If Celtic fans ever need a dose of reality, we’ll not be going to The Daily Record for it.

I write a lot about reality on this site.

I write a lot about it because we live in reality, and other people don’t. And I always like to differentiate between the two. But if the day ever comes when I need to do my own reality check, here’s where I won’t go to get one—I won’t go to The Daily Record, or to any of its reporters. And nor should any Celtic fan.

That newspaper doesn’t deal in reality. It doesn’t operate in the real world. So when one of its reporters tries to lecture us and explain to us what reality is, that’s bad enough. But when he tries to tell us that our thinking doesn’t reflect how we really feel, that starts to sound like a piss-take.

Earlier today, I wrote about Peter Grant and his ludicrous assertion that if we don’t win at Ibrox it will take the shine off the whole season. That generated one heck of a debate on the site! I loved it. Especially as most people kept it civil.

In my view, Grants comments are utter rubbish, but where one fool goes others will inevitably follow and Michael Gannon of The Record repeated it and tried to accuse us of doing spin. Why, in God’s name, would we be doing spin? The game hasn’t even been played yet. Spin is usually done after the fact, not before it.

One of the reasons I write about the press so often is that for people in the media industry—people who are supposed to work with words—they seem to have an awful lot of difficulty actually understanding what words mean.

And if you allow those kinds of standards to slide, then you get the media you deserve. This is what Gannon had to say about the game:

“Celtic need to win at Ibrox on Sunday or it will take some of the shine off their Premiership title win. Let’s just put it out there, because no matter how some Hoops fans try to spin it, this is the reality.”

But again, this is The Daily Record confusing its own fantasy with reality, because of course that’s not reality at all.

It’s an opinion—and a particularly stupid opinion at that. And when Celtic fans are openly wondering, online and elsewhere, whether or not this game really matters to them, that’s not spin. That’s how we feel.

I’m sorry if that doesn’t suit the narrative that some people would like to present here—that this is some kind of do-or-die moment for us. I’m sorry if that doesn’t support the claim that our season will be rendered worthless if we go there and lose.

To me, that’s the idiotic view. That’s the preposterous suggestion.

The idea that some Celtic fans, with the league already wrapped up, don’t particularly care about this weekend’s game reflects a deeper reality some in the media simply don’t want to face.

Let me repeat, so it’s crystal clear: to me, this is just another game. And I’m not saying that it’s a game that doesn’t matter. None of us is saying we don’t care if we lose. I do care if we lose—but I’d care if we lost to any team this late in the season, with the aim of building momentum for Hampden. Furthermore, because we’ve lost the last two, I’d be a little concerned. But that’s where it starts and stops.

The derby itself now takes place in what is essentially a non-competitive environment, and their club has become such an irrelevance in real terms that I care about it now about as much as Liverpool fans care about losing once in a while to Everton—the perennial relegation strugglers—while they’re fighting for the title and aiming for honours like the Champions League. To paraphrase a great TV moment, “The lion doesn’t concern itself with the opinions of the sheep.”

Straight away, Gannon is calling it the Old Firm derby—and straight away, that tells you his opinion isn’t to be trusted.

That’s a viewpoint stuck in the past. That’s a viewpoint from an era we left behind long ago. When we went to Ibrox at the end of last season and then hosted them at Celtic Park, those games mattered.

Those meant something, because wins in those games—taking points from those matches—had a profound impact on the championship race.

Neither of the last two derbies took place against the backdrop of any kind of title race at all. And this one means even less than those did, because this one takes place in the context of a settled title race—one where we already know we have the prize.

So the idea that a failure to win this game will somehow take the gloss off a 38-game campaign—decided in our favour on Game 34—is, frankly, ridiculous.

“Of course, it would be extremely harsh – and daft – to diminish the achievements of this side if things don’t go to plan this weekend,” Gannon says at one point, before proving just how daft he is by adding: “But this is the world they live in.”

I’m sorry, but it’s not the world we live in. It’s the world Gannon would like us to live in. It’s the world some people think we live in.

But in the actual world—the real world—the team that wins the most games and accumulates the most points wins the title.

Individual results against individual teams only matter in that context, and are rendered inconsequential if your name is already on the trophy.

And for the hard of thinking, let me say it again: I will not be happy if we lose. I’ll be pretty pissed off, because we’ve already lost twice to the same team and a third defeat in a row suggests that lessons aren’t being learned and people aren’t getting a grip. But the name of the opposition won’t factor into that.

That’s not what will bother me.

I have never claimed on this site to speak for every single Celtic fan. For all I know, my opinions reflect only a tiny minority of our support. I have no idea. But I do know that I’m not alone in thinking this game isn’t one of genuine consequence.

All of us will want to win—because wanting Celtic to win is what we do.

