One of the smartest things Martin O’Neill has done so far this season is make sure that everybody who signs for Celtic understands something immediately: this is not the easy option. Scotland is not the easy option either.
Those players would probably have figured that out for themselves eventually, but it is still valuable that O’Neill has given them the warning early, because this is a story we have seen before.
I remember reading in one of The Secret Footballer books about how he had been offered the chance to come to Celtic and asked a former professional who had played for the club whether he would recommend the move.
The writer was certainly up for it. He wanted to come up here and play. He wanted to sign for Celtic. But instead of being told that it was overwhelmingly a good idea, he was given a warning. Only do it if you come with the right mentality.
He was told first and foremost not to look at Celtic as a soft option, some comfortable final stop where he could pad out his bank balance before winding down his career.
He was told that expectations among Celtic supporters are sky-high. The demand that you win every game is enormous, and no player can really understand what that pressure feels like until he has experienced it.
Plenty of footballers have played under pressure before. Plenty have played for clubs where losing matters. But the demand here is different.
Every game. Every week. Win. Lose once and it can feel like a disaster. Drop points and the media noise begins immediately. Play badly in victory and people still want to know what went wrong. That is a very specific kind of football environment.
He was also told that every team wants to beat you.
As the biggest club in the country, as champions, you are the scalp everybody wants. Opponents raise themselves against you. They run harder. They tackle harder. They play as though beating Celtic would make their season.
You do not get many easy afternoons.
For somebody who has already spent his career in winning teams, that idea will not be completely alien. Those players already know what it is like to walk onto the pitch with everybody wanting to knock them off the top.
But Scotland amplifies it. That is where the real pressure comes from.
He was told something else too, and this may be the most important part of all: Celtic supporters will not tolerate players who arrive here on holiday. You do not get to stroll around the pitch relying on your reputation to protect you from criticism.
There is a long list of footballers who came here with big names and big expectations and discovered very quickly that none of it bought them any special treatment. That list gets even longer when you include the club across the city.
Players have come here assuming the game would be easy, assuming they would dominate because of where they had played before, assuming Scotland was somehow beneath them. Joey Barton remains perhaps the most spectacular example of that attitude being exposed. He talked as though he was coming north to run the place.
Instead, he found out in breathtaking fashion that Scottish football was not remotely interested in his reputation.
That is the lesson.
Celtic supporters are not grateful simply because somebody signs the contract. They expect total commitment. They expect effort. They expect professionalism. And if they do not get it, they let you know.
The Secret Footballer was also warned that the game here is physical, that there is no hiding place, that the media environment is insane, that your own supporters are fanatical and that rival supporters will hate you, especially if you are successful.
But there was another side to the warning.
If you get it right, if you give everything, if you win people over and make yourself a hero, you may experience something unlike anything else in your career. That is the deal. The pressure is enormous because the rewards are enormous too.
What I always found fascinating was that, after thinking it through, he decided Celtic was not the right move. He knew himself well enough to recognise that he wanted somewhere quieter to wind down his career, somewhere where the football was less intense and the pressure less overwhelming.
That was not going to be Celtic. I always thought that was impressive.
It took a remarkable amount of self-awareness. Plenty of players would have taken the contract anyway and convinced themselves they could cope. He understood that he probably did not measure up at that point.
And when you think about some of the players who have come here with completely the wrong conception of Scottish football, you can see why that honesty mattered.
The encouraging thing about this current group of new Celtic players is that none of them appears to have arrived labouring under that misconception.
This is not a holiday camp. Celtic is a tough and demanding environment. Scottish football is a tough and demanding environment.
And it is good to hear comments from someone like Mika Baur which suggest he understands exactly what the manager has told him.
He is ready to fight. He does not sound like somebody who is going to be overwhelmed by the place or ground down by the pressure. Quite the opposite.
This is what he came here for. He came here to play for a huge club under constant scrutiny. He came here to experience an environment where you are expected to win all the time, and it is good that O’Neill has made sure every other signing understands the same thing.
Nobody can be under any illusions about what this season is going to demand.
It is going to be World War Three.
Only players who are psychologically prepared for that are going to handle it properly. Baur sounds like he understands. Duran does not appear remotely intimidated by it. I expect Høgh to adapt well. I expect Hassan to adapt well.
I expect the rest of them to understand it too.
But the important thing is that the standards have already been spelled out. Whatever these players have done before, this is where they have to raise their level again.
Playing for champions is not easy.
Celtic did not become champions by signing footballers who thought their contract was merely a convenient way to fill the bank while performing at low intensity. We talk a lot on this site about psychology and about why champions have a different mentality from everyone else. Part of it is experience. You have already felt pressure. You already know what it is like to have to win every game.
You have won enough of those games to know what sitting at the top feels like, and you have learned that once you are there, nothing less is acceptable.
That mentality separates teams which win things from teams which merely hope to. It is one of the reasons I always believed Hearts would eventually crack last season. It is one of the reasons the Ibrox club has cracked under pressure over and over again.
Winning teams understand that pressure is not something which occasionally appears. It is the environment. It is permanent. And that is why O’Neill’s message to these new players matters beyond this season.
He is not simply telling them Celtic is a difficult place to play.
He is beginning the process of teaching them what Celtic’s standards are supposed to be. Once they absorb that, once they live through it and once they become comfortable with it, they become the next group responsible for passing those expectations on. They become the players who tell the next signing: this is how it works here. They become the ones who impose standards in the dressing room.
They become the ones who notice if somebody is coasting. They become the ones who refuse to accept a drop in intensity. That is how culture gets built. Not from slogans on walls. Not from corporate presentations. Not from somebody talking vaguely about “the Celtic way”. It is built when players who understand the demands of winning pass those demands on to the people who come after them.
That is what makes this so important. O’Neill is not merely trying to prepare a few new signings for difficult afternoons in Scottish football. He is trying to make sure they understand the psychological cost of playing for Celtic before that cost surprises them.
And already it is good to see that someone like Baur appears to get it.
If the rest of the new players are as motivated as he is, this could be a very good season.
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