Celtic must be preparing for the next title win right now. Let our rivals see our power.

So the title is won, and the club has to start thinking about the next one.

Now, if we’re smart, and if we’re good – and I am sure we’re both smart and good – we are way down the line on what the plans are.

This would be a good time psychologically to hit the ground running, and not just because a lot of us call for that every single year. This year is different. This year is crucial. This is not only about Champions League qualification.

What we need to be prepared for is further domestic dominance.

If we’re taking care of our stuff early in the season, we’re going to send a message across town, and it’s going to hurt them. Whatever happens with the takeover – fake-over, or whatever we’re calling it today – it’s going to take time.

They’re not going to be ready. They’re not going to hit the ground running, and if we do, we’re going to be in a great position to undermine them.

The psychological impact on that club will be tremendous if it looks like we’re stealing a march on them and they’re dragging their feet.

It won’t be dragging their feet, of course – it’ll be the natural consequence of the club changing hands and new people coming in with a new plan. That plan will need to be implemented carefully. And if they are going to appoint a new manager – which looks absolutely certain after yesterday’s debacle, which I’ll talk about later – then they either have a name in mind right now and can appoint him as soon as the takeover itself is complete, or they’re going to badly fumble this and it’s going to take too long.

If you check out the media reports and if you check out the Ibrox fan forums, they’re all saying the same thing. These people may want time, they may need time, but they’re not going to get time because the Ibrox fans, and the media allies of the club, are all out of patience.

They’ve watched us win four in a row. They’ve watched us humiliate and degrade that club at every step this season. Although they’ve won a couple of games against us, they’re going to take home no silverware, and we will take it all. And they’ve had enough. They’re not bringing these new people in just so they can watch us win more.

And that’s the bruise that we have to punch, over and over and over again. We have to do it hard, and we have to do it well, and we have an opportunity to do it if we hit the ground running in the summer. Because the contrast between us building for the next season, and them not even out of the starting gate, will be devastating. It will make some in their own dressing room very fearful about what the campaign ahead holds.

As far as we’re concerned, that’s perfect.

That’s exactly where we want them to be. We want them to be in their heads. We want their fans to be nervously looking at the clock. We want them going into their own Champions League qualifiers feeling like they’re outmanned and outgunned.

If they fail to win in them, the blow to not only their prestige but to their bank book is going to be immense. That will get any takeover, any revolution, off to the worst possible start. The more ready we look, the less ready their fans are going to feel that they are. That will get them on the back of the team, and on the back of the new manager, and on the back of the new directors before the season even starts.

If it starts badly, everyone over there is going to be feeling the heat.

Of course, we could go the other way and decide to inflict a critical injury on ourselves at a critical time. We could drag our feet. We could make the manager frustrated. We could have him start to tell the press how frustrated he is, and that will spark a whole rash of stories about how he’s unhappy and how he wants to leave at the end of the campaign.

It would be just like Celtic to do something as stupid as that. It would be just like us to do something as hare-brained and dumb as that. And a lot of us kind of expect it.

But the manager can spot this opportunity.

He, more and more in his press conferences, keeps on talking about his relationship with Dermot Desmond. Perhaps that means that this is an end run.

Perhaps he’s already done the end run and gone around the board and gone to Desmond direct and gotten what he wants in terms of guarantees that this summer he will have the free hand that he requires. And that’s what I hope for – that the power dynamic at Celtic has now shifted definitively in favour of the manager.

The work at Celtic never stops.

This is what the manager has accentuated over and over again, and that does make me a little optimistic about the summer, in spite of all the years that we’ve seen managers be stymied and their needs put aside. If Brendan has his way, and Brendan knows what he wants and who he wants, and we move fast, we can have all the pieces in place way before the season kicks off. We will have shown our strength and our resolve, and our unity as a club, and our sense of purpose will be clear – to win that fifth title.

To win another treble. To take another huge step in the Champions League.

At that point, nobody’s going to catch us. Nobody here at home.

And if they don’t, if they don’t do it next season, then already the new club is starting to crumble. The new board is already under pressure. The new manager has his neck already in the noose.

We can’t make it all collapse, but we can weaken the foundations and then give it a good kick. All that weight of expectation, and good old-fashioned gravity, will do the rest.