Celtic’s title win traumatised the losers. If we show strength, we’ve got them.

Last night, two different articles appeared on my feed which were so similar in tone that I initially assumed they were versions of the same story.

It was only when I opened both, looking to see whether one contained quotes the other had omitted, that I realised they concerned different people at different clubs. What connected them was the subject: how psychologically shattering Celtic’s title victory last season had been for those speaking to the media.

The first featured Alexander Schwolow discussing his time at Hearts and admitting that the ending to the campaign would hurt him forever. The German goalkeeper is now preparing to leave Tynecastle for Mainz, but Celtic’s final-day victory clearly remains lodged in his mind.

I have no doubt that Schwolow was devastated. He was part of a side which had led the league for much of the campaign and arrived at Celtic Park knowing that one final result could deliver a historic title.

For long periods that afternoon, Hearts could see the trophy.

Then Celtic took it away.

That is not the kind of defeat a player simply forgets when he changes clubs. It becomes part of his career story, a moment he will revisit repeatedly and wonder whether anything could have been done differently.

Everyone associated with Hearts will feel some version of that. It was not merely the loss of a football match. It was the destruction of something they had spent an entire season convincing themselves was possible.

That hurt is understandable.

The second article, however, was even more revealing.

It contained another section from Danny Röhl’s extended reflections on his time at Ibrox. Röhl is now at Red Bull Salzburg, yet he remains visibly affected by the way Celtic emerged from last season with the championship.

He was not a Hearts employee. He did not lead the team which entered the final afternoon with the title in its hands.

But he had taken the Ibrox club into the race, briefly convinced himself that he had a chance and then watched Celtic survive while his own side collapsed into third place.

Röhl has left Scotland, and it still eats at him.

That tells us something. If the man who has departed the country and begun another job still feels the defeat so acutely, imagine how it must feel for those who remain directly connected to it. Multiply that feeling several times and consider Derek McInnes, Lawrence Shankland and Cammy Devlin.

All three were at Hearts. All three came within touching distance of the greatest domestic achievement of their careers. All three are now at Ibrox, carrying the memory of how Celtic denied them.

Schwolow remains haunted by watching it happen. Röhl has gone to Austria and still cannot entirely put it down. How deeply must it burn inside Shankland, Devlin and McInnes?

That is what interests me.

There will be people in the media who regard this as the perfect motivational foundation for the campaign ahead. The Ibrox club now possesses a manager, a captain and another major player who know what it feels like to come close to beating Celtic and who should therefore be desperate to finish the job.

But is motivation really the dominant psychological force here?

I am not convinced. There is a fine line between being inspired by a painful defeat and becoming consumed by it. One can drive you forward. The other can make you frightened of experiencing the same thing again.

McInnes, Shankland and Devlin know how close Hearts came. More importantly, they must understand the circumstances in which that opportunity arose.

Last season was an appallingly weak Celtic campaign by our normal standards. The club changed managers, stumbled through periods of dreadful form, endured executive chaos and repeatedly appeared ready to surrender the championship.

The door was not merely open. It was hanging from its hinges.

Yet Celtic still found enough strength, courage and experience to power through the final weeks and take the trophy. That has to hurt in a way which goes deeper than ordinary frustration.

Hearts did almost everything required. Celtic produced a season which should have made the champions vulnerable. The Ibrox club briefly moved into first place and had its own opportunity to take control.

Still, neither of them could finish the job.

They may never get conditions that favourable again.

That is the thought which must keep returning. Celtic was wounded, divided and badly run. The squad had obvious weaknesses. The support was furious. The football was often nowhere near the standard expected of the club.

And even then, when the challengers could almost touch the trophy, Celtic reached out and snatched it away.

Danny Röhl is the giveaway. He has moved on, but the psychological bruise remains. If he is still discussing the campaign and reliving the mistakes, those who stood even closer to the decisive moment must feel it more intensely.

McInnes does not have a particularly convincing poker face either.

His comments after Hearts lost their position at the top, and especially his fury over the late Celtic penalty against Motherwell, did not sound like the measured reflections of a manager who believed his side had simply fallen short.

They sounded like the words of someone who believed forces beyond his control had altered the outcome. He described the decision as “quite disgusting” and was subsequently handed a four-match touchline suspension. As we know, the Ibrox club has appealed, while McInnes has argued that the punishment does not fit the offence.

McInnes has never sounded like a man who has accepted that Celtic were worthy champions and Hearts simply failed to complete the task. His public position has consistently carried the implication that his former club was wronged and that Celtic benefited from decisions which should have gone another way.

Now imagine beginning a new campaign with that belief already embedded in your mind.

McInnes is taking charge of the one club in Scotland where grievance does not merely survive. It is cultivated, watered and placed in direct sunlight. Every questionable decision becomes evidence. Every disciplinary sanction becomes persecution. Every Celtic success can be explained by forces which supposedly operate beyond the pitch.

McInnes is not entering an environment likely to challenge that outlook.

He is entering one built to reinforce it.

If he already believes Hearts were denied a title by forces outside their control, what does he believe he is facing now? Does he think those same forces have disappeared because he has changed clubs? Presumably not.

If he believes the Scottish FA, match officials or some wider establishment tilted the balance towards Celtic last season, he must begin this campaign assuming that the same hidden obstacles remain in place.

