It was the best of times, it was the worst of times

It’s nothing new for football coverage in Scotland to accentuate the negatives for Celtic and the positives for Rangers*. If you’re old enough to remember the mid-1990’s you’ll be familiar with Celtic transfer negotiations breaking down because of, “Penny-pinching Fergus,” while David Murray, “refused to be held to ransom,” when clubs asked for more than he was willing to pay.

This season, it has reached ridiculous proportions, with Celtic winning not just the Treble, but a third successive Treble, yet the feel-good factor surrounds the club who finished nine points behind and were knocked out of both cup competitions before the finals, while Celtic are supposedly in the midst of a crisis.

We have not just sports hacks, but respected voices in Celtic cyber-space, casting doubt on the destination of next year’s title based on the events of this season when, lest we forget, Rangers* finished nine points behind Celtic and were knocked out of both cup competitions by Aberdeen. So, let’s take a hopefully dispassionate look at how this situation developed, starting with Celtic.

It was, by our own standards, not a vintage season and I wouldn’t deny that for a second. The football has been turgid for most of the past 10 months. It is just wrong to say that it began with Neil Lennon’s arrival in February. There were quite a few reasons why it was so poor and they all began, and came to a head, because of one man – Brendan Rodgers.

Last summer, Rodger destabilised the entire club by his open desire to take off for China. Everyone knew he wanted away because he tried to take Moussa Dembele with him and it’s hardly surprising we got off to a poor start to the season and failed to qualify for the Champions League with a manager who didn’t want to be there and a squad of players who knew it. In the circumstances, the board were right to refuse to throw more money at Rodgers, especially after they’d gone out on a limb to secure Odsonne Edouard before he threw his toys out of the pram.

Mr Wantaway was also responsible for the decision to refuse Dedryk Boyata the move he wanted. From everything we know about Celtic’s business model these past ten years, Boyata should have been sold. He was bought for a relative pittance and was now in the final year of his contract after having a good World Cup for Belgium. A big bid was on the table, the club could make a tidy profit from the fee and with all the stars aligned, by rights he should have been allowed to go with grateful thanks for his service and the transfer fee. The club though backed Rodgers, who didn’t want to sell and the player was understandably put out that a man who didn’t want to be there was stopping *him* from moving on. You can’t condone Boyata’s downing of tools before Athens, but it is at least understandable and Rodgers was at fault.

Then came the Dembele fiasco with Rodgers again trying to stop the move, when again, it was exactly Celtic’s business model to sell. The result of this was a very public falling out and Dembele being allowed to leave at the last minute with no chance of a replacement being signed before the close of the transfer window.

It was a very unhappy ship that embarked on season 2018/19 and it took some time for things to improve after a poor start. When the improvement did come, it was more by accident than design. A midfield injury crisis in the League Cup semi-final at Murrayfield against Hearts forced Rodgers to pair Callum McGregor and Ryan Christie in the deep-lying midfield roles and, hallelujah, it worked! The two were at the heart of a mini-renaissance for the next couple of months with a team suddenly firing on all cylinders and banging in the goals as they hit top spot at last. Then it all went wrong again with more injuries leading to the fiasco at Ibrox just before the new year.

Many people have held up defeat in a meaningless match at Ibrox as a reason why Neil Lennon should not have been made permanent manager, but December was worse. It was actually an important match, which allowed Rangers* to draw level on points with us (albeit having played a game more) at a vital moment in the season. It happened with Rodgers playing Callum McGregor, our best midfielder, at left back, and teenager Mikey Johnston on his own up front. That defeat, for me, was far more significant than losing a meaningless match at Ibrox after the championship was already secured.

In the January transfer window, the board were again, quite rightly, unwilling to spend big for a manager they knew would be gone by the end of the season, but good loan signings were made and the new year opened with Celtic again performing well as a gap was opened up over Rangers before Rodgers did a midnight flit to Leicester before our two biggest games of the season.

Here’s where Neil Lennon comes in, and think about the magnitude of his job from the outset. Rodgers hadn’t just gone himself, he’d taken almost the entire backroom staff with him, This was a club in disarray, players and fans alike shell-shocked by Rodgers’ departure, 24 hours ahead of a visit to Tynecastle where we’d lost two of our last three visits, and a few days ahead of a Scottish Cup match at Easter Road, where we had not won since Rodgers had been at the club. In normal circumstances they would have been daunting matches, yet Neil Lennon guided the team to two wins. It wasn’t pretty, Tynecastle was perilously close to the loss of two points against ten men, but we got there and that deserves to be recognised as an achievement regardless of the nature of the wins.

Things didn’t get better, and here’s where Neil Lennon might be open to some criticism. He maintained Rodgers’ playing system, reasoning if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it. I’d say actually it was broken. It wasn’t working brilliantly when Rodgers was here, so I don’t see how it could improve with him gone. For me, Neil Lennon should have had the team playing his way, at least after the matches against Hearts and Hibs were done, but then again, I’m not a football manager so it’s not a massive criticism.

