A Celtic title win would force a conversation Scottish football doesn’t want to have.

Earlier today, I wrote a piece about the Green Brigade in which I said that the Celtic board has bought itself a little time and a little breathing space, at least in terms of the general atmosphere inside the ground.

These people have not bought themselves a reprieve by finally doing the right thing for once. They have simply given us as good a chance of winning the title as we were ever going to get, considering the sabotage earlier in the campaign.

A couple of days ago, Paulina wrote a piece arguing that this would be a dangerous league title to win if it meant we forgot the lessons of this campaign. The lessons that we cannot trust the people running this club. The lessons that they view the fans with contempt. We now know their judgement is badly flawed in ways that are profoundly dangerous to Celtic and its future.

In short, none of us is unaware that this club has acute problems.

We know we must solve those problems regardless of the outcome of this title race. Celtic fans are not naive. In fact, we are much smarter than some of the loons in our media give us credit for. These same people have proved over recent weeks and months just how brain-dead they are.

They, after all, are the people who said we were entitled. They are the people who said Rodgers was a troublemaker, and now, little by little, step by step, they have to admit that everything they thought they knew was wrong.

And the poster boy for this madness, Keith Jackson himself, tells us nothing today that we did not already know. Winning the title will not fix Celtic’s problems. Winning the double will not fix them either.

He now admits Rodgers was right and that we were right. He now admits the support was stronger than the board gave it credit for. Jackson admits that we have already seen a chairman leave and the Green Brigade return to the ground.

But this is typical of the Scottish media. They arrive at a conclusion long after we got there ourselves, then try to dress up that belated realisation as wisdom. Not one of them, not a single one, will consider the larger point or the obvious truth that will stare them in the face if Celtic once again engraves its name on the SPFL trophy.

Because everything they have said, and everything we have said, about this calamity of a season is true.

This has been a disaster. This has been a serious moment of reflection for all of us. It has made supporters pause, take stock, and rethink what is going on at our club and what has gone on here for some time. Most impressive of all, it has galvanised fans to action.

It is not wrongheaded to say that Celtic’s campaign has been one act of self-inflicted damage after another. That is simply a statement of fact.

But if that is a fact, then other things ought to be equally clear.

We may be on the brink of taking this title race to the final day. We may be on the brink of a Scottish Cup Final. And you know what that would mean? It would mean that even in this mess, even in a season like this, Celtic would still have been in the title race at the death, whether we win it or not.

It would mean a Scottish Cup Final, which we would be expected to win, on the back of also reaching a League Cup Final. We may have finished only a few percentage points short of a domestic treble in a season where our own club has looked like an epic basket case.

No one will want to ask what that says about Hearts. No one will want to look too closely at what it says about the situation at Ibrox. Danny Rohl, already knocked out of the Scottish Cup by Celtic, may yet lose the title to the worst Celtic side many of us have watched in more than ten years.

You would think the prospect of Celtic winning a domestic double might focus some minds on the problems elsewhere.

Will these people acknowledge, if it comes, that our success says nothing good for either of our rivals or for the Scottish game as a whole? This is not to deny that we have problems of our own.

In fact, it admits those problems, faces them squarely, and then asks the obvious question: what does that say about the rest of you?

A Celtic title win this season would not just rank among the most satisfying any of us can remember because of the circumstances. It would also mark a profound moment for Scottish football to take stock of its own failures. Because if we become champions, the Celtic board will not be the only people tempted to ignore the bigger picture. No one else will be keen to confront it either.

Instead, all the focus will be on how great the title race was.

It’ll focus on how brilliantly Hearts did, and how well Danny Rohl held his club together.

No one will want to say that this absolute shambles of a Celtic squad, this absolute basket case of a season, this club which has committed every act of self-destruction possible, has still somehow been good enough to secure the prize, and might have been good enough, with a little more luck and one fewer bad decision, to secure all three of them.

That would beg a pretty obvious question.

If they cannot stop us this season, is there any point in the rest turning up next year? And yes, I expect next season to be difficult. I expect it to be chaotic in some ways. I still do not trust the people running our club to make good decisions.

But the point remains, and it should haunt this whole game. If they cannot take it from us this year, when will they ever get themselves sufficiently organised to do it? What happens when Celtic gets back to its best?

What happens when the chaos and calamity are behind us?

Who is supposed to challenge us then, if they cannot even do it now?

Even if we do not win the title, the fact that we are likely to take it to the wire in this god-awful season should give people pause for thought.

But if Hearts win it, the whole story will be about the miracle of Tynecastle.

If Ibrox wins it, God help us all. The whole summer will be about how the balance of power has shifted, how they deserved it.

The fact that we shot ourselves in both feet will hardly be acknowledged at all.

This is the real difference between us and them. This is the real difference between clear-headed Celtic fans and a media which thrives on fantasy and fairy tale. Especially if the fantasy or fairy tale makes the Ibrox club sound better than they are.

We are capable of putting what happens this season in its proper context.

We are capable of looking at a triumph and saying that it does not fix all our problems. Celtic fans are capable of facing a negative outcome with a degree of equanimity. We already know we are not very good and that things have to change.

That is why, if Celtic does win this title, the reaction of the media and the rest of the game will tell us as much about them as the campaign itself has told us about us. Because we already know what we are. The real question is whether the rest of Scottish football is ready to face what it is.

Choose The CelticBlog as a ‘Preferred Source’ on Google News for quick access to the news you value.