Jackson, like many others, has written off Celtic. It would be great to win this.

Oh man. I don’t know if you read Keith Jackson’s article this morning, but spare yourself the pain. I’ll give you the long and short of it.

This is a title race with twists and turns in it. This is a title race where three flawed teams are vying for the prize. All three could drop points in any game. That’s it. That’s the substance of it. If he had written that in straight, flat tones, it would have been one thing. But he wrote it like a man who can hardly believe what he is watching. His excitement is off the charts.

And you know what? I just find it mind-numbing now.

We are watching the worst Celtic side any of us can remember seeing in a long time. We are watching a Hearts side that is playing above itself, but is not actually on any kind of exceptional run of form. In addition, we are watching an Ibrox side which, in spite of all the hype surrounding it, is actually pretty ordinary. Trying to convince us that this is some kind of title race for the ages is simply not sustainable in reality.

I’m sure there are people out there who do find this title race exciting rather than excruciating. I know there are people who find it exhilarating and think it offers some great advert for Scottish football. I’m just not one of them. I don’t get it. I don’t get how anyone can whip themselves into a frenzy over this and imagine they are watching something brilliant. Instead, they are watching something that is, in truth, a little embarrassing.

But here’s the general point of the piece.

Jackson, like so many others, even taking account of the weekend’s results, still does not really acknowledge that we are in this race.

It’s there in the whole framing of the article. It is built around the idea that it is Hearts and the Ibrox club going head to head, and that they are the only sides with a chance to win it. There are three points separating us from the top of the league. Three points. And yet you would think it was already over. It seems like we were the also-rans, the afterthought, the club making up the numbers.

Look, I’m pretty clear that I don’t necessarily think we are going to do it. I watch Celtic and I have too many doubts in my mind. But I also know that we have the best manager. We have the best players. I know we are the side that has been over the line before. I also know that if we get into the split in our present position, we will have the advantage in terms of home games.

That matters.

And there is a reason why so many of us think that if we did win this title, it would be one of the sweetest and most satisfying title wins of all time. Not because we have been brilliant. In fact, partly because we haven’t been brilliant.

Partly because we have seemed determined to shoot ourselves in the foot at every turn. If we have done all that to ourselves, if we have been this self-destructive, and we still finish as champions, there will be something undeniably sweet about that.

But a lot of that sweetness would be about the media.

I said right from the start to ignore all the talk from the West of Scotland press about how excited they were by the Hearts title challenge. They were excited by the Hearts title challenge only because it didn’t look like there was going to be one from Ibrox.

Once we had conspired to do enough damage to ourselves, and Hearts had climbed into the position some of them wanted to romanticise, they wrapped themselves in that story. Now Hearts have fallen exactly as some of us predicted they would. As a result, an Ibrox title tilt is back on the table, and these people are positively salivating over it.

The bottom half of Jackson’s article is nothing but salivating over it.

And the pretence that any of this was ever really about Hearts has now been dropped.

This is anyone but Celtic. It’s that simple. And it always was.

That is the reason this would feel so satisfying if we somehow did it.

It’s because no one expects Celtic to do it, and no one wants us to do it. The last few years have been filled with moments, even whole spells of the campaign, where it was obvious that sections of the media were getting wildly overexcited about Ibrox winning a few games in a row. There have been years where every decent result was treated as evidence that the balance of power had shifted.

And yet here we still are.

If the balance of power has shifted, then it hasn’t shifted very much. This is not tectonic plates moving and changing the shape of continents. It is a minor earthquake. That is all this season would be if it were won by someone other than Celtic.

If we can get our act together, if we can bring in proper leadership at the top of the club and proper players onto the pitch instead of floundering as we have been, then I have no doubt that things will return to their natural state next season.

The question is what the people at the top of our club are made of. This is important because they may yet be the reason we do not get there this season.

But it is the casual way so many in the mainstream media write Celtic off that irritates me most.

The ease with which they do it. The comfort with which they assume this is now a straight fight between the other two. The willingness to pretend that three points is an unbridgeable gap, as if we are not Celtic, as if we have not done this before, as if the pressure will not tell on the others too.

How great would it be to silence these people?

How magnificent would it be for Celtic to end this season with five in a row? Not just for our own sake, but for what it would do to a lot of those in the media who have spent the season waiting for someone, anyone, to stop us?

I genuinely think we would break them.

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