The desperate Daily Record treats Celtic fans – all fans – like idiots.

We saw a classic example of clickbait on the Daily Record website this week in one of their latest pieces. They’ve written an article whose audience is not immediately apparent, except that it seeks to denigrate Celtic’s success in some modest fashion.

The article in question is about Celtic’s dominance of Scottish football and where that ranks in terms of overall dominance across Europe. In short, it seeks to determine whether we are Europe’s most dominant club since 2001.

I doubt any club in that time has won more trophies than us, because I think Celtic must have that one pretty much locked up. So, they focused only on league titles, which isn’t a complete reflection of “domestic dominance” anyway.

Apparently, we are second to Dynamo Zagreb.

If you’re wondering, “Who cares?” then I’m already there with you.

No one cares. This is a complete irrelevance. This is a non-story. This is an example of a national title putting up a piece of clickbait just to get a couple of hits. It has no significance to our lives. It’s of no actual interest to any ordinary football fan. But it simultaneously fills space on a website and seeks to cast a shadow over what Celtic has done—although it really doesn’t cast much of one, as I don’t know a single person who has even entertained that thought.

These people think they’re writing for a football audience, but they’re writing for a stupid football audience. Only a stupid football audience thinks this matters at all.

Only a stupid football audience believes the measure of a club’s success and standing can be found in these ridiculous comparisons.

It’s a lot like when the Ibrox club claims that its coefficient is the eighth-best in Europe, based on some weird and wonderful way of calculating that.

Does that mean they’re the eighth-best club in Europe over the last X number of years? Of course, it doesn’t. There are multiple Champions League winners in that time. There are teams that have reached multiple European finals in that time. There are a handful of teams that seem to get to the latter stages of top European competitions every single year, and who along the way beat other top teams every year.

If they were talking about which team in Europe has been the most successful in the past 20-odd years in terms of trophies won, that would be us. I don’t believe any club has won more than us in that space of time—I cannot imagine which club that would be. But again… who cares?

There’s not one of us who wouldn’t trade an armload of that silverware for a single European trophy. There isn’t one of us who wouldn’t gladly sacrifice a few League Cups if it meant playing in the last 16 of the Champions League a couple of years in a row. We know how success is truly defined.

When Ibrox claimed to be the most successful club in world football, it was not only a barefaced lie considering the successes of clubs in other continental associations but a ridiculous claim to anyone who’s ever walked through the trophy room at the Bernabéu and seen all those European Cups.

That’s why I think Celtic should be very proud to promote itself as Scotland’s most successful football club, and one of Europe’s most successful clubs—without going overboard about it.

We should be glad for the success that we’ve had. But we should never get carried away into thinking that it puts us on the level of the elite clubs. Trying to compare ourselves with those clubs is pretty stupid and pretty embarrassing.

I mean, there was an Ibrox fan who emailed me the other day and told me not to get carried away with the number of league titles we’ve won, or the idea that we’ve now drawn level with their club—if you accept the Survival Lie, which none of us do anyway—because Linfield have won one more. I didn’t know that. I didn’t care about it. And I still don’t. I don’t know why he thought I would.

It all feeds into this idea that football fans are stupid, that we take this stuff seriously. We do take it seriously—but not in the way they think. I have celebrated every title and trophy that Celtic has won in my lifetime as if it were the first. Winning the title two years ago on Rodgers’ return was one of the sweetest in my living memory because of all the garbage we had to read in the media during the campaign—especially after Clement had apparently clawed them back into it.

Some title wins stand out more than others.

I think winning the Treble this time around will be one of the great achievements I will have the pleasure of watching, particularly because it will be a piece of Brendan’s unfinished business. He will, in doing it, make history. A Treble is still a special thing, even though we’ve won a bunch of them over the last few years. And I still get excited thinking about it. It still gives me a thrill. It still gives me a buzz.

I’ve never cared where we rank on some list of teams who’ve won the most titles. I care that we’re now Scotland’s most successful club, even accounting for the Survival Lie—because we’ve had to listen to that rubbish about how the club across the city is the “world’s most successful club” for far too long.

Not only was that always a ridiculous claim, but it’s one they can no longer make with a straight face now that we’ve eclipsed them in terms of trophies and titles. And I think it’s to Celtic’s credit that we have not traded on the idea in the crass, shabby, and dishonest manner that they have.

That’s why, when I saw the Daily Record’s shabby headline—“Domestic Celtic dominance eclipsed by ONE league title as this century’s ultimate European kings revealed”—I clicked on it with little more than a sigh.

Apart from the fact that the headline is a grammatical car crash, it’s one of those bizarre articles that infantilises football supporters rather than enlightening them. It treats us like children rather than giving us actual information, because it assumes our focus is so narrow that we actually care about that stuff.

Even if the time comes—and it very well might over the next couple of years—when we can legitimately boast of being the most successful club in the world in terms of silverware, I won’t be terribly put out if we don’t do it.

I suspect the Celtic marketing department will want to make a big deal of it. I suspect they’ll see an opportunity to make a lot of money out of it. And I’m sure I’ll end up buying some of the merchandise. But, honestly? I won’t care either way.

The real value in being able to call ourselves Scotland’s most successful club is in what it does to the Survival Lie.

That big European Cup sitting in the trophy room forever makes us Scotland’s most successful club, regardless of what trophies and titles are won elsewhere.

The fact we have also moved ahead in the silverware stakes is important only because it renders the Survival Lie redundant. It takes away its reason for existing, because that spurious claim about being the “world’s most successful club” is the only thing keeping the Survival Lie propped up.

Beyond that, it doesn’t bother me much—and I don’t think it bothers most Celtic fans.

When next season starts, I’m not going to look at it as “the race to 56.” That number will be there as something to torment our rivals with, but its real importance isn’t about one-upmanship. It’s about the experiences I want to have as a fan. It’s about the celebrations I want to enjoy with my family and friends. That it will put their noses out of joint is just the cherry on the cake.

I want the victory for its own sake—not for any grand significance or deeper meaning.

And that encapsulates another key difference between us and them. We want triumph for our own enjoyment, not just to climb to the top of the pile and crow about our superiority. That stuff doesn’t interest us at all.