How does a manager motivate a team from that starting point? How do you tell players to believe completely in their ability to win while simultaneously suggesting that they may not be permitted to do so?

“Give me everything you have, although the officials may decide it does not matter.”

“Believe in yourselves, although the governing body may already be against us.”

“Win the title, even though the whole system is apparently designed to stop you.”

That is not motivation. It is psychological surrender disguised as defiance. That is the mood he is going to spread around Ibrox like a toxic substance.

McInnes recently said that he saw no reason why his new side should not have the ambition to win the title. That is an oddly restrained formulation for the manager of the Ibrox club. There was a time when the man in that job did not speak about whether his team should possess the ambition to challenge. Winning the championship was understood to be the minimum requirement.

The ambition was assumed.

Now the manager talks about it almost as though it is a daring possibility.

Why? Perhaps it is because he already recognises the scale of the climb. Perhaps he understands that last season represented an extraordinary opportunity and that, having missed it, Celtic may not offer another one. He’s about to watch us spend £11 million on one player. What is there is more? How does he beat us then?

Perhaps the phrase reveals a man trying to convince himself as much as anyone else.

McInnes has inherited a club full of people who believe they were denied something last season. He has brought two prominent members of that failed Hearts challenge with him. Shankland knows exactly how close he came to lifting the trophy as captain. Devlin knows how much work went into taking Hearts to the brink. McInnes knows that he may never again manage a side which reaches the final day with the title effectively in its own hands.

They have not arrived at Ibrox carrying only hunger. They have arrived carrying trauma.

That can be powerful for a while. It can sharpen the focus and create determination. But it can also become corrosive.

The first time Celtic scores a late winner, what memory returns? The first time the Ibrox club loses a controversial decision, what explanation presents itself? The first time they fall behind us in the table, do McInnes, Shankland and Devlin remain calm, or does the ghost of the final day appear beside them?

Pressure does not merely test ability. It awakens memory. Those three already know what it feels like to watch Celtic take something they believed belonged to them.

The fear becomes even greater when the leader himself appears to believe that external forces are responsible. A manager has to give players the sense that every problem can be solved through preparation, effort and quality.

The moment he persuades them that the decisive factors are beyond their control, he gives them an excuse before the competition begins.

Imagine having to enter a dressing room after a defeat and restore confidence when your own public argument is that Celtic receives the decisions and your team does not.

Imagine trying to convince players they are masters of their own fate after repeatedly suggesting that somebody else controls the outcome.

A leader cannot preach helplessness and resilience simultaneously.

He has to choose.

This is why last season’s title victory was so much bigger than the trophy itself. Celtic did not merely win the league. We implanted something in the minds of everyone who came close to taking it from us.

Hearts had their greatest opportunity in generations. The Ibrox club recovered from an appalling start and briefly found itself at the summit.

Celtic looked vulnerable enough to fall. Then, at the moment when everything had to be decided, the champions survived and everybody else broke.

That leaves scars.

Schwolow says it will hurt forever. Röhl is still picking through the remains of his own campaign from another country. Shankland, Devlin and McInnes have gathered at Ibrox with the same wound, hoping that proximity to one another will turn the pain into strength.

Perhaps it will. But they must also know something else.

The Celtic which denied them last season was nowhere near the strongest version of this club. That was the deeply dysfunctional Celtic. The underprepared Celtic. The Celtic whose executives appeared paralysed and whose squad had been allowed to weaken.

It was a Celtic side which offered its opponents every imaginable encouragement.

And it still won.

Now Celtic has begun to flex some financial muscle. Camilo Durán has arrived, and the pursuit of Kasper Høgh has demonstrated that the club is at least capable of contemplating a record-level investment in the team.

Celtic’s summer remains incomplete and there is a substantial amount of work still to be done, but the willingness to spend heavily on two major targets suggests the resources can be released when the pressure becomes great enough.

That cannot be what McInnes imagined when he accepted the Ibrox job. He must have looked across the city and seen a club requiring a huge rebuild, a support at war with the board and an executive structure which appeared incapable of moving quickly enough.

He may have believed Celtic would fail to complete the work.

We still might. Nobody should pretend that two signings resolve every issue or erase every concern. But if Celtic finally decides to use the power available to it, the psychological landscape changes again.

The challengers failed to beat the weakest Celtic side in years.

What happens if the next one is stronger? Much stronger? What happens if O’Neill receives the striker he wants, the ball-winning midfielder he needs, the wide players required to supply them and the defensive depth to survive a full season?

What happens if Celtic does not spend the next campaign fighting itself?

McInnes can complain about officials. The Ibrox media can construct narratives about dark forces. Supporters can convince themselves that every setback is part of a conspiracy.

None of it will matter if Celtic becomes too strong to catch.

That is the real nightmare waiting inside the trauma of last season. It is not merely that Celtic defeated them. It is that Celtic defeated them while operating at a fraction of its potential.

Schwolow will carry that ending into the Bundesliga. Röhl has carried it to Salzburg. Shankland, Devlin and McInnes have carried it across Scotland and into the one dressing room where the grievance will be encouraged rather than confronted.

They will tell themselves that the pain is fuel.

Perhaps some of it is.

But if Celtic now decides to use the strength it has spent years refusing to deploy, they will not require biased officials or hidden conspiracies to explain what happens next. We will simply be too strong for them.

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