of them won’t get it. Some of them don’t want to get it.

Some will never be able to wrap their heads around the idea that we’re just a bigger club than they are. And the result of that, of course, is not that they’re going to get any better—it’s that they’re going to turn on their club at every single failure. They’re going to continue to give the club grief. They’re going to continue to demand the heads of managers, directors, and the transfer-out of any player who doesn’t hit the ground running. And they’ll continue this self-destructive cycle.

Those who do accept that Celtic are just better run, and better at everything we do, at least offer their club a glimpse of a potential future—albeit one spent in Celtic’s shadow. For a long time. Until they can grow and develop into something different than they are now.

The problem is, there just aren’t enough of them to make that policy work.

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