And so, more than 24 hours after our competent and even impressive win at Ibrox, and all the boasting and sneering is beginning to die down, where are we?
It would have to be said that we are in a pretty good place, and are finishing the season strongly. Only a fool talks about it being all over (Kris Boyd said that yesterday!) and we still have six League games to go, of which we must win four and draw one to be absolutely mathematically guaranteed of winning the Premiership, and of course, anything can happen in the Scottish Cup!
So cautious optimism is the order of the day!
But let us look further ahead to the summer. We do not as yet know what our participation in Europe is going to look like this year, but we do now seem to have a team for us to make a long overdue impact on Europe. In particular there seemed yesterday to be an ability to defend, to absorb pressure and not to conceded soft goals.
More often than not in the past, we have decided to make a collective European fool of ourselves by losing to mighty men like Sion, Bodo and the three Ms of Malmo, Maribor and Midtjylland. With all due respect to such teams, they really should not be striking terror into our men and our supporters in our magnificent stadium, which is the envy of most of Europe.
So Europe has more often than not, been an embarrassing experience and we have been known to trot out weak excuses like the “wrong time of the year”, and “we are not ready for it”. Frankly, that will simply not do. We really have to “wise up” to the realities of the situation. We are Celtic, and we really need to have our squad in place for such fixtures. We recall the time when Kieran Tierney was transferred while we were actually playing a European game.
That was amateurish. That must stop.
All our players who are in a short term contract must be engaged so that there is no uncertainty for July. We really have to do better than what we have been doing. A club of our status in the world game really should be in the European Champions League – and doing well in it.
So, let us finish the season strongly and grab more silverware, but let us also get ourselves organised at an early stage for next season.
David Potter
We won’t be starting early if everything goes well we don’t have to play qualifiers so it will be a month later we start which makes enormous difference
Yes, I appreciate that, Jack, but let’s be ready for it whenever it happens! One thing at a time, certainly, but eye on the future as well.