We’re just ninety minutes away from the sweetest Celtic title of our lives.

So today is the day.

The longest, hardest, toughest season Celtic has faced in years comes down to this. A season of spectacular highs and spectacular lows. A season where, at times, the right thing was done at exactly the right moment, and where incomprehensible stupidity, arrogance and ego run amok have conspired to do more self-harm to this club than any external force has managed in more than a decade.

For all the pain this season has brought to many of us, and for all the difficulty it has manifested for the club, here we are.

This is it.

It will either end in triumph, or it will end in the nightmare of seeing our title lost to a side that did not even finish in a European place last season. If that happens, it will be a disgrace for this club, and the roots of it will be easily traceable all the way back to our own boardroom, where serious change will be required.

The fact that we are here at all is down to one man.

Martin O’Neill.

He has dragged a club that was on its knees to the brink of glory. Three points today puts the title in the bag and allows us to go into the summer with a lot more confidence and stability than we otherwise would have had.

A third-place finish for Celtic would have been nothing short of a catastrophe. It is a catastrophe for the club that did finish third, but at least we no longer have that concern hanging over us. Not that we are without concerns of our own, but we are in a better place than we have any right to be.

Ninety minutes.

Ninety minutes to exorcise a lot of the demons from the campaign we have just endured. Ninety minutes to change some of the narrative around this club. Ninety minutes to give us title 56 and our fifth in a row.

This one is important because I think it has already broken a lot of people elsewhere. We were supposed to be dead and buried, yet we are still walking. More than that, we are still ready to punch people out, and that is devastating to what these people believe about themselves and what they believed about us.

Today would be a triumph not without parallel, but certainly without any recent precedent. You have to go back to 2008 to find a title we won on the last day. There have been titles we did not win on the last day since, but nothing like this. Nothing like a season where we hamstrung our own efforts, where the odds were stacked against us, and where, with seven or eight games to go, people were giving us zero per cent chance.

Even back in the 2008 campaign, nobody was giving us zero per cent.

This is widely accepted to be one of the poorest Celtic teams many of us have ever watched, but mentally they are as strong as lions. The psychology that underpins this team, the manager and the key players is immense.

We will miss the institutional memory that comes with multiple successes in and around the team. It is why we should work harder to retain key players for longer than we do. Once you have been inside a successful winning machine, that becomes the baseline for your standards from then on. Everyone who signs for the club walks into a dressing room full of winners.

It is that winning mentality which has made this whole thing possible.

That, and a manager who is able to get the best out of players and inspire them to become these versions of themselves. There is clearly also a seriously good unity within the playing squad, which is what usually comes from having the entire media industry that is supposed to cover the game basically write you off, even though there was never a point where we were completely out of it in terms of games remaining and the points differential.

It has been a season of embarrassing narratives, and it is only fitting that the media saved the best one for last.

It has been instructive, in any number of ways, to see who the true paranoids and crazies in Scottish football are. It is not Celtic fans. It is not even Ibrox fans. It is mainstream journalists, who have exposed themselves as the absolute pits, not just over the last few days, but over the last few months.

This is an industry that gives Ryan Stevenson a gig. This is an industry that still employs Kris Boyd. This is an industry where there are so many ex-players whose average IQ barely meets room temperature that it has become a long-standing joke that if you had the mental fortitude to sign a contract, you could get a gig writing for a national newspaper.

There is no absence of evidence that it might not be a joke after all.

For years, we have said that the only requirement to get a job with the BBC was some former connection with Ibrox. This season, they have expanded that to include Tynecastle, and the average IQ has not exactly gone up as a consequence.

Nobody wants us to win this.

Martin O’Neill had that spot on. Nobody wants Celtic to be champions. It does not matter whether it is driven by the usual bigotry or whether people have simply got carried away with the mythology of Hearts. We are standing alone.

The only people outside Celtic Park who want to see this come off are the supporters of Hibs.

It has been obvious for a long time exactly what role we would play in the closing stretch of the season. The fact that it has been left to the final game will make it all the harder for some people to handle. We have been behind for almost the whole time, and if we snatch it now, in the final match, I think a lot of people will lose their minds.

But we are not here to look after the so-called best interests of the game.

We are not here to make someone else’s fairy tale come true.

Celtic is a fairy tale, and our first responsibility is to ourselves. Since no one else wants to see us do it, that will make it all the better if we do.

I am not saying that no one likes us and we do not care.

I am saying that those who dislike us do so with such virulence and vehemence that I will drink their tears like the sweetest wine.

This team has fought, clawed and at times scraped its way to the line. The number of last-minute winners is almost too ridiculous to count. The determination not to let this slip away is almost too immense to describe.

This team will not be broken.

It will not be beaten.

Today is one last push.

If we do it, people will talk about it for decades, and I personally do not care what stories some of them will tell themselves.

Because we will know the truth.

We will know the facts.

We will know we earned it.

And you know what?

That is enough.

That is more than good enough.

We are 90 minutes away.

I will see you all on the other side.

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