It’s in our hands, Celtic. All we have to do is not drop it.

So yesterday Hearts got their victory, by a single goal against Dundee. The Ibrox club, not unexpectedly, beat Aberdeen at Ibrox, and did so comfortably. No shocks this weekend. Now it is over to Celtic. Over to us.

Now it is about what we do, and how we respond. And we have to respond. This is the kind of pressure that comes with being defending champions, and with being in a position where, right now, we are chasing.

Nothing less than a win will do.

It is always better, I think, when we have to win. When we are under pressure to win. That is when you see what this Celtic side is about. That is when you see how it handles pressure. It is when you find out if it has the nerve to keep going, to keep putting points on the board.

And when the big games come, the really big games, you expect this team to go out and get the results.

Nothing will be decided today.

But a lot of us said before the weekend started that if we win these two away games, it is pretty much ours to lose.

It would have been nice to see at least one of our two rival sides drop points. But they have to play each other at some point. One of them will do us a favour in that game. As long as we do our own job, that is all that matters.

Just ourselves. Just the task in front of us.

Three more points on the board.

The media is going out of its way today to frame this as some kind of high-pressure situation for Celtic. It isn’t.

The season we have had has already put us in a position where every game has to be won, regardless of what anyone else does. That is the reality. That is the bottom line. If we win all of our games, we are champions.

That is the fact of it.

Some people think we will have to win all of them. Maybe we will. Maybe we won’t. I still expect both of our rivals to drop more points. But that is not pressure that has suddenly appeared this weekend. It has been there all along.

The pressure would have been the same if we had played first. It would have been the same if both of those sides had lost yesterday.

We still have to win.

And that always brings me back to Gordon Strachan, and something he said during the race to the 2008 title, one of the hardest we have ever won. One that looked impossible more than once and where we had to put together exactly the kind of run we need right now.

There were doubts then, just as there are now.

Strachan said that in circumstances like that, you do not think about what the other teams are doing. Not at all. You focus only on what you have to do.

You claw back the gap, such as it is, one point at a time. One game at a time. One win at a time.

You do not look beyond the next match.

The old line is that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Stephen King once wrote that the Great Wall of China was built brick by brick.

It is the same idea.

A game. One step. A brick.

That is all this is.

It does not need to be more complicated than that.

Yes, there are eight games to go. Yes, we may need eight wins. That is a difficult task. No one should pretend otherwise.

But it is not an impossible one.

We have done it before. We know what it takes. And if we show up, properly, in each of those games, I have little doubt that we will get there.

That work begins today.

I have little doubt what Martin O’Neill will be telling the players in the dressing room.

Shut out the noise. Shut out the media narratives. Ignore the latest round of Ibrox hype. Ignore Derek McInnes, who has won nothing yet but carries himself like a conqueror before the conquest.

O’Neill would not trade places with him for all the tea in China.

Because this is still Celtic.

And Celtic is still the strongest side in this country.

That has not changed.

No matter how bad this year has been at times.

I have always said the league table does not lie. But it has been known to exaggerate.

If we win this title, it will be because we are still the best team in Scotland. Even when we are not at our best. Even when we are not as strong as we might be.

So Hearts win. The Ibrox club win.

Now we have to win.

But we would have had to win whatever happened yesterday.

So nothing really changes.

The team knows the job it has to do. The manager knows the job he has to do. We have got this far. It is in our hands.

All we have to do now is not drop it.

I’ll see you on the other side of today.

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