But a defeat will not send us into a tailspin over the summer. It won’t shatter our faith in the manager or the players, or lead to us waking up one morning wondering if we really deserved to be champions.

When I say I’m still deciding how much I care about this weekend’s game—as a derby, as a contest—I’m not lying to myself or deluding myself. I genuinely feel apathetic towards it. And this is not the first time in recent years I’ve said that. It’s not even the first time this season.

Gannon tries to push his narrative across the finish line by repeating—repeating—the point that this game is some kind of huge event of cosmic significance, and then ends by saying: don’t believe anyone who says otherwise. Once again, submitting his personal opinion as fact. Which it is not.

So my question is this: am I allowed to believe myself? Am I allowed to believe the other Celtic fans around me who I know feel the same way?

Even some of the Ibrox supporters recognise this is how we feel, and they feel a sense of loss over it because they know what it represents. They even have a name for it: Espanyolification. The state of being where your club is so far behind your biggest rivals that you cease to be of any relevance or importance to them.

There is a common mistake the press makes; it has, not for the first time, mistaken our fascination with what goes on across the city for relevance. Almost every article I’ve written about the club across town in the last year or so has been about how they’re covered in the media. Those articles were about the media as much as that club. Although when that club does something momentously stupid, of course I’ll write about it.

But regular readers also know I’ve written excoriating articles about Hearts and how badly run they are. I’ve written about my hopes that Aberdeen might mount a proper challenge after a strong run early in the season. I’ve written about Hibs and how pleased I am that David Gray has proved a lot of people—including me—absolutely wrong and got them playing some storming football.

I write about the environment we operate in. All the clubs who operate within it. And if Aberdeen, or Hearts, or Hibs generated more news, I’d write more about them.

One of the most venomous articles I’ve written about the media in the last couple of years wasn’t even about the Ibrox club—it was about Aberdeen when they hired Neil Warnock and people in the media were calling it a “box office” appointment.

Which was about as stupid a claim as I’ve ever read about a move that had disaster written all over it.

It’s the same when the media—and some sections of the Ibrox support—claim our scrutiny of their takeover is based on fear. It isn’t based on fear. It’s based on asking legitimate questions—questions we’d be asking tenfold if it were about our own club. It’s based on our amazement and even shock that the media—and the Ibrox fans themselves—aren’t asking those same questions.

We are a Scottish football club; the goings on elsewhere in the game affect us in multiple ways. I go out of my way to remind people that although it is called The CelticBlog this is, and has been since I’ve been running it, a Scottish football site that just happens to view the game through a Celtic supporting lens.

And so I watch the whole game here.

If the club across town sometimes draws a crowd, it’s not because we’re obsessed with them. It’s because that club is a freak show—and a freak show always draws an audience. That has been a known fact since time immemorial. It’s why they were popular. It’s why every travelling circus had one.

This weekend’s game is just another 90-minute football match.

Do I want to win? Yes, I do. Will I be angry if we don’t? Yes, I will—because it will be another failure to beat the same team we’ve had struggles against this campaign, and I’ll have questions for people at Celtic about why that is.

They are, after all, a team miles behind us in the league. A team that can’t string together results. A club in crisis.

So yes, I’ll want to know why we were inefficient. Why we were unable to inflict a heavy blow on them. But in terms of genuine consequence, real-world impact? That’ll be virtually zero—no matter how many people come out of the woodwork to say different.

The Glasgow Derby is itself an overhyped circus act. It’s a freak show. But in recent years, a lot of Celtic fans have been able to detach from those elements of it and see it as just another game. Just another three points to win. And there are people inside Celtic who see it that way too.

They’ve said so many times. “We want to win every game. This one isn’t particularly significant. We just don’t like to lose.”

I’m already bored with the narrative.

It’s ridiculous. It has no internal logic. And I’m convinced that the only people who believe this weekend is some massive moment in the season are those who cling to the Old Firm tag like a comfort blanket and refuse to let go of it.

For the rest of us, this is one of the appetiser before the main event. The main event is the Cup Final at Hampden. That’s the one that will decide the last piece of silverware this season. And in case our friends in the media need reminding—we’ve already won the first two. So this would be a treble. Three trophies. They can go and look it up. Rangers won the last one at Ibrox over 20 years ago.

I recognise the attempt to establish a narrative here because all this garbage is coming from the same media that, just last week, was talking about “tedious trebles.” This is yet another attempt to devalue what we’ve done—and it’s before a ball has even been kicked. If this narrative is already annoying and offensive, I can only imagine how much louder the volume will be if we do lose on Sunday.

It is garbage. And that’s all it is.

I’m certain that in years to come, when people look back on the ninth treble in our history—and the sixth in less than a decade—the history books will reflect just how stupid any effort to devalue that accomplishment was.