Celtic looked scared of Ibrox today. What were we so afraid of?

One of the most interesting movies from the point of view of human psychology that I’ve seen over the past few years is Steven Spielberg’s Catch Me If You Can. In it, Frank Abagnale Jr., a young kid from New York, pulls various con tricks because he’s learned one incredibly important thing. It is not what you are. It is only what you appear to be that people notice. It’s a trick I’ve seen repeated over and over again.

There was a show that ran on TV before all of its stars became so well known they could no longer make it work. It was called The Real Hustle, and over and over again, those guys were able to prove how easy it is to trick people into doing what you want.

Getting them to do things, sit somewhere or sign a piece of paper is much easier if you fake authority, access or knowledge.

A familiar trick was to dress in a uniform.

Sometimes, it didn’t even take that. They managed to heist an entire delivery of electronic goods simply by having someone walk up to the van in a high-vis vest and a hard hat, carrying a clipboard. You present people with what they expect to see, and you can do whatever you want. Or make them do whatever you want.

It is a lesson that Abagnale learns very early in life, listening to his father, who tells him that the secret to the enduring success of the Yankees is that opposing teams can’t handle the pinstripes. They walk into Yankee Stadium, see that unique outfit and come apart. Because that outfit carries history and tradition, and you assume that those in it are simply better because they wear it.

I said in the piece I wrote earlier on about Total Recall that the Ibrox club has confused itself with Rangers. But that confusion is less and less evident among other teams in this league, who don’t respect the current Ibrox club the way they might once have respected Rangers. They know that Ibrox has a certain reputation and a certain cachet. They know that the blue shirt is supposed to represent power and presence. But once you see through the fakery, all that just falls away in an instant.

This was the third time since his return that Martin O’Neill has taken us to Ibrox. And in the last two fixtures, we have registered one meaningful shot on goal. That’s not in 180 minutes. That’s in 210 minutes.

On our last trip there, it took a penalty shootout before we got one. At the very moment when other clubs are realising that Ibrox is not the fortress it used to be, when they have internalised that and reduced that newco to where it belongs, we’re still acting as if we’re scared of the pinstripes.

We entered Ibrox with fear. We entered passively. We entered like cowards, and we played that way, not just in this game but in the last one too. We won the last one on penalties. We knocked them out of the Scottish Cup, and in the aftermath, a lot of things didn’t get said that should have been said.

That was a lousy performance. That day, it was excused because of the hand we were dealt. We went in there without key players, sufficiently important key players that we knew we’d have to spend a lot of the game on the back foot. So it was excused. But to go to that ground and play so passively, so within ourselves, shouldn’t really have been excused, and today there’s no excuse at all.

Martin O’Neill is trying to deploy the absence of Celtic fans as an excuse. I guarantee you this: McInnes, emboldened by what he watched today, will not make the same mistake when he comes to Celtic Park. He’ll try to do what I thought we would have done today: try to score early, try to hurt us in the positions where he knows he can.

He won’t be afraid, because he doesn’t think he has to be. He thinks he’s got it figured out now, and he’ll double down. Unless we dramatically change the way we play and the way we approach the game, he’s got every chance of pulling it off.

I don’t know why we’re so scared of Ibrox. I don’t know why we went there today with fear, because no side that’s gone there this season has gone there with fear except for us. I don’t know why we decided to spend most of the game in our own half. I don’t know why we didn’t produce any attacking football of note, even when we were behind.

When we went to Ibrox in the league towards the end of last season, we played exactly the same way for the first 45 minutes.

It was only in the second half that we changed enough to get forward and really put them under pressure, and that’s how we got back into it. You’d think we would have learned something from that. That when you press, when you push further up the pitch, when you attempt to do something different, you can get rewards.

No elite-level manager would have gone there with fear. No elite-level manager would have picked that starting eleven. Rodgers had no fear of Ibrox, and it’s not that he didn’t have bad days there, because he did. But he was never afraid to take a team there. He never set out a side to play that way.

And what made it worse was that we so very obviously lack the players to try to play the kind of game that Martin O’Neill and his coaches had us playing today.

McInnes’s team has not been that convincing all season. The only two occasions on which they ran up significant victories were when the opposition actually capitulated in front of them: St Mirren and now us.

And St Mirren were one heck of a lot better when they played the Ibrox club again. They at least learned some lessons from the first time. Once you learn those lessons, and once you see that your opponents aren’t swaggering, indestructible conquerors, you can get after them. You can make them suffer.

We’ve played exactly one good half of football in three visits to Ibrox under Martin O’Neill, and that’s inexcusable considering how poor the quality of our opponents has been over that time. It took extra time to beat them in the League Cup last season. The saving grace is that we managed it, that we did it, and all of us are grateful for it.

We beat them in the league last season at Celtic Park, and it took a moment of magic from Maeda to wrap that one up and put a bow on it. As it stands right now, I am not in the least bit confident for the game next weekend.

Not in the least bit, because I don’t see what he’s going to do differently, and I don’t see what McInnes is going to do differently. McInnes doesn’t have to do anything differently. He just has to rely on us doing everything exactly the same.

That blue jersey is an empty shirt now. That stadium of theirs is a hollow chamber that only echoes Ibrox’s past. A lot of other clubs in Scotland have worked that out. Are we really going to be the last people to stumble upon this obvious truth?

What the hell were we afraid of today? Ourselves, I suppose. That fear, at least, is grounded in something real.

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