Fear and loathing at the Hate Dome: The Ibrox club is no longer on a Rohl.

Tomorrow I will focus properly on the scenes at the end of the match at Ibrox. Tonight, however, I am going to do a little celebrating after Celtic’s penalty shootout victory.

That said, I do not think I need to tell anyone that there was a great deal of fear and loathing on their fan forums tonight. Across their wider support the mood is much the same.

And, as usual, a lot of it is justified.

Celtic are not over the line yet. Not by a long way. We still have nine league games ahead of us and they will not be easy. Furthermore, this is not a great Celtic side. We will probably have to win almost all of those matches to retain the title.

But there is something about this team that still gives me confidence.

There is a fundamental strength and determination about Celtic right now which is clearly missing from our two principal rivals. That matters.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a piece called Empires Fall II. I regarded it as part of a trilogy about potential collapse. In the third part of that trilogy I laid out the consequences for Celtic if we finished second, third or fourth in this league race.

Each scenario involved escalating problems and setbacks. But I also said something else. Those consequences could just as easily fall on the club across the city and if they did, the damage would be far worse than anything Celtic might face.

Tonight, as the coward who manages that club licks his wounds and tries to console himself after failing to beat the weakest Celtic side in years, many of their supporters are beginning to confront their own worst-case scenarios. They are not going to enjoy what they find when they start digging into those possibilities.

Because what exactly happens to that club if they stumble into another summer of chaos?

This was the year they only needed modest competence. Look at how far Celtic have regressed. Look at how many problems we have. And yet here we are.

Yes, the season has not finished yet. But at the same time the media has produced an extraordinary amount of nonsense over the past six to eight weeks. Almost all of it has detonated in the faces of the people who wrote it.

Hugh Keevins felt so certain the balance of power in Glasgow had shifted that he wrote Celtic’s season off before the January transfer window even closed. People like that deserve to look as foolish as they now do.

The question they will not ask is the obvious one.

If the Ibrox club finish third or fourth this season, and end the campaign without a trophy again, what exactly is their Plan B?

It certainly will not involve Danny Rohl. Any manager of a Glasgow club who finishes third is essentially finished.

Even if he somehow survives the immediate aftermath, the pressure at Ibrox will be relentless as soon as the new season begins.

One bad result, one poor performance and the storm returns. At that point he becomes what every manager in that position eventually becomes. A dead man walking.

We have watched this same farce play out repeatedly across the city.

Earlier today I described his post-match comments as gutless. I stand by that. He knows he cannot afford to alienate the most vocal and volatile section of the Ibrox support. A manager in a position of strength might have reacted differently to what happened today.

But Rohl is not in a position of strength.

He has spent most of his time at the club trying to win those people over and keep them onside. When a manager does that, he loses the ability to speak freely uUnless he is willing to risk everything. And he clearly is not.

But that strategy will not save him anyway.

Consider the reality.

Today Celtic were missing Schmeichel, Tierney, Johnston, McGregor, Carter-Vickers, Arne Engels and Jota. That is before we even consider the fact that this squad has not properly replaced Adam Idah, Kyogo or Nicolas Kühn.

What we saw today was a patched-up Celtic side filled with loan signings and academy players.

In short, it is the weakest Celtic team many of us have seen going to the Hate Dome in years.

Yet we have gone to Ibrox two weeks in a row and emerged ahead of them in the league while also knocking them out of the Scottish Cup. Even their own supporters must recognise what that says about the state of their own club.

The remarkable thing is that the Ibrox support is already asking tougher questions than the Scottish media will ever ask. Those same journalists told us that their January transfer window was a masterpiece.

Some of us said at the time that it is not how much money you spend that matters. It is what you spend it on. And we have plenty of our own examples to prove that point.

The belief that they had assembled a squad capable of carrying them over the line now looks like one of the worst predictions in recent Scottish football history.

Yes, the season is not finished yet. But the early signs are grim for them.

Since the January window closed they have won just two of their last six league games.

Include today’s defeat and it becomes two wins in seven.

This is the same Ibrox boss who was named Manager of the Month in January.

This is the same manager some people predicted could end the season with a double.

Instead, he now faces the possibility of ending it with the sack.

And many of their supporters would not be especially upset if that happened.

They have spent around £16 million more than they have brought in since the start of the season. Overall, their spending on the squad since last summer exceeds £40 million. Yet they sit third in the league.

They lost the League Cup semi-final to Martin O’Neill’s Celtic. They have now lost the Scottish Cup quarter-final to Martin O’Neill’s Celtic. The remarkable part is that those two defeats came either side of the disastrous Wilfried Nancy spell.

Without that interlude Celtic might already be comfortably clear in the league and pushing for a domestic treble. Their supporters understand that as well as ours do.

Because if this weakened Celtic side can still keep them at arm’s length after they have spent more than £40 million, what exactly is another £20 million going to solve in the summer? Especially when their ability to spend is becoming increasingly limited.

Their Europa League campaign was a disaster. There was no extended run to bring in additional revenue. Several matches were played in front of partially empty Ibrox stands, costing them millions in lost ticket income.

Their supporters are already being asked to spend more money than ever before and what are they looking at? Another trophyless season. Possibly a third-place finish. And a summer of reckoning unlike anything they have experienced before.

The financial drop from the Europa League to the Conference League is enormous.

If Celtic win the title we will again be only a couple of qualifying rounds away from the Champions League jackpot. That creates another vast financial gulf.

Even Europa League football would put Celtic within touching distance of a financial advantage they simply cannot match and next season raises the stakes even higher.

The champions go to the Champions League. Second place goes to the Conference League. The financial consequences of that difference two seasons in a row are enormous. For them it represents the nightmare scenario.

If they enter the summer with uncertainty around the manager, fewer resources to repair the squad and a fanbase increasingly unwilling to fund another rebuild, the problems will multiply quickly.

How many times can supporters be asked to start again? How many times can they convince themselves that next season will be different?

There are only so many resets any fanbase can tolerate.

Football often turns on the smallest margins.

Last week Celtic needed a late penalty to draw at Ibrox. Today we needed penalties after 120 minutes without a single shot on target to knock them out of the cup.

But those margins matter. Because we did get the draw and we did win the shootout.

A well-run Celtic would probably have brushed them aside comfortably. But a well-run version of them should also have beaten this Celtic team.

So, the real question becomes simple.

Which club is better positioned to recover from this dreadful season?

The team that wins, or the team that consoles itself by talking about how narrowly it lost. We all know the answer to that one.

Yes, there is fear at Ibrox tonight and that fear is justified. These final nine league matches will unfold under immense tension. Unless you have lived through that kind of pressure, it is hard to understand just how heavy it becomes.

Danny Rohl has already shown he does not have the shoulders to carry it. There are players in that team who do not have the shoulders for it either. Captain Disappointment’s penalty smashing off the crossbar felt like a perfect metaphor for his entire career at that club. A career spent trying to convince himself that finishing second is something worth celebrating.

Fear always turns into loathing eventually.

And everyone inside Ibrox should understand that. Because when they watched those ugly scenes unfold at the end of the game today, they were looking at their own future. Sooner or later that anger will turn inward.

That mob will come for the board. It will come for the manager and for the players just as it has before. Just as it always does.

Because even they can see the direction this is heading, and when fear becomes loathing, it spills out in every direction.

Eventually, much of it finds its way back home.

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