Welcome to a weekend dominated by the potential to skelp the denizens of Mordor and potentially doom them to third place. I don’t know which of you lunatics keeps describing this as exciting, but as I sit here in Belfast waiting on my flight to Paradise, all I feel is the same emotion that has dominated this season: anxiety. Severe, pulse-pounding anxiety, coupled with the occasional check for the location of the nearest defibrillator.

That’s because, thanks to this season’s chaos, third place is still technically on the cards for us also. As much as we’re all blocking it out and working hard to convince ourselves that the first half of our double is just over a week away, there is a grim shadow hovering over proceedings. 

This shadow adds mightily to the pressure on the players and the crushing anxiety of the fans. I know I’m old, but I do remember being excited about close races in the past; however, I don’t remember it ever feeling quite like this. The consequences of this game could be much more far reaching than just who wins the title. 

If You Know Your History

Maybe forty years ago, when we ripped an even more unlikely title from the sweaty palms of mouse hearted Hearts, I had more tolerance for stress or perhaps I was just more carefree. When you’re sixteen, there are other things vying for your attention that seem more pertinent to your future than the league table. 

Since then, we’ve won many, lost many, and even lost at the death when victory was within our grasp.

So, this should be a familiar feeling, shouldn’t it? In reality, we’ve been dominant for so long that maybe it’s the unfamiliarity of a genuine threat rather than actual anxiety that stresses me, though my skyrocketing blood pressure doesn’t seem convinced by that logic! 

We are a support mainly used to the view from the summit, and the vertigo inducing view from this cliff edge, with the razor sharp needles of disaster below, or the soft pillow of victory just a safe step in the other direction, is enough to make any Hoops fan light headed.

Victory Variables

The outcome of this weekend could be glorious or ominous. Although, even the possibility of the most dramatic double victory comes with its own set of concerns. How will the board react to triumph or disaster? As I asked last week, will they treat those two imposters just the same?

The way they’ve behaved this season, it’s difficult to believe that they will respond in any meaningfully positive sense. 

Will a second or third-place finish finally trigger a real attempt at the required revamp from top to bottom?

Or will victory simply cement their condescension and a belief in their own infallibility that is the envy of the papacy?

Past performance may be no guarantee of future results, as they say in the financial world, but it remains a reliable indicator of trends when it comes to human behavior and the intransigence of those in the boardroom. 

For the moment, I’ll leave the last word to George Bernard Shaw: “Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.”

The Demands from Delaware

Danny Rohl and Martin O’Neill both have a manager of the month award this season. However, in Danny’s case, that’s the sum total of his achievements in Scottish football thus far. 

No matter the outcome of this campaign, I don’t think there’s a Celtic fan alive who would be surprised at blessed Martin being offered the manager’s gig on a permanent basis.

That would entirely reflect our board’s approach: do the easiest, laziest, least forward thinking thing, without any thought for a long-term vision.

It would not be unreasonable to assume this is because no such vision has been formulated, much less articulated.

However, Mr. Rohl’s paymasters across the city are not afflicted by such sentimentality or complacency. They fairly swiftly removed the misfiring Russell Martin regardless of a remarkably huge transfer spend. 

Despite Rohl having dragged them back into the race, largely thanks to Celtic’s own mystifying misadventures in Nancyland, a failure to win silverware or finish in the Champions League qualifying spot could easily lead to the unfortunate Rangers man’s demise. 

He has not earned the respect due to O’Neill. In fact, based on the radio phone in shows since their defeat to Hearts, he has not earned anything other than contempt from his own fan base.

However, that’s a fan base that believe themselves to be the club that died in 2012 and keep making hilariously delusional statements like “that’s not Rangers” when talking about the standards on the pitch, when the only way to accurately apply that sentiment is in relation to the club itself. 

The Rangers manager remains at the mercy of the unknown Delaware based money men, cloaked in their opaque LLC.

The clearly enthusiastic new ownership authorized a near £40m gross transfer spend and an approximate £17m net spend. This was an astonishing gamble, considering the club has no credit available from reputable lenders, and has racked up in excess of £130 million in losses since its founding in 2012. And that does not count the tens of millions is soft loans from directors.

As much as I’m delighted we’ve had no need for such investment, it’s difficult to envision Celtic’s board of directors putting their hands in their pockets in the same way. In fact, you may be right in believing that the sole purpose of the giant cash pile is to protect the Desmond’s from ever having to do so. 

Regardless, on the back of what was almost certainly a highly leveraged buyout, that massive spend was a desperate roll of the dice to go straight into the Champions League thanks to their European coefficient. 

Failure to secure Champions League qualifying & subsequent tournament involvement, will likely see a radical restructuring of the playing budget and a sharp reduction in transfer spend. The men from Delaware will want their significant debt burden reduced, and will insist on clear strides towards profitability.

Do not be distracted by talk of their lack of motivation now that they’re likely out of the title race. Failure to finish second will have repercussions they did not anticipate when drawing up their grand plan to dominate in Scotland.

Be in no doubt, the future of this manager and many of his squad are on the line. I expect them to be ferocious in the face of this dawning reality. 

House of Cards

Although the men from American led consortium did accurately identify Celtic’s structural weaknesses, they failed to anticipate two things: the ineffectiveness of ‘losers’ team bonding’ in Loch Lomond, and the unexpected success of their capital counterparts.

Celtic have been risk-averse for so long that it has become unwarranted, insular, and damaging to our European prospects. However, what we may have seen this year from the Ibrox club is exactly what what we’re led to believe keeps the delightful Ross Desmond up at night, the consequences of a massive financial gamble failing to pay off. 

A “swing and a miss” of epic proportions.

If we strike them out on Sunday, it could do more than just keep us in the title hunt. It could put paid to them as a genuine threat for years to come. 

Right now they are a house of cards built on Delaware debt, and one firm shove from a determined Celtic side could bring the whole structure tumbling down into the Clyde. 

The anxiety about the game may be real, but so is the opportunity to strike a massively damaging blow to The Rangers future.