The core of Celtic’s next dominating team is currently at the club.

All the talk over the last couple of days has been about the media and their disgusting reaction to Celtic winning the title. We’ve all had a good laugh at it. But it’s not really what we should be talking about now.

Sky did the whole hand-wringing bit the other day, even though they are among those pushing some of the more horrendous stories. So let us stop, for a while at least, talking about the controversy the media wants to whip up.

Let’s talk about the team.

Paulina talked yesterday about Callum McGregor, and I think that was a very good change of pace. More than just Callum himself, she talked about Kieran Tierney’s comments on McGregor, and I think the team spirit they are talking about is something we have to try to maintain.

These are winners.

You want to keep those guys at your club.

They are iron-willed. While other clubs slumped and folded when the pressure became too hot, these guys found another gear.

This team needs work. It quite possibly needs a lot of work. But there is no reason why we cannot try to keep the core group together, and I wish to God we would.

I know we won’t. But I wish we would.

Arne Engels is a player I would keep here for the next five years and beyond. I would keep Maeda here for as long as he was willing to stay. Alistair Johnston has to be tied down to a long-term deal as soon as that is practicable, because he is a captain.

Although Callum will probably hand the armband over to Kieran Tierney at some point, we have to be thinking about the long-term replacement right now. If we are not, that is a bad situation to be in.

So not only do we need to keep the core of this team together, we have to start thinking about what the next core of the next major Celtic side is going to look like.

There is a lot to do. There is a lot to get right. But it is not impossible, and it starts with trying to keep as many of your good players as you can.

We know who the players in the squad are. We know who can be relied upon. The best thing the incoming manager, whoever that might be, can do is watch as many games as possible and learn who those players are.

Letting them go means we have even more work to do.

That seems self-defeating to me.

There is always change at football clubs. There is always transition. You are always moving from one team to another, one form to another. The fact we have managed to keep the basic core of this team together over the past three or four years is easy to overlook when you consider the number of top players who have been sold.

But we will be a better team next season. We almost certainly will be. We have to be. Whether we are as mentally strong next year will depend on how many of these guys are still here. Talent is not enough.

Talent has never been enough.

A strong mentality is what wins more trophies than anything else. The number of leaders, the number of winners, the number of people you have in the squad who, on a bad day, will drag others up, make them work, and push them beyond their limits.

That is what makes a winning team.

You can have a team full of showboaters. A team full of individuals. Guys who want to go their own way, for their own reasons, and play football for themselves.

But what matters most is team spirit and mentality.

That starts the minute a new player arrives at the club. They know who in the dressing room carries respect. If they are smart, those are the people they listen to. We have been very fortunate indeed that we have a number of those guys.

Look at Arne Engels. This is a guy who was brought in last season and took a lot of stick. I never understood why. We are still finding out how good Engels can be.

But I know this. He’s one of the youngest players in the Celtic team and on Saturday he took a penalty kick just before half-time. He had to score it or we were in serious trouble. Our title race hung in the balance.

He did it. That is a strong mentality.

Not just that, but he now has two years under his belt as a winner. As a title-winning player in a title-winning side. The idea that we are just going to sell him because the offer is right does not sit right with me. It never has.

I accept that it would be a lot of money. I accept that he may want to go. But I do not think we fight hard enough to keep these guys, because I do not think there is enough appreciation in the boardroom for what these guys are actually worth.

More than money, they are the core of a winning side.

As long as your squad has a handful of these players, it can get through anything. The beautiful thing is that those players can turn an otherwise disparate group of footballers into a title-winning side, making other players stronger as well.

Then, when one group of leaders move on, the next core group of players forms from those they helped grow into the role.

That is why we are not just talking about trying to keep the likes of Callum, Tierney, Engels and Maeda if they can be convinced to stay. It is why Alistair Johnston may be the most important player at the club in terms of the future.

If we convince him to stay, he is the kind of leadership figure who can help develop the next major title-winning group of players. This is something those in charge of our club have often failed to understand.

You do not just go out and sign untried talent and try to mould them into a winning team. That is not how it works.

Rodgers did one last thing for this club before he left. He brought in Iheanacho on a free. A lot of people at the time said it was a ludicrous deal. Rodgers knew exactly what he was doing. He brought in a player with enough experience and enough talent to change games of football. That experience cannot be overstated.

It is more than just talent. It is composure under pressure. It is being able to do things like score a last-minute penalty in a must-win game that would break lesser footballers.

That is why I would keep him. It is also why I would keep Oxlade-Chamberlain.

I would give them both one-year deals with the option of another and see what they can do with a summer of intensive training behind them. They do have that experience. They do have that edge. They do have the ability to maintain their cool under pressure in difficult situations. They have been there, seen it and done it before.

Those are the kinds of players every club needs around a team.

When you sign those guys on a free, you are not just getting potentially good footballers. You are getting dressing-room leaders. You are getting players you can bring on late in a difficult game and know they can make a difference because they will bring a clear head and a coolness other players might not possess.

I hope we are thinking about all of this behind closed doors.

We have a cup final to play at the weekend. But once that game is over, the hard work really gets under way. The difficult stuff really starts.

We have to restructure this team and try to forge next season’s side. That means the right manager. It means the right signings. It means keeping the right people.

There is a lot of doubt among Celtic supporters that this board has the capacity to do that job in the way it needs to be done. Nevertheless, I believe the core of next season’s team is currently at the club. They proved it again. They did not do it by being brilliant. They did not do it by playing dazzling football.

They did it by winning big games when it mattered. That is a much tougher thing to do. It requires a different sort of skill set, and this team, as Tierney says, has it more than any team this club, or any club in this country, has had in years.

That is worth protecting. That is worth building around.

That is where next season starts.

Choose The CelticBlog as a ‘Preferred Source’ on Google News for quick access to the news you value.