Celtic fans should ignore the swelling hype around Ibrox. It’s fantasy not reality.

The Ibrox club sits ahead of us in the league table. They sit behind Hearts. This has been one of the most calamitous seasons in Celtic’s recent history. As a consequence, we have formed a fan pressure group to force change at our own club. We are pushing for structural reform.

Across the city, they believe they are on the brink of a renaissance. They think a new golden age is just around the corner. The reality does not support that.

Yesterday, the news broke that they have lost their commercial director after just four months in the job. Last week, the club confirmed it was preparing a fundraising exercise, an internal share issue, to bolster the manager’s transfer budget for the summer.

At the same time, they have increased season ticket prices by six per cent.

So let’s be clear about what that means. They are asking supporters to pay more, while also asking them to invest directly in the club to fund recruitment.

One Ibrox site described this as a period of stability. It pointed to board departures in November as the last moment of turmoil. In other words, they have had stability for five months. Five months in which they have raised ticket prices, turned to internal fundraising, and now lost a senior executive.

If that is stability, it is a very strange version of it.

We are told there is a new ownership group, a new direction, a new level of competence.

Directors leaving at this rate is not normal in football. Senior executives walking away after a matter of months is not normal. Clubs resorting to share issues to fund transfers is not normal.

Nor is trying to sell the idea that there is a managerial genius in the dugout when the numbers simply do not support it.

For all those Ibrox supporters pushing that narrative, it is no different from the Celtic fans who refuse to accept how serious our own problems are. It is denial, dressed up as optimism.

The Ibrox operation is not stable. For a club where so much has supposedly changed, it is remarkable how much looks exactly the same.

They are following the same model as before. Spend beyond their means, raise funds from supporters, talk about sustainability while doing the opposite.

This week, they terminated the contract of Rabbi Matondo. He was once a marquee signing, a player expected to generate profit. He leaves for nothing. Not for free, of course, because whatever payoff was required will not have been small.

This looks very familiar. It looks like previous Ibrox regimes. It looks like a club that is still a mess. The only reason this is not under greater scrutiny is that our own club is in disarray. Our focus has been, rightly, on ourselves.

But nowhere is the gap between perception and reality clearer than in the hype around their manager. We are told he is a transformative figure. A game-changer. A leader who has elevated the team.

The evidence says otherwise.

He has faced Celtic four times and won once. That win came against a Celtic manager who lasted eight games in the job. He has faced Brendan Rodgers three times in meaningful matches, including two at home and one at Hampden, and has not won any of them. Rodgers has knocked him out of both cup competitions and gone to Ibrox with a weakened side and taken a major result.

His current win ratio sits at 57 per cent.

That is poor. It looks worse when you put it into context.

Michael Beale had a win ratio of over 70 per cent during his time at Ibrox, across more than a year in charge. His tenure was widely regarded by their own supporters as a failure.

Let’s go further.

Beale managed 43 games. He drew four and lost eight. This manager has taken charge of 33 games. He has already drawn six and lost five, with ten matches left to make that record worse.

Beale’s numbers got him sacked. This manager is on course to produce a worse record over a comparable period.

That is not opinion. That is fact.

Philippe Clement posted a win ratio of 63 per cent. He delivered strong European results and won a League Cup. He was still deemed not good enough.

Giovanni van Bronckhorst had a 59 per cent record, reached a European final and won the Scottish Cup. Again, not considered good enough. Set that against 57 per cent and ask yourself where the evidence for this supposed genius lies.

Rohl’s record is also inflated by a short run of results.

Between mid-December and late January, they put together a sequence of eleven wins that included two matches against a managerless Aberdeen, Ludogorets in Europe, Annan in the Scottish Cup and a Celtic side in complete disarray.

Since then, they have five wins in eleven games.

Strip away the narrative, and what you are left with is a manager performing below the standards that got his predecessors dismissed.

None of this excuses the state of our own club. None of it suggests that everything is fine at Celtic. We all know it is not. We all know the problems are serious.

But we should not fall into the trap of believing something extraordinary is happening across the city. It is not. The only extraordinary thing is the hype.

We have seen it and heard it before.

We know how this story goes.

The truth is that if Celtic were even slightly better this season, even marginally more competent in our decision-making and execution, this would not be a title race at all and Rohl would not be getting praise, but he’d be staring into his open grave.