Yes Celtic deserves credit. It’s amazing that it took Boyd to say it.

Celtic fans will have heard the old adage about wisdom coming “out of the mouths of babes and infants.” It is weird, though, to talk about wisdom coming out of the mouths of bampots and idiots. But incredibly, truth does sometimes emerge from the strangest places.

So, if many of us are rubbing their eyes in shock today, reeling at the latest statement from The Village Idiot, they certainly are not alone. The one thing I will say is that his suggestion that perhaps we deserve a little more credit than we’ve been getting is not exactly a revolutionary thought.

Let’s not pretend he was gushing in his praise for Celtic or anything like that. He certainly wasn’t. He simply pointed out a fact: if Hearts and the Ibrox club are getting praised for their form, perhaps Celtic deserve to be praised for theirs too.

That becomes even more obvious when you look at Martin O’Neill’s record. As I’ve said before, he is the on-form manager in the country since he walked back through the doors.

It is not that our record has been perfect. It has been up and down. We had two pretty consequential defeats against Hibs and Dundee United. Win either one of those games, instead of losing it, and the picture looks very different.

But that is football. We can’t go back. We can only look at how we have responded and where we presently stand.

Although this still has a ways to go, we are in a better position now than we have any right to think we should be.

I am not a great fan of the style of football we are playing. I certainly don’t think it can continue into next season. But right now, we are getting results. We are putting points on the board more consistently than just about any other team, and we have had no praise for that at all.

Even in a chaotic season, where we don’t look anywhere near our best, we might still be only a few weeks away from a domestic double. Having reached the League Cup final as well, we might finish this campaign with only Wilfried Nancy having prevented a treble.

We can say all that without claiming we have been brilliant at any time.

We made a right royal mess of this, and we deserve stick for that. But to write us off completely, in the way a lot of people in the media did, was nonsensical. There was no logic to it.

It is as if the media formed this idea in its head and refused to shift from it. The season was a complete calamity for Celtic. The wounds were too deep and too self-inflicted. There was simply no way back for us.

But our form has not fallen off a cliff.

You even had people like Sutton predicting that we would not win a single post-split fixture. Well, the first one is already won. It is like the supercomputer story. How much attention you pay to it depends on how much you want to believe a fantasy version of reality.

I prefer the real thing.

The real thing is that we are only three points off the top. Both of our title rivals play each other this time next week. We have as good a chance as we could want at this stage, even allowing for the fact that we need to be perfect.

We have no more wiggle room. That is just a fact.

But our form is more like the form of champions than the media would have you believe. With players who have been over the course, and a manager who has been over the course, it is no wonder the bookmakers have now made us favourites again, although we do badly need Hearts to drop something soon.

In terms of credit for us having hung in there, there has been none. None whatsoever.

You would not believe we had gone through the whole Wilfried Nancy debacle and left a lot of points on the board during that period. You would not believe we had collapsed so spectacularly in that spell where we lost to both the Tynecastle club and the Ibrox club in a matter of weeks.

Throw in the cup final, and the whole thing becomes absolutely unbelievable.

To have pulled ourselves up from that kind of position, to still be in this race and sitting second with four games to go, is a minor miracle for the ages.

Yet nobody wants to say it.

That is what makes it even more absurd that the first person to openly acknowledge it in a proper way is one of our fiercest critics. One of the most pro-Ibrox and bitter people in the entire broadcast media.

For that acknowledgement, overdue as it is, for that tiny modicum of respect, to come out of the mouth of Kris Boyd adds another surreal layer to what has already been a surreal season.

If this season ends in a Celtic title win, nobody in the media will say we genuinely deserved it. I know that already.

The story will be about hard luck at Hearts or about a late collapse at Ibrox. The story will be about how, if Röhl had another six months and the summer transfer window to get his team together, or if Hearts had not picked up late-season injuries, someone else’s name would be engraved on the trophy.

It will all be about how they threw it away rather than how we won it.

I have lamented the poor nature of this campaign. I have said repeatedly that this is a donkey derby, not a race of thoroughbreds, and that the least bad team will be the one that gets over the line.

But that does not mean the winners will not deserve to have got there.

It’s just that if it is Celtic, no one will acknowledge it.

The narrative has already been formed. This will be a title someone else gave away. But no one gives away a title. The league table may exaggerate, but it does not lie. To be in the race this long, despite all the chaos and calamity that has surrounded Celtic this year, deserves recognition. It deserves some level of praise for the manager and for the players.

It deserves an acknowledgement that it has taken a lot to get here.

Yes, it will take a lot more to get over the line. We all know that. We may or may not be good enough to finish the job.

But anyone who has spent weeks handing credit to Hearts, and anyone who has layered it on thick for those at Ibrox, owes Celtic more respect than we have been given.

They had to admit it eventually. The surprise is who broke cover first. Fair play to him for it. It cannot have been easy to say, but The Village Idiot is right.

Celtic deserve more credit than we are getting.

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