The Ibrox club tried to hide from the pressure. Today it fell on them.

About a month ago, when we heard the news that the Ibrox club and Hearts were both taking themselves on the road for a little late-season break, I remember thinking how crazy that sounded. First, it was an admission of defeat. The only reason they had the opportunity was because neither of them was good enough to be in the cup semi-final.

But it does something else too.

When you take yourself out of the pressure cooker, you lose the edge.

During the Second World War and Vietnam, troops who fell off the line, whether through injury, leave or R&R, suffered adaptation shock when they returned to the blood and the mud.

They had gone from a frontline situation, where the mind is always active and stress levels are high, to comfort and relaxation far from the fight.

On the line, every sense is heightened. You are always trying to stay two steps ahead of the events unfolding around you. Then suddenly, you are away from it. You are somewhere safe, somewhere calm, somewhere comfortable.

It is difficult to move from one state to another cleanly.

Troops who came back from leave, or who spent time in hospital, were a little less sharp and a little less focused for a while after their return. The better time they had away, the harder that adjustment must have been.

It must be difficult enough to sit on a beach knowing you are only there because someone else is in the cup semi-final and you are not. But as I said last week, the pressure is waiting for you when you get back home. All downtime does in a situation like this is increase how hard that pressure hits when you return.

Celtic stayed in the pressure cooker. Celtic stayed in a combat-ready state. We had to go to Hampden and come back from losing that second goal just before full-time. We knew we had to get through another 30 minutes, and we found the extra edge.

Celtic got the job done early in extra time.

Yesterday at home, Celtic produced one of our most relaxed and calm performances of the season. That was because we are fully immersed in this now. We are in the cycle. We are in the combat zone and we’ll be there until this is done. Celtic have not lost that state of mind.

But the Ibrox club were away sunning themselves, as if they could leave all the pressure behind them. As if going on holiday would wash it all away.

Then we won yesterday.

Suddenly, they had to win today. We know how that turned out. They made every mistake you could make in terms of psychological conditioning, and we have now exploited it. We have to keep exploiting it. We have to win our next game. Then, when they roll into town, we have to make sure we win that one too.

But they did not come back with the swagger and the spring in their step of a team that had scored six against Falkirk. Whatever edge they were riding, whatever momentum they had, they left it behind wherever they were resting.

Momentum is often misunderstood. What momentum comes down to, as much as anything else, is routine under stress.

We know that. We have observed that. If you are miles ahead in the title race and a free week comes up, then it is permissible to take your players away and recharge the batteries.

But that is not what this was. This was a high-pressure, no-margin-for-error situation with everything on the line. The smart thing would have been to stay at home and work doubly hard. Don’t get me wrong, it can work. But the downside risk is enormous.

On a day when Celtic were competing in the cup semi-final, they should have had their players on the training ground sweating it out. That is what keeps you sharp. It keeps you in the moment. It keeps you in the mental headspace where you know you have a job to do, and that it has to be done. On top of that, it sends the right message, that there should be a price for failure, not a reward for being not quite good enough.

Taking the players away sent the opposite message. It revealed a certain mentality. Not a lack of professionalism exactly, but a sort of unseriousness, as though losing was something to brush off more lightly than it should ever be brushed off.

It was always folly. Absolute folly.

Today, the Ibrox club paid a high price for that stupidity. They paid for that mistake. They paid for ignoring one of the key precepts of coping with pressure.

You have to face it and stand up against it. You certainly cannot run away from it, because it always waits for you when you have to return to normality. The best thing they could have done was acknowledge it and try to work through it. Instead, they tried to escape it.

That is a category-one error. There is no telling how consequential it is going to be.

More on that when I get to the fear and loathing later on.

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