We then limped on to the end of the season, somehow, despite not playing well, keeping on winning the matches that mattered. There were a couple of very frustrating draws along the way, and the second Ibrox fiasco of the season, but by then it didn’t matter. Neil Lennon deserves immense credit for not only securing the title, which was the minimum expected, but winning the Scottish Cup, which was eminently losable. Anything can happen in a one-off match, there’s no room for error, and Neil Lennon got us there too.

I completely understand those who are unhappy with Neil Lennon’s appointment as permanent manager – I’m one of them. I think we should have gone for a European coach who could bring some much-needed new ideas to the club. Rafa Benitez and Jose Mourinho were always pipe-dreams, but there are thousands of coaches out there, and surely there is one who could have fit the bill for us. It’s disappointing that that doesn’t seem to have happened.

Anyway, Neil Lennon it is and that means we have no choice but to back him. I don’t share the view that he is a coaching dinosaur although there are on the face of it valid criticisms, mainly surrounding his attitude to player fitness, but it’s not a disastrous appointment by any means. Let’s remember he took Celtic to the last 16 of the Champions League, beating Barcelona along the way. His record in Europe is far better than Brendan Rodgers’.

Moving on to next season, we will have a manager who isn’t trying to work his ticket out of there, a more settled squad, fingers crossed not so many injuries, and then it’s down to the board to back the manager in the transfer market. Imagine we signed Virgil van Dijk, Victor Wanyama and Stuart Armstrong this summer. We’d be delighted. We also managed to buy them in the first place for a combined fee of about £5m, so we don’t need to be spending fortunes to rebuild.

I’m quite optimistic about next season. We won the Treble this season at our lowest ebb in many years. This was us at our worst. And we won the Treble. That alone gives me cause for optimism.

Turning to Rangers*, they are on the crest of a wave at the moment. They think Steven Gerrard has transformed their fortunes. They think Alfredo Morelos is a £20m striker. They think Ryan Jack is a footballer. They think they are serious title contenders next season. Let them think that!

At their absolute best in their entire seven year history, they finished nine points behind Celtic at their worst in that seven years. They might have beaten Celtic twice at Ibrox, but what happened to them the rest of the time? Two wins is a six point swing and they still finished nine points behind. Hearts can beat us on any given day. So can Hibernian. So can Kilmarnock. But no one is worried that any of them might overhaul us next season, because like Rangers*, they cannot sustain it over the course of the season. We need to stop thinking of Rangers* as the club that we faced for 125 years until 2012. They’re not and they never will be.

Rangers* have shown that on the day, with a fair wind at their backs and Celtic for whatever reason not at their best, they can beat us. But what they can’t do is sustain that for any length of time. They are in reality little better than they were under Caixinha and Murty. They just look better because Celtic’s standards dipped. They have a load of loan signings leaving this summer, they have a huge wage bill and are operating on fumes. They are as good as they are ever going to be.

Celtic on the other hand have been operating and playing well within themselves for about 18 months now and even with the much-maligned Neil Lennon in charge, they are still a considerable distance ahead of Rangers*. Time to stop panicking over The Rangers* coming, because they’ve been coming for years and they’re still no closer.  We need to ignore the media spin that has trophyless Rangers on a seven year high, and Treble Treble winning Celtic on a seven year low.

Overreacting to Defeat is a Bigger Problem Than Defeat Itself

This has been a terrible season. There’s no getting away from that. We started poorly, stumbled on a winning formula by accident only because of injuries to key players, lost the manager as the season entered the business end, a shell-shocked squad still suffering injuries to key players stumbled over the line under an interim boss, and now we’ve (horror of horrors!) lost a meaningless match to Sevco. Many fans are now approaching the Scottish Cup Final, when we have the opportunity to clinch an astonishing third consecutive Treble, with a sense of trepidation.

I didn’t see the match against Sevco today, and I won’t be watching it either, but from what I’ve heard, it sounds a familiar tale – poor, gutless performance and no protection for our players from thuggish assaults. I’m not going to worry about it. There’s no need to worry about it. All I hope for from today is that no one is injured ahead of the only game that matters since last weekend – the Cup Final.

But why has this season been so bad? I can’t believe I’m writing this, we’re on the verge of yet another Treble and fans are up in arms about how bad we are. It’s insane.

But yet, no one can claim it has been good to watch, or that it’s been entertaining, apart from a brief period in the autumn and the few weeks after the winter break before Rodgers left.

The question is why has it been so bad this year, and is there anything that can be done about it?

The first reason is one that recurs throughout the season and continues to reverberate today. Brendan Rodgers. If anyone is to blame for the situation we find ourselves in today, it is Brendan Rodgers. If we fail to win the Treble, the blame will lie with Brendan Rodgers. He sabotaged and undermined us from before the season began and continued to do so throughout the season.

