Celtic chase records. Ibrox chases relevance.

I wrote earlier about that exceptional performance last night, and it was such a thrill to see us do so well — with what is essentially a second-string side. In the aftermath of the game, I checked the BBC Sport website, and it confirmed something I had suspected during the match: we’ve now levelled the Lions’ fantastic record of 111 goals in a league campaign. And we’ve still got one game to go.

That’s what we do at Celtic now. We try to break records — usually our own. As I said in the piece earlier today, we are no longer really competing against the rest of the league. They’re not our benchmark anymore.

We are. We are our own benchmark. Our own standard to meet. So it’s no surprise that we’re chasing a Celtic record. No surprise that we’re aiming to better what great Celtic sides have done in the past.

Who else are we going to judge ourselves against?

This Celtic team is a powerhouse. We’re not just trying to put points on the board, not just trying to put trophies in the cabinet — we’re always looking to go that little bit better than before. We don’t just set the standard — we try to top it, every time.

There was a point this season when it looked like we might break other records — ones set by Rodgers’ team in his first campaign here. That slipped away from us. But you always get the sense, watching this team now, that there’ll be more chances. More opportunities to set new ones.

And the manager was smart to keep pushing for those records. It gives us extra motivation. Not just to beat teams, but to do it with such confidence and verve that we set an impossible bar — and then try to clear it ourselves. That might not be as important to the players as putting up enough points to win the title, but it gives them something to chase once the real race is effectively over.

It’s like a marathon runner who’s left all his rivals far behind. He knows he’ll cross the finish line first, but he’ll push himself every step of the way if there’s a chance to break a record. That becomes the goal.

That’s the crucial difference between where we are and where the club across the city is. We’re chasing records. They’re just chasing relevance. And even as they do that, the signs are clearer than ever that all they’re really doing is proving just how irrelevant they are.

I said earlier that their biggest problem is this: no matter what they do, they are as reliant on a Celtic collapse as they are on their own sudden strength. Because as long as we can turn in performances like last night’s, as long as we can hit 90 points every single season, they’ve got a mountain to climb.

And whatever they do, they’ll have to do almost perfectly.

But perfection is hard. Maintaining that kind of form is inherently difficult. We make it look easy because we’re used to it. Because we’ve been doing it for a long time. We make it look easier than it is. But even our players have to be reminded of their responsibilities. Reminded that they’re expected to maintain that form even when the league is effectively wrapped up by January.

Let’s be honest — if they weren’t in the midst of this takeover, or whatever the hell is going on over there, where would they be right now? What relevance would they have? They’d be a joke, and we’d all be calling them one. We’d be openly laughing at them. Some of us are still laughing at them.

In terms of their wider relevance to football itself? They’d be nowhere. That’s one reason they cling so tightly to this whole derby idea — this nonsense that the Glasgow derby is the biggest in the world.

We know it’s not. We’ve got more sense than that. We know El Clásico puts it in the shade. We know the River Plate vs Boca Juniors derby puts it in the shade. We know all this. But it’s in their interest to push it. It’s in their interest to hype it up. Because if they’re part of something that big, they must be a big club too, right?

If the takeover goes through, they’ll say it’s put them “on the map.” They’ll talk about hiring the son of a great manager as if that means he’ll be a great manager. The new owners will talk of a transformation just like a newly elected party of government; after a while business will return to normal.

Which in this case means us winning everything. But for a while, they’ll ride a little PR wave. But if it starts to unravel — if it turns out they just can’t keep up — then I think it’ll unravel faster than anything we’ve seen go wrong over there in a long, long time. And where the Hell that leaves them … well that’s the question, isn’t it?