Hugh Keevins insults Celtic and sounds like a clown with his “zero chance” rubbish.

Last week, the veteran (by that I mean old and useless) broadcaster Hugh Keevins said Celtic have a “zero per cent chance” of winning this title. Zero.

Not a small chance. Not an outside chance. This was not some line about how we would need everything to go our way.

Zero. Finished. Dead. Done.

I am sorry, but when you hear something like that said about Celtic, you do not just shrug and move on as though it is a sensible thing to say. You stop for a second and wonder what exactly some of these people think they have been watching all these years. You wonder what is left between their ears except saw-dust and rat shit.

What a ridiculous thing to say. Zero chance in a title race where the top three sides are separated by a mere three points. What a clown.

I have been following Scottish football closely for about a year now, and I know this not about this man making one daft remark. It is about his familiar rush to write Celtic off completely, to speak about this club as though its history, mentality and sheer bloody-mindedness count for absolutely nothing the minute things get difficult.

That is the part I cannot accept.

Criticise Celtic? Fine. Say we have been poor? Of course we have. Say the squad has flaws, that the football has disappointed and that there are real reasons to doubt? Nobody can argue with that. But “zero per cent chance” is not analysis. This is not even criticism. It is spiteful. It has the feel of a schoolyard insult, something childish in its absurdity.

That is why it hit me so hard. I felt that anger straight away. I felt that disbelief, that frustration that comes from hearing your club reduced to a punchline in somebody else’s story especially when you write this club off at your own risk.

That is what people like Keevins do not want to get, and I am convinced this is about want. Or rather, what they don’t want. They look at a team sheet and think they have the full picture. No striker, he says. Utter lack of goalscorer. Just like that, he builds his whole argument on one part of the game, as though Celtic have never adapted, never evolved and never found ways to win when things were not perfect.

James nailed this stupid narrative last night in his piece about the league goals. We were one behind the Ibrox club yesterday before their game and one ahead of Hearts. Yet the whole story has been about our lack of a striker, as though nobody at Celtic was getting goals.

Do they really think goals only appear when there is one designated man there to score them? Do they really think Celtic built its entire history on one player at a time? I do not see it that way, and I’ve not got the decades behind me that this man has behind him. Why is it that I see it more clearly than he does?

Then I hear him say that Sevco and Hearts have a better chance of coming to Celtic Park and winning. Celtic Park. Even writing that makes something shift in me.

Because Celtic Park is not just a stadium to me. It is a living, breathing thing. It is nights under the lights when the air feels heavier, when the noise wraps itself around the players and when the history of this club presses down on anyone who walks onto that pitch thinking it is just another game.

And I am supposed to believe teams will stroll in there and take points because we are missing a striker? No. I reject that completely.

I have felt Celtic Park when it matters. I have seen how it lifts our players, how it drags them forward even when legs are tired and minds are full of doubt. In those moments it becomes more than football. It becomes something emotional, something almost impossible to explain.

That is the part these pundits can never measure.

They can talk tactics all day. They can list weaknesses, point out flaws and highlight what we do not have. But they cannot measure heart. They cannot measure resilience. They cannot measure what happens when players wearing that badge decide they are not going to accept the story that has been written for them.

That is why this gets to me so much.

Because I do not just hear doubt in comments like that. I hear someone telling me that everything I believe about Celtic, everything I have seen and everything I know, counts for nothing.

What stupidity, because I have watched too much and felt too much to just nod along with that.

I have seen Celtic prove people wrong. I have seen games that looked as though they were slipping away turn on a single moment, a single bit of brilliance that changed everything. That is football. That is Celtic.

So, when someone says zero per cent, I do not just disagree. I almost laugh.

There is always a chance. As long as there are points to play for, as long as there are games left and as long as Celtic are still standing, there is a chance. Maybe it is difficult. Maybe it requires something special. But zero?

Never. Not with this club. And maybe, just maybe, this is exactly what Celtic need.

Maybe this is the spark. Maybe this is the thing that gets into the dressing room, gets under the players’ skin and makes them look at each other and say, right, let’s show them. Because I want that.

I want Celtic to take every word, every doubt and every dismissive comment and turn it into fuel. I want performances that scream defiance. Goals and results that feel like statements. I want wins that silence every single voice that said it could not be done.

I want to sit there, watching it all unfold, feeling that surge of pride and that overwhelming sense of this is why I love this club.

So let them talk. Let Hugh Keevins keep saying there is no chance. Let them doubt and dismiss and write us off completely. I will be right here, waiting to laugh long and hard at the end when Celtic proves them all wrong.