As the Premiership hurtles toward its crescendo, Celtic stand on the knife edge between triumph and disaster. Four matches remain. Four matches to define a season of self-inflicted chaos, that has veered between embarrassment, frustration, rage and disappointment, but now at the death, most surprisingly, hope!

The table is brutally simple, but predicting the final outcome is anything but.  Momentum swings weekly. Managers have changed, in Celtic’s case multiple times, and form fluctuates. The remaining fixtures represent a maze of pressure, peril and possibility. Extreme pressure though, is how diamonds are made, as are emeralds!

We face the drama of an entirely unpredictable title race, and Celtic’s precarious place within it.

Mr Kipling Makes Exceedingly Good Poems

To paraphrase Rudyard Kipling’s ‘If’ (The full text of which I’ll leave at the bottom of the page)

If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

For our players, this is crucial. Regardless of outcome, those who are here next season must face reality with equanimity and a new sense of purpose. Reinvigorated, prepared for the challenge of a new season. No matter the outcome this year, the challenge for the players next year is the same. Reassert domestic dominance and make meaningful inroads in Europe

Bored Of The Board

Sadly, the Celtic fans and Mr Kipling do diverge in quite a dramatic way. We face a relentlessly tedious truth about our board. Nobody became a Celtic fan because of their obsessive love of boardroom machinations, yet we are faced with an overwhelmingly frustrating reality that we cannot meekly accept.

The ambitions of the board and the fans are entirely different. Ross Desmond made it clear that Europe was aspirational, but for the fans a ‘Lisbon in our lifetime’ is a foundational goal.

This board have indeed treated triumph and disaster just the same. They have never built from a position of strength, and their only ambition when facing a disastrous season, is to get us back to the level of mediocrity we achieved prior to failure.

Not to improve upon what came before. Not to build the desperately needed strong foundations in the football, analytics, scouting and recruitment departments. Foundations laughably absent in a ‘trading’ club.

They have been content to maintain, as Brendan Rodgers pointed out.

However, as so perfectly illustrated by the new owners of Hearts & The Rangers, there is no ‘maintain’ in football.

Backwards By Design

Like pretty much every other business, if you’re not making progress you’re regressing. This is particularly true of football. The football ecosystem is ever changing and incredibly dynamic.

Even before this season, it was clear that Celtic were not interested in a plan for progress. They were content to hold what they had. Domestically successful, often an embarrassment in Europe, but winning just enough games to keep the fans engaged. Most fans refer to this as managed decline. Do just enough to succeed domestically and stubbornly refuse to contemplate any ambition beyond that.

Despite the clamour to look at the massively successful models of some of our financial peers in Europe, the board’s insistence on using the same redundant recruitment process for the last decades, has not only failed to see us maintain what should be crushing domination of the domestic game (based on our huge financial advantages) but to be facing the potential of the bottom tier of European football.

The shifting sands of football have now exposed their complacency for the wilfully blind, intransigent, lazy arrogance that it always appeared to be.

Dysfunctional Functionaries & Damaging Defeatist Attitudes

When asked in a meeting with fans about the European success of clubs like Bodø/Glimt, the Chief Financial Officer Chris McKay made the shocking statement that they were on a ‘different trajectory’ to Celtic. This was a quite breathtaking admission. It exposed the utter lack of ambition within the board, the acceptance of our place as irrelevant in Europe, and the intention to do absolutely nothing to change that.

During the utterly disastrous reign of Paul Tisdale, it was also widely reported that in a meeting with some of Celtic’s corporate heavy hitters, he was sneeringly dismissive of any European ambitions and confirmed his opinion that Celtic are not a big club.

One is an accountant, and the other promoted so far above his station it’s a literal scandal. These are mere apparatchiks, but they reflect the values and beliefs of the real leadership.

It’s difficult to imagine any other business so content with not even attempting to achieve their full potential.

This is massively dispiriting for the fans. As I said previously about Brendan’s statement, maintenance is not a motivational mission.

This is not only true for the fans and the manager, but as clearly evidenced by Calum McGregor’s recent comments, the players as well.

Europe or Bust

Even with domestic dominance reestablished, many Celtic fans will not remain engaged without realistic potential for European success, and that success should be the default measure of achievement for Celtic.

With more changes always possible in Europe, failure to establish ourselves as regular guests at the top table could well see us feeding off scraps with the rest of the Euro minnows if there is more upheaval in the structures.

Not to be a player of significance when, and if, these conversations happen, could ultimately cause a downward spiral at Celtic that no amount of ‘rainy day’ money might arrest.

Since the demise of our main rival, Europe should always have been the benchmark for Celtic. However, rather than vision, our leaders displayed an insular lack of belief and courage that no doubt still has Fergus McCann spinning in his bunnet.

Passion Provides a Pass

Celtic are blessed with a supporter base unparalleled in their dedication and loyalty. It is these very qualities that have allowed the board to treat the fans historically with general disdain, but this season that devolved into contempt.

Despite that, protests have been put to the side as we desperately seek to win this league and Scottish Cup. The fans understand the importance of this as much as the board did not. The Rangers winning the league could be a devastating blow to Celtic, if they were to gain automatic access to the Champions League.

Hearts winning could potentially be enough for Bloom to make a far more significant investment, having achieved the ultimate success many years before he thought they might.

The anxiety among fans is palpable. So is the hope.

Based in the reality of returning heroes like AJ, and other heroes like Maeda, once more discovering their Midas touch

Our ambitions are modest.

We just want the earth and everything that’s in it!

Well, every trophy will do!

If—

Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”;

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings—nor lose the common touch;

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
 If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run—
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!