First of all, he wanted away in the summer and did his best to get away. Not only that, he asked the best striker we’ve had in the past decade and a half to go with him. The upshot of that was one very unhappy striker and one (rightly) very unhappy squad. I claim no inside knowledge, but those players are not human if their morale was not badly affected by the knowledge their manager was looking to leave.

The board, rightly, were not willing to give Rodgers any serious money to spend, knowing he would be off first chance he got. They did however shell out serious money to secure Edouard before Rodgers started agitating for a move.

As the season kicked off, it was plain to see things were not right. We laboured to the early points and some of it was awful to watch. It only changed in the autumn with so many injuries, especially to Brown, Ntcham and Eboui, that Rodgers was forced to play McGregor and the hitherto out-in-the-cold Christie in the deep-lying midfield roles. Suddenly, things were happening. Fluidity was restored to the side and we were blowing teams away. Then Brown was able to play again (not fit, just able to play again) and he was restored, thus breaking up the McGregor-Christie partnership that inspired a great run of form through October-November and performances suffered again, culminating in defeat at Ibrox with McGregor playing at left-back and an academy player on his own up front. We were hopeless and were still just an offside call away from a point.

The board, rightly, were still not willing to buy big in the January transfer window, but did sanction several useful loan signings while Sevco spent crazy money on Defoe and Davis, leading to widespread panic, and it wasn’t just Charlie Nicholas. But those loan-signings sparked another mini-run of very good form from January-February before Rodgers finally bailed, just 24 hours before a trip to Tynecastle in midweek and Scottish Cup match at Easter Road that weekend.

He could not have picked two more difficult games to abandon us ahead of and I include Ibrox in that. Not only did he go, he took almost the entire backroom staff with him. If Neil Lennon did not take charge of an absolutely shell-shocked group of players that week, again they are not human. They beat Hearts and Hibernian on muscle-memory alone in the two most important matches of the season.

I’m not going to make a case for giving Neil Lennon the manager’s job permanently. I think we need fresh ideas from a top class foreign coach if we want to progress from here, but he cannot be anything but commended for the way the season has gone since he came in. He had an impossible job to do and has (so far) seen us to where we need to be.

When you look back at this season, the surprising thing is not that we have struggled over the line, the surprising thing is that we are on the verge of a third successive treble. When you think about it, we are actually at a low point. We haven’t been so low in years. And yet here we are sitting as Champions, with a Scottish Cup Final to come.

Think about it from Sevco’s point of view. They are on a seven year high. They think they have a top-class manager. They think they have a great team. Confidence in their camp is sky high. And yet against a stumbling, misfortune-ridden opponent they have still finished second. If ever they had a chance to end our run of league titles, this season was it. And they still fell well short. Beating Celtic today will give them even more hope for next season, but that’s because they are brainless and desperate. They will hold onto any tenuous hope for dear life and they’ll eat this shit up today. The thing about hope though is that it always, in the end, meets reality. And the two very often do not match up. If Sevco had a brain, they’d be dangerous. But they don’t and in their brainlessness think Celtic will be just as bad again next season.

Next season will be different. We will have a new manager in place, so it’s very unlikely we’ll be destabilised by a manager working his ticket out.

The board will back the new manager. I’m not expecting fortunes to be spent, but enough will be spent to address the problems in the playing squad. But the biggest problem in the playing squad is not the quality we have, it’s the lack of stability and leadership they’ve had to endure all season. In my opinion, Neil Lennon should have got those two matches against Hearts and Hibs out of the way and then imposed his philosophy on them. It was a mistake to try to keep Rodgers’ system ticking over because it hadn’t been working for long stretches of the season and he was gone. We know Lennon can do it, he won three titles in a row before he left and took us into the last 16 of the Champions League. He was Rodgers’ most difficult opponent in his time here. Anyway, next season we will have a permanent manager in place and the playing squad will be settled. Without signing a single player, we will be better next season.

The run of injuries suffered this season is also unlikely to be repeated (please!). So when we look ahead to next season, I cannot see things being as bad as they have been this season.

We are at our lowest ebb. Sevco are riding the crest of a self-created wave. In the circumstances, I’m not surprised they won today. The game itself was meaningless and will be very quickly forgotten about. Sevco gained nothing of any substance today and we lost nothing of any substance. They haven’t even won bragging rights – they’re trophyless yet again while we’re (in case you’ve forgotten) Champions and on the verge of another Treble!

The only thing that bothers me about next season is the issue of morale. And that’s an issue for us fans. It’s created by our responses to triumph and disaster and as Kipling said, you need to treat those two imposters just the same.

Only we can stop the run to ten in a row and the first step to doing that is to overreact to a ridiculous degree to losing a meaningless post-season kickabout at Ibrox.