Tomorrow night at Tannadice Celtic have the chance to win the title against Dundee United and complete a quite remarkable turnaround in the club’s fortunes.

No-one needs reminding of the fact Celtic started this league campaign positioned right behind the eight-ball. The team had just finished a season future generations will likely discount entirely – as we perhaps do with the war years – given it was played out in the midst of a worldwide pandemic and with the lifeblood of the game, the supporters, forcibly made to watch a series of training ground games unfold on laptop screens.

It may well have been 22 men running around with a ball and ultimately vying for silverware, but it certainly wasn’t football.

Celtic finished the behind closed doors season 25 points behind theRangers and that was enough to damage the morale of the club entirely, but when you add in the fact it was also hoped to be a record-breaking season, not having a support who could influence their team made everyone feel somewhat impotent.

The sight of a Quadruple Treble being won was magnificent, yet to see it completed in the most dramatic of circumstances, but in an eerily echoing Hampden Park, made the whole achievement feel like it was lacking something – because it was.

By the time football fans were returning slowly but surely to the matches Celtic were in a period of limbo. Neil Lennon had been replaced temporarily by John Kennedy, then a protracted and ultimately fruitless chase for Eddie Howe, left the sands of time in which to be ready for a new season disappearing far too quickly – and the wantaway players from the previous season were still itching to leave with no-one in place to authorise replacements.

Into this void came Ange Postecoglou, an unknown to many of us, but one who would prove to be a saviour. Looked upon by many as a desperate punt on the back of the failed chase for Eddie Howe, all we could really hope for was someone who could transition Celtic, and hopefully at the same time steady the ship enough so as not to embarrass us all, and give us some hope to cling too.

Time and common sense were against any other outcome, and after a start to the season where clear signs of an identity was emerging, yet results were patchy to say the least, we all got behind what we could see was developing and accepted the results may take a little while longer to catch up with the burgeoning playing philosophy.

Players who wanted to go had their exits facilitated, whilst those who wished to stay were given the opportunity to show they could fit the style of play. Some did, most didn’t.

🗣 “I thought the Premiership race was over…” 👀

Ange Postecoglou is only looking at Celtic after their win over Motherwell saw them move to within 4 points of leaders Rangers. pic.twitter.com/8AnC2GK27L

— Clyde 1 Superscoreboard (@ClydeSSB) October 16, 2021

The incomings from the transfer window were plentiful but ultimately a rush job, yet from it a team began to emerge. Celtic were binned from the Champions League, lost three out of six of the opening league fixtures and for some in the mainstream press a 1-0 defeat to Livingston had the scribes calling time on Celtic’s title hopes.

Yet from there something miraculous happened. Through injury crisis after injury crisis, whilst operating with a small pool of trusted players, and against the backdrop of the pandemic once again biting, Celtic emerged as a cohesive force.

From that loss to Livingston until now, Celtic are undefeated in league football. We even had a Europa League group stage where signs were evident that we had a playing philosophy, if not quite yet the personnel, that in time may be able to compete at that level – and it was likely in those games that the players truly bought into their manager’s methods. If he and they could do it in Europe what fears did Scotland hold?

Celtic, it should be remembered, finished the group stages of this season’s Europa League on nine points having won three games, theRangers had just eight points yet scrapped through while Celtic went out.

Celtic went into the winter break a mere six points behind theRangers and on the back of a derby win at Celtic Park, where 45 minutes of breath-taking football converted any remaining doubters, and there were but a few by then anyway.

Celtic were top of the league, extended their dominance to six points, and that gap remains as we head to Tannadice tomorrow night. A January transfer window where quality arrived in the shape of Reo Hatate – scorer of two goals that night – Daizen Maeda, Yosuke Ideguuchi and Matt O’Riley also played a big part, with three of the four having a huge impact on the second half of the season, as once again Ange Postecoglou got his recruitment spot on at a crucial time of the campaign.

It truly is a remarkable chapter in the history of a club Billy McNeill rightly claimed had something of the fairytale surrounding it. This was an impossible job, and anyone telling you they believed it was likely after that opening day defeat to Hearts should have their honesty questioned.

But it didn’t take long to see what the manager was trying to do, even in that defeat to Hearts you could imagine what he was trying to achieve, and it was enough for us all to get behind that hope.

And where the previous season had fans unable to influence proceedings and a disconnect between club and the support emerged, this season the support has bought into it all and have been there to influence the road travelled – with perhaps the win at Pittodrie against Aberdeen, and Jota’s winner that got the away day hoodoo off our back, the moment the support, players and manager all came together to create what ultimately became an irresistible force. And against the laws of physics the apparently immovable object of the team across the city eventually shifted.

READ THIS…Fly the Flag – The 52 Days that Celtic became Scottish Champions

Now in a season where support and players have come together to create such an unbreakable bond, there is something fitting about the location where this title can be won.

Tannadice is a ground where Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink headed home to take Celtic to a title win on the final day of 2008. It was also a game where the support and the staff came together to ensure that victory was achieved in the name of Tommy Burns. And if ever a man bridged both supporting Celtic and playing for the club it was Tommy Burns.

READ THIS…Dundee United act as Celtic fans look for Tannadice tickets for title triumph

After a season of no fans in grounds and the clear impact that had on Celtic’s fortunes, and through one where it all came back together under Ange Postecoglou, a return to Tannadice to seal the most unlikely of league titles seems just the place to complete the job.

Tickets may well be hard to come by, but you can guarantee there will be a Celtic Great looking down with a bird’s eye view of proceedings. And in a season where a disconnect between club and fans was entirely corrected, Tannadice, a ground where the man who was the epitome of Celtic, be that on the park or in the stands, had his life celebrated, seems a fitting place to complete Celtic’s reconstruction.

Niall J

As part of our Fathers Day promotion we launched a new offer last night offering a free Twice as Good t-shirt with every order of Matt Corr’s brilliant book Harry Hood – Twice as Good. When you order the book just drop in the size of t-shirt you want alongside you name eg Matt Corr (Medium) etc – choose from S, M, L, XL and XXL. Order below…