Celtic: The secret of our success.

Earlier in the week, Ryan Stevenson talked about how last Saturday was a dark day for Celtic. We had just won our fifth title in a row. We had just won title number 56. We had this cup final to look forward to today. Celtic were being told there is some shame in our success.

Well bollocks to that rubbish.

I don’t know about you, but I want more dark days like these.

They seem kind of fun. They seem kind of special. Almost every club in world football would love to have dark days like these.

I said the other day that everyone in Scottish football had a lot to learn from Martin O’Neill and from this Celtic team. A lot of people in Scottish football talk about Celtic being a rich club without giving any consideration to where that wealth comes from.

It comes from us.

It comes from the supporters. It comes from the scale of the club. It comes from decades of loyalty, ticket money, merchandise, travel, subscriptions, European nights, sold-out stadiums and people putting their hands in their pockets year after year. If there was ever a season from which others should learn the lesson, it is this one.

You have the Ibrox club once again spending sugar-daddy money. You have Hearts more reliant than ever on outside financing. This is treated as if it is perfectly normal, as if it is perfectly fine. But Celtic’s strength is different.

I hear people all the time asking how Celtic fans can still enjoy triumphs when we win so often. I always tell them the same thing.

We built this. If we take an inordinate amount of pleasure in seeing what we built become so strong and successful, why shouldn’t we?

Are we not allowed that?

Because sometimes it still feels as if this is a country that thinks the uppity Fenians should not have too much. Should not enjoy life too much. Should not be allowed to become too successful before someone tries to put them back in their box.

But we are not happy with that state of affairs. We are not going to live with it. We are not going to accept it. That’s one of the things the Grand Conspiracy article on the Ibrox forums did get right; John Reid was the guy who said “we’re not going to sit at the back of the bus” and that, for many of us, was an amazing thing to hear because it gelled perfectly with how we thought about it all ourselves.

This is part of what they struggle to understand, and one of the things that has annoyed them so much this season is that even when we looked out of it, even when we looked like we were in real trouble in this title race, we were still going to fight for it.

Then fans fought for the future of the club itself. We did not get sentimental about the past. We did not make extravagant claims about outside forces holding us back. We knew that the only thing holding us back was inside our own walls. When our enemies say we are too strong, there is truth in that, even if not in the way they intend.

We are too strong. That is a fact.

We have more power than they do. We have more power than any club in Scotland has ever enjoyed before, and it is going to be damn hard to shift us.

Even when we faltered this season, even when we hamstrung ourselves, they still were not good enough to beat us. Part of the anger pouring out from everywhere has been caused by one simple question.

If they couldn’t catch us now, when will they ever?

It is not the wrong question to ask. And here’s the first lesson. It starts with realising that you are not special.

Football is a meritocracy. You have to be the best if you are going to succeed. The world does not owe you anything. Football does not owe you anything. The football gods will not smile on you because you feel entitled to your turn.

Celtic fans were not angry earlier in the season because we believe we have a divine right to win things. We follow a club that should always be in the hunt for trophies, but our anger did not come from entitlement.

It came from the prospect of unnecessary and stupid failure. There has never been a sense of entitlement among Celtic fans because we are not from that cultural mindset.

I know it will seem absurd to outsiders to hear us navel-gazing when we have just won a double. But we should have been far stronger this season than we were.

I know there are people who wonder how we get any satisfaction from winning anymore, far less why we would wonder why we did not win more. But we should have had a Champions League run. We should have had the treble. We should have had this league wrapped up long before the final day.

That is not entitlement. Had this club put forth its full strength, those things could have happened. Looking at where we are now, they would have happened.

That is the next lesson others have to learn if they want to catch us. Have the confidence to believe success is possible, but do not mistake confidence for arrogance.

I’ll say one thing for Tony Bloom: he believes it is possible. I think he is wrong, but he believes it. The first time someone does stop us, that is what it will take. I just never believed this was the year. Not at any point. The relief at putting the Ibrox club out of the race was that I knew we could handle Hearts on the last day.

Confidence should not be mistaken for arrogance.

If you are going to be arrogant, you had better be able to back it up. I tend to find that those who are the most arrogant are often the ones least able to do that.

Humility and respect are how you know the difference.

Confidence is belief in your own ability. It does not mean dismissing the opposition. You never hear anyone at Celtic dismiss the opposition. You never hear anyone at Celtic saying that because we are Celtic, we should automatically beat everyone else.

Every opponent gets respect.

So, you start by realising you are not special and that no one owes you anything. Then you have the confidence to believe you can succeed, even against the odds. But you do not let it tip into arrogance.

The third thing is to remain clear and focused.

Look across the city. Look at Edinburgh right now. What you see are two clubs that are not focused at all, not on the things that matter.

They have become obsessed with petty matters and grievance. You cannot build success on point-scoring and grievance. The whole idea of a siege mentality only works up to a point, and it does not work at all if someone else is doing the football better.

The fourth thing follows from the third.

You have to be able to handle pressure. You have to be able to shut out the noise when others are trying to ramp it up. You do your talking on the pitch, where it matters.

You do not get distracted mouthing off in the media and trying to pay off scores all the time. That only saps energy you need for what really counts.

If you let the barbs and the criticism bounce off you, or even better, if you use them as fuel, you will succeed where others have failed.

I said that Hearts and the Ibrox club made a catastrophic decision by going away during cup semi-final week. I said it would come back to haunt them both.

First, because you cannot run from pressure, and you should not even try. You should be right there in the middle of the fire, learning how to deal with it.

They chose to get away from the pressure, not realising that pressure does not fall away. You take it with you.

Every moment you are sitting on the beach, you are thinking about what is going on back home. Celtic powering past St Mirren in extra time to get to the final. Celtic gearing up to face you when you come back.

It is not only about having the best players.

You have to have the best attitude. You have to have the right frame of mind. You have to have the right mentality. There are no shortcuts.

That is what some of our rivals will not understand.

Sugar-daddy spending is crazy because it suggests there are shortcuts. It suggests you can build long-term sustainable success with unsustainable spending. But spending is not the answer to every problem.

What it often creates is a club where people get paid an awful lot of money but are not expected to win things. Celtic are different.

We expect to win because we have built a club capable of winning. We expect to compete because our support has made that possible. We demand standards because we know what this club can be when it operates properly.

Scottish football could learn a lot from Celtic if it wanted to try.

If it was not so busy resenting our success, it could honestly account for how it happened. It could give us credit for once. It could ask why this club keeps winning, why this support keeps turning up, why this structure keeps delivering, and why, even in a season where we made a mess of so much, we still ended it with a double.

But I’m not going to hold my breath. Not for any of it.

Because that would require them to admit the truth.

Celtic are not lucky. Celtic are not an accident. Celtic are not some artificial force propped up by outside money. Celtic are what every other club in Scotland claims it wants to be. Strong. Relentless. Demanding. Self-sustaining. Built by the people who love it.

That is the lesson. Whether anyone else is willing to learn it is another matter.

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