Celtic fans need hope this weekend. A scrappy three points won’t do it.

This is the time of year where every result matters. No matter how you get it, that is the general consensus. It is the accepted wisdom of football. Celtic fans know that at this point in the calendar the only thing that matters is the result.

But the results have papered over a lot of cracks recently, and as perverse as it sounds, the results are no longer enough. The Celtic Star put up a piece this morning saying we need to win at Dundee by any means necessary. I agree, to an extent. We do need to win. There is absolutely no question about that.

But the win has to say something. It has to be a statement, and the statement has to be about more than the scoreline. It has to show that we have learned something, that we have taken on board the lessons of the last few months. The piece is technically correct in terms of survival in this title race, but fans need hope as well.

Paulina wrote a piece a few weeks ago, in the aftermath of the Dundee United game, that cut right to the contradiction at the heart of everything we have been saying and doing. She pointed out that we have a problem that needs fixed.

People have talked about this Celtic side showing heart, resilience, a will to win, a never-say-die attitude. They have pointed to the two games at Ibrox, where we went there with depleted resources and got results. But nobody has talked about us playing well. Nobody has pointed to the football itself as a reason to believe we will win this title.

That is the problem.

The performances have been so poor, for the most part, that nobody is confident we will win this based on how we play. We might grind out results more effectively, but nobody believes we are going to play teams off the park.

If you want to know how low we have fallen, that is it. When people talk about winning by any means necessary, it is not a vote of confidence in the squad or the style of football. It is an admission that we do not trust ourselves to dominate games.

For the result at the weekend to matter in ways that restore faith, it has to be coupled with a radical change in how we approach the game.

If we scrape through this one, that will cover a multitude of sins again. We are not going to scrape our way through seven matches, with five of them against teams we have struggled against all season, playing like this. It is not going to happen.

A win this weekend should give us evidence of change. It should be a Celtic performance, one of the few we’ve managed in this campaign. It needs to be filled with attacking intent, something that cuts Dundee open.

This is the point where things have to change. The whole narrative of this race can pivot on 90 minutes if they show a Celtic this league hasn’t seen too much of lately.

Nobody will convince me there is not a configuration of this squad that can beat every team in front of us. There is. There has to be. It requires us to play more aggressively, more on the front foot, quicker with the ball, and with real movement off it.

There is a version of this Celtic team that can play that way. The domestic opposition, to be blunt, is not strong enough to stop it if we get it right.

We have to win. There is no debate about that. Without the three points, this is over. I have no doubt Hearts and the Ibrox club will win their weekend games. Drop points here and we fall further behind, and that is the title gone.

But if those three points come from a scrappy, disjointed performance, if we stumble through with no attacking cohesion, if we register two shots on target and call it enough, then all we have done is paper over the cracks for another week.

That does not solve the problem. It delays it.

All we’re doing is putting off the inevitable at that point; the defeat which, when it comes – and it will come – ends this title race once and for all.

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