This Celtic side is just 90 minutes away. Time to do the business.

Today, our boys must leave it all out there on the pitch.

They must treat this game as if it’s the most important 90 minutes of the entire campaign. In some ways, it is. Today, our boys must not leave that pitch with any regrets. They must leave it with only one thing—the title. They must leave it as champions.

They must not let this drag on another seven days.

The media thinks this stuff is easy. Or at least, they claim to think that. I don’t know if they do or not, or whether it’s just another effort to take away the credit we so richly deserve. I don’t care either way.

Every single thing we have, we earned. Every single thing we’ve got, we had to fight and sweat and bleed for. I know you know it. We all know it. This club never has it easy.

But there have been parts of this season where we made it look easy. Where our excellence was so apparent, our quality so great, that they could have put two teams out on that pitch and still wouldn’t have stopped us. When we play, we play like no other side in this country is capable of getting near.

It’s that form which has carried us all the way to the brink of this success. And today, we must finish the job. No more delays. No more postponements. It’s party time. And Celtic fans want something to celebrate.

Oh, what a week it’s been.

What a long, horrible week—full of media nonsense, full of slurs against our supporters, full of snipers and critics all having their say.

Trying to devalue it, trying to take the shine off what is going to be a fantastic occasion for every Celtic fan—because every title win is a fantastic occasion for every Celtic fan. There isn’t a one of us who wishes things were different. We live for this. We want to see more of it. This is what drives us as supporters.

The boss is right. It never gets old, and you never take it for granted. You can’t take it for granted—some of us grew up without this. Some of us grew up never thinking these days would ever come.

By about 2009, it was obvious that something momentous was going to happen in our game. That the club across the city was teetering on the brink, and that a great opportunity was going to come around. No one thought it would be like this. No one thought we’d elevate our club to a whole new level.

We knew there would be titles. We might even have dreamed there would be trebles. But we never dreamed of an Invincible Treble. A Double Treble. A Treble Treble. A Quadruple Treble. It’s phenomenal.

Five of them now, in very short order. And a bunch of doubles too. Nobody thought our club would hit its stride quite like this. To go nine in a row. To have COVID stop our ten. And then to shake ourselves off, come back from that, and go on another run—one that tonight will stand at four. It’s phenomenal.

The blips along the way? They’re over with, hopefully. You understand how it could happen. You understand how a team so far ahead might lose some focus as it closes in on the finish line. But Rodgers slapped us back into wakefulness.

He’s not allowing us to drift. He’s not letting us stagger across the finish.

He wants us to roll across it at full power. That’s how it should be. That’s how champions should win titles.

This team always shows up for business when there’s important business to be done. That’s what has marked it out as such a success story.

That’s why we’re where we are today.

If it wasn’t for that will to win, that will to dominate other sides in this league, that will to be the best—and to be seen to be the best—we’d never have made it over the line last season when the pressure was on and the fight was most fierce. These players found another level. And because of the start we made this season, we never had to find that inner strength and drive. So, we lost a little along the way.

But all that’s behind us now. We bemoan the missed opportunities. We bemoan the chances we had and wasted. But that’s all right—because today it’s in our hands, and we only need a point. Although if we only get a point, I think the sense of disappointment will be palpable.

No, we want to win it in the same style we built our lead.

In the same manner we dominated earlier in the campaign. Best to end it that way. Best to win this title with a bit of verve and flair.

And we’ll enjoy it—obviously. Wherever we may be.

In the Gallogate, up in Dundee. Across the water, like Eric Knott of Read Celtic and the Trinity Tims, watching us from Ireland. Or further afield, like Paulina watching from Poland, like our friends in America, Australia, and all those other places around the world where we’ll gather to watch and cheer on the boys.

Nobody will tell us this is tedious. Nobody will tell us this is boring. Every one of those bubbling bitches would trade places with us in a heartbeat—and they wouldn’t care how the rest of Scottish football felt about it.

And because I know that—and because Wee Barry admitted yesterday that he’ll be hurting today—I couldn’t care less either.

Hurt, you little toe-rag.

I hope you clutch that precious blue jersey of yours and feel it deep in your soul. And all that stuff you told your team about using the pain as fuel for next season? Just goes to show how little you’ve got in the locker when you’re resorting to that voodoo claptrap. As if that hocus pocus ever made a difference to anybody.

I got news for you, Barry. Those boys in your dressing room get paid whether they win things or not. They get paid whether they’re champions or not. They’re millionaires whether they have gold medals or silver ones. Whether their houses are filled with the merchandise of winners, or if they have shrines with all their runner-up medals. If you want to lead men to victory—if you want to make winners out of these serial losers—you’re going to have to do a hell of a lot better than that.

And you’ll never get the chance to. When that penny finally drop, when you do realise, as Jackson declared you already had, that you’re never going to get it I hope the pain is worse than you ever felt before. I think you’re getting off light, myself. I’d have loved you to have gotten it and then pay the consequences.

That talk too about not wanting another coaching job if they turn you down … ha! Easy to say as you know you’re never getting another one anyway. Back to The Daily Record with you, back to pretending to be a journalist after pretending to be a manager.

The mentality of champions just isn’t there across town, and no amount of money is going to easily fix that.

But this team has it. This team of ours. This team always shows up for business when there’s real business to be done. And today, we know what that business is, and the pressure that’s on them to deliver.

That pressure is good. That’s when we’re at our best.

So three points today, Celtic. A comfortable win.

And we’re not just a step closer to the championship—we are the champions. The champions of Scotland. Has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?

Glasgow Celtic—Champions.

Let’s do it.