Ibrox’s flapping over the St Mirren game proves they are terrified of Celtic’s potential derby lead.

What a shambles the club from Ibrox has gotten itself into over the St Mirren fixture postponement. And you know what? It should have remained their own mess to resolve in whatever way they could.

The bigger shambles is the league allowing them now to back out after St Mirren had already told its own fans that the fixture would probably be rearranged. This is a joke, in every sense, and for Russell Martin to actually claim that this is not a consequence of what you can see when you look at the league table is risible nonsense.

He says the plan was always to play the fixture.

But if the plan was always to play the fixture, why did the club request the postponement in the first place? To pretend that this has nothing to do with the league table, and what that table could look like by the time we roll into Ibrox, is just ludicrous.

It makes their club look like a laughingstock. It makes him, and the rest of them, look as if the full consequences of this have only just set in and they’re now running scared. What amazes me is that it took until now for this to dawn on them.

A week ago, when they did this, I wrote about how stupid it was considering that we were already ahead of them in the league and that the possibility of us going to Ibrox with a five-point lead made it absolute lunacy to postpone the fixture.

But they were still going to go ahead and do it — right up until the events of Saturday, when they dropped another two points and lost a key player.

All of a sudden, we’re expected to believe that they were intending to play the game all along, and it’s got nothing to do with the league table.

For the SPFL to put it out there this morning that they were okay with this, and to have agreed to it this afternoon, with another member club being completely messed about — is farcical. It makes you wonder who the game is being run by.

It’s certainly not being run for the benefit of supporters, because the home fans at St Mirren must feel thoroughly messed about, and the club itself even more so.

The truth is there’s no good way for this to go for them.

If they fancy their chances against St Mirren in the aftermath of a European game, then go for it. I say let them try. It doesn’t matter to us. We still go into Ibrox with a lead, whatever happens. Even if they play the game and we lose our next league match, we’ll still go to Ibrox ahead on points. So, they can run but they can’t hide; the chances are we’ll go there four points clear at least, and they’ve done that to themselves.

This is an entirely self-inflicted wound, and the SPFL had a responsibility to the rest of the clubs in this league — not just one — to tell them to deal with it. They made their bed. They said that in the event they got through in Europe, they would seek a fixture postponement. That should be written in stone and unchangeable.

But even now with the SPFL having bowed down to them — because it always does — what kind of message is the club sending out? They can talk all they like about this not being a reaction to what the league table will look like that day, but we know it is.

Everyone knows it is. Nobody is going to be suckered by this nonsense about how they “always intended to play the game.” The full implications of this have finally hit them, and they’re terrified, and everyone knows that too.

It’s at a time like this that you understand why our own board is such an absolute mess in and of itself.

These people don’t have to be very good to stay ahead of this lot. They don’t have to be at the top of their game for this club to be sitting atop the SPFL, because the opposition really isn’t up to much.

The opposition is more capable of doing harm to itself than we are capable of doing to them. We can only beat this side four times in the league in a season; they inflict far more damage than that on themselves the rest of the year.

That club across the city is a laughingstock.

And if I were them, I’d have just left things as they were, because I wouldn’t be too confident about going into the St Mirren game right now in their shoes.

I wouldn’t be too sure they’re capable of getting three points, because that’s exactly the kind of game that will suit the home team right down to the ground. Celtic might very well roll into Ibrox with an even bigger lead than right now — and they won’t even that cushion of a game in hand, but will actually our lead as solidly on the board.

Which means we could leave there with a double-digit lead this early in the season. Imagine the carnage such a thing would cause over there.

The smell of fear and weakness is wafting off that whole club right now. I just wish we were in a better state. I wish we were more up for our own challenges and that our board had been more ambitious and gone that little bit further. Because it wouldn’t take much to put this lot in a box and bury it six feet underground.

Look at them right now. They’re practically doing the job for us.