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I could tell you about an attack at Celtic Park if I had been blindfolded and the stadium had been plunged into total darkness.
Visibility is not mandatory in times like these. All you need is a sense of smell willing enough to be able to stumble upon the unmistakable scent of pungency in the air. It has been difficult for me to perceive when, how and why relations between Celtic and their supporters are periodically broken. It all started the day Fergus McCann and I weren’t asked to leave the box in 1994.
Fergus was there to set in motion his plan to buy the club and the goalkeepers at the time had us ejected before we started answering calls from disillusioned enthusiasts on the Superscoreboard phone. Three decades later, there is a fashionable malaise that leaves fans frustrated with the board, recruitment department and manager over how they treated Celtic’s moving business.
I have, on the back of incoming transfers on an ascending scale of mystification, been given cause to wonder if Celtic’s data analysis on new players has been conducted on something resembling my twenty-quid Nokia mobile phone, with all of its temperamental faults. The last two transfer windows have been an insult to the intelligence where the fans are concerned.
And the situation may get worse due to the events in the park. There are a number of midweek effects that could accelerate Rangers’ day at the top of the table. A win for Philippe Clement’s team at home to Aberdeen on Tuesday night would be the symbolic turning point in a cycle since the day in September when Michael Beale lost to the same team and had to leave.
A defeat for Celtic to the relegated Hibs at Easter Road would mean that the game that Rangers have, if they win it, would take them to pole position in the table.
At this stage, Celtic are facing internal conflicts, as they are a group of lightweights and misfits who will one day have to be unloaded en masse before they can launch a new attack on national supremacy.
The air has become foul through a series of acrid disorders that have caused the stench to increase. Celtic fans were unhappy with Peter Lawwell’s return as chairman as chairman as they see him as complicit in squandering 10 consecutive games of his tenure as chief executive.
His supporters are also unhappy with the installation of Mark, Lawwell’s son, as head of recruitment because, rightly or wrongly, they see the appointment as a whiff of nepotism. Jobs for the Boys.
And there is an element of the fan base, as Brendan Rodgers has publicly acknowledged, who were opposed to his Second Coming at Celtic Park after previously leaving the club for Leicester City. Rodgers now bears the demeanour of a man who, subconsciously, suspects he’s done the wrong thing by retracing his steps back to Glasgow.
Last July, on the day of his appointment as Ange Postecoglou’s successor, Brendan said: “I assure you that I will be here for 3 years unless I empty myself first, as they say here. Lots of genuine words said in jest.
The signings who do actually manage to make Rodgers’ team flatter to deceive and those who will never make the side have started to be binned not long after arriving in the country. The football that Celtic play has become an irritant, and not a stimulant, for the paying public. And the blatant disregard by the club to sign upgrades on what was already there has meant that a potentially chaotic state of affairs could be just days away.
And dissent, as history has shown us, accelerates descent when unhappy fans break the emergency glass and the alarm starts to go off. You could argue that nothing lasts for ever – and you would be correct to look at 11 of the last 12 titles having been won by Celtic as evidence of that being the case.
It could even be recommended that some enthusiasts suffer from a form of good luck fatigue and that anything that is rarely an Invincible Treble is an outright failure. And yet you’d be right. But at the heart of the now audible, visual and undeniable divide is enthusiasts’ confidence that their club’s stage was created as a result of terrible decisions.
Self-harm that may have simply been avoided with greater judgment. I appreciate that some enthusiasts have excessive attitudes toward behavior. I just have to go back to the person who radioed and said he questioned my sanity, his words, when I said that the championship is perhaps not considered inevitable after Clément’s appointment at Ibrox and the transformation that began there.
When complacency backfires on you, the inclination is to take a flamethrower to those within your club who have let you down and caused you to look foolish. There is a choice of three names available to the Celtic supporters in that regard and all three will surely understand the magnitude of their next game.
Celtic have what they have left and the January transfer window is now closed. This means the door opens to recriminations if those players don’t have the mental strength to handle what awaits them in the league. Any change in the balance of forces between Celtic and Rangers increases the levels of hostility.
The current situation for Celtic leaves them with only one detonator to explode.