Celtic must send Tavernier off remembered forever as a loser.

There was a very funny moment in the House of Commons once, when two Yorkshire lads standing in for their party leaders clashed at Prime Minister’s Questions. It remains one of the greatest, most hilarious exchanges of banter ever heard over the dispatch box.

John Prescott versus William Hague. Go and Google it and watch it. It is tremendous, even if you do not like politics. You will appreciate the brilliance of the insults, all of them delivered in good humour and with a level of sophistication.

At one point, Prescott slapped back at something Hague said by saying he was the first Tory leader not to become Prime Minister.

That was actually true at the time, and it must have stung as badly as any slap either party landed on the other. Hague has since been superseded by a procession of Tory leaders who never got to be Prime Minister, but at the time that was so real and raw that he must have been wincing about it for days afterwards.

It was the thing that popped into my head today when I read that James Tavernier is to depart Ibrox at the end of this season.

Even if you account for the silverware he has won, he is an exceptional figure in the history of the Ibrox operation, because of all the long-serving captains of the two Ibrox clubs, he might be the least successful. It is not for nothing that Captain Disappointment has become such a figure of fun and mockery amongst Celtic fans.

I do not know all the ins and outs of what has informed this decision, but I cannot help but think there are two elements of it which matter. The first is that he knows if they win the title this season, people will remember him for that.

It will be job done, and he can go a happy man.

He also knows that if they do not win it this year, they are never going to win it, and that has to factor in somewhere. In either case, this is the moment to go, because in one scenario he gets to rehabilitate his reputation to an extent, and in the other it is beyond recovery anyway.

Sure, there is probably a financial element to it. I very much doubt they are going to offer him any kind of contract on the level he is on right now.

Let’s not forget that we are talking about a guy who, for a long time, was Scotland’s most well-paid footballer. That seems kind of farcical now when you think about it, but it remains a fact nonetheless. Maybe he wants to go somewhere else. Maybe the fabled offer from Saudi Arabia is waiting for him at the end of this campaign. Hey, you never know. Brendan Rodgers may even be the one who does it, although I rather doubt that.

More than likely, he will line himself up a move to some modest league where he will get a fraction of his current salary, but where there will be benefits for him and his family. Or he will get to lie on the beach most days and not have to worry about pressure, the kind of pressure that he has proved time and time again he does not function well under.

I write this knowing full well that I am giving a hostage to fortune.

Because this could be the season when Tavernier and his team get over the line. It could very well be. But this guy is a loser, and he will depart a loser no matter what. There is a part of him that will always know it took an epochal collapse at Celtic to give him his window.

Even then, he and his club only squeezed through the crack of it.

In another year, this campaign would have been a blowout, and he would be departing beyond all shadow of a doubt as one of the great comedic figures in the history of our game. There is still a very good chance that this is exactly how he will depart the scene.

They may even find themselves in third place by the time the curtain comes down, and that would be a fitting end to his time at the club.

It is easy to call Tavernier a loser when you look at the pitiful trophy haul that the club has managed in the time he has been there.

I am not surprised to see that there are Ibrox fan sites characterising him as a chronic underachiever, because he is. It is equally unsurprising to see that there are sites defending him. I say let them. They are welcome to.

He is a symbol of how far their club has fallen from where they believe it ought to be.

He is the walking, talking embodiment of their mediocrity.

As I said, even if they find themselves champions at the end of this campaign, it will be because Hearts threw away a huge lead and because Celtic are in a category one mess. It will not be because he was brilliant, or because the team he plays in is brilliant.

The moment that sums this season up is the miss in the penalty shootout. He was the first taker. He has had more practice from the spot than any player in the recent history of the Scottish game.

But you could see on his face the dread he felt at taking that kick.

The psychological boost that he gave Celtic was enormous. Go and check the Ibrox forums and their response to that moment. The word “loser” features a lot. The word “bottler” features a lot.

Those are accurate representations of the player they have been watching for all these years. This is in spite of the number of goals he has scored and his ability with a dead ball, which I would have taken in our Celtic team any day of the week.

I am not saying I would have taken Tavernier; of course not.

But to have just one player capable of doing that, it would have been nice.

For all of it, he has remained a more divisive figure over there than he does over here.

We all find him moderately hilarious, although we have had plenty of reasons to curse him over the years.

What I love most about him now is that when he is being interviewed after some crushing result, you can see that he is fighting with himself not to say that he is disappointed.

There are two movie scenes that come to mind.

The first is in Pulp Fiction, where the guy cannot stop saying “what?” to Samuel L. Jackson. The other is in The Negotiator, where Farley cannot stop saying the word “no” on the phone (again to Sam Jackson) although he has been explicitly told that it is the one word in negotiations that gets people killed.

Those two moments are about pressure.

Those two moments are about whether or not you can contain yourself and keep calm. The fight that it takes Tavernier not to use that word shows how well he deals with pressure. Because he is weak mentally, he was a terrible choice for captain.

His leadership, or lack thereof, has dragged that team down.

It has done it as much as poor players, bad signings and terrible managers have.

As such, I will be sad in a way to see him go. Whoever they replace him with will not have his dead-ball ability, and they will lose that. They will not have his ability to create chances and lay on goals, and they will lose that too. But they may gain an actual leader, and they do not have that right now.

It is the job of this Celtic team to get over the line for reasons that are all about us. For our own sake, our own future, our own prosperity. To put another couple of trophies in the bag. For the fans. For ourselves. But it would put the capstone on Tavernier’s career. It would send him as the failure we all know him to be. The loser we all know him to be.

It will just be the icing on the cake.

It is not a reason in itself to want us to win this league. There are plenty of better reasons than that. But will it make it a little sweeter? Will it make it taste a little better? Hell yes. Because of that, I will enjoy it that little bit more if it comes.

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