James Forrest
The Emperor of Ice Cream
There is a strange belief taking root in Scottish football this week, and it is one of the oddest ideas I have heard in a long time. The idea is that Celtic should be deathly afraid of the weekend because the club from Ibrox is going to go all out to stop us winning the league.
They are going to strain every sinew. They are going to push every player to the maximum. They are going to kick, bite, scratch and claw to make sure Celtic are not champions.
On the surface, that might sound reasonable. It isn’t.
When you break it down, it is one of the dumbest theories floating around right now. It is spook-story, scare-house bullshit. It might work on a ten-year-old, but it will not frighten those of us capable of taking the argument apart.
Because even a surface-level understanding of it collapses on contact with reality.
What we are being told is that stopping Celtic will be a major driver and motivator for them. That this will push them to be at their very best.
But how seriously are we supposed to take that?
They will be pushed to be at their very best to prevent a Celtic title, but they could not push themselves to be at their very best to win the title themselves?
I find that logic absurd.
If I were an Ibrox fan, contemplating that state of affairs, I would be offended by it. I would be asking whether the people in my dressing room are more interested in beating their rivals than hoisting silverware for their own club and their own supporters.
I would be pretty angry about that.
I know there are Ibrox fans rubbing their hands together in anticipation of this, but instead of doing that, they should be asking hard questions about their own club. They should be asking what actually drives the people in their dressing room. They should also be asking hard questions of their manager.
Why would he be able to tactically outfox a rival manager in a game that no longer matters for his own title hopes, when he seemed so scandalously unprepared in the two games that actually did?
The media will say they are still playing for second place, and that second place is still worth something to them.
Well, big deal. Second place is not first place. If they are trying to tell us that the motivation to finish second is greater than the motivation to finish first, I call bullshit on that.
Obviously, I do. We all should.
Is stopping Celtic a motivation for them?
Yes, of course it is. Just as stopping them would be a motivation for us in the same circumstances. But if I thought there were people in our dressing room prioritising one derby game over the games that could actually win us the title, I would be concerned.
For Celtic, the importance of this game is simple. It is next.
The opposition does not matter. If the fixtures had been ordered differently, the most important game would still be the next one. That is how it works when you are in a title race where you cannot afford a single slip.
The game in front of you is the one that matters.
That is obvious when you think about it for five minutes.
Yet already I have heard journalists make this weird suggestion that the Ibrox club will be more motivated to win at the weekend because they can stop Celtic winning the title. More motivated, presumably, than they were in the previous two games, which would have kept alive their own chance of winning the title.
How are we meant to take that seriously? If that really is the thinking at Ibrox, then that is bizarre. That is wrong. And that is why they find themselves out of it already.
This is supposed to scare us. It is supposed to make us worried about the fixture. We are supposed to tremble because their manager has described the run-in as three cup finals. But at the start of this run, he was describing it as five cup finals.
As Paulina beautifully illustrated in her piece, he wouldn’t know, since he has never managed in one. His players wouldn’t know either, since almost none of them have played in one. Those who have usually end up on the wrong side of the result.
So, comparing these games to cup finals, when your club has won three trophies in thirteen years, is probably not the comparison I would have made.
If these were five one-off games where winning each one brought its own prize, then the cup-final analogy might stand up. But that is not what this is.
They were knocked out of the title race when they lost to Motherwell.
That result put them four behind Hearts and three behind Celtic. From that moment, it was no longer in their hands. Even if they had won their final four fixtures, they were still out of luck if Hearts did the same.
So, the first one really was a cup final.
And they didn’t win it.
Now Röhl is trying to motivate his team after the real opportunity has already passed them. The media is trying to find motivation for them as well, and all of it is hilarious.
They can spare us any attempt to frighten us with this idea. Even when you break it down to pride and bragging rights, it still doesn’t hold up.
Bragging rights?
In case nobody ever told them, bragging rights do not go into the history books. “We stopped you from winning something” is a pathetic last straw to clutch when your own season has ended without silverware. If you take consolation from that, then you are already admitting how low your standards have fallen.
Let me say what I have said several times before when this bragging-rights question has been put to us. They are worthless. They have absolutely no value at all.
In the context of the season, they have just had, where once again they have made a lot of noise and finished with nothing, the idea that they can claim some mythical victory by delaying Celtic is laughable.
We have knocked them out of two cup competitions. We are on the brink of winning one of them. We are still in the title race. They are not. That is the reality.
Whatever way this is dressed up, it is all hot air.
We are playing a demoralised, weakened, psychologically crushed team with nothing meaningful left to play for. Whatever motivation they invent, whatever slogan they come up with, it will not equal what has motivated us from the start of this run.
Win the games and win the title.
That is the difference.
If they suddenly find something that lets them raise their game beyond what they were able to do when their own title hopes were on the line, then that does not make them dangerous. It makes them losers.
Because if they can only do it when there is no real pressure on them, when there is nothing at stake in terms of their own success, then that club is exactly where it deserves to be.
If Celtic show up for business, Celtic will win.
I am not in the least bit concerned about what they might try to do. If we approach the game in the right way, in the right frame of mind, I expect the three points.
Nothing less will do.
We are not going to kid ourselves about two more cup finals after this weekend. If we lose this weekend, it is over. There is comfort in that, strange as it sounds. There is strength to draw from it, because we know exactly what is required.
We know the stakes. We know the job.
When the chips are down, this team has shown that it can rise and meet adversity head on. We are not the mental weaklings our friends across the city think we are. In fact, right now, we are everything they would dearly love to be.
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The post Ibrox being “motivated to beat Celtic” is mad when you break down the theory. appeared first on The Celtic Blog.
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They are going to strain every sinew. They are going to push every player to the maximum. They are going to kick, bite, scratch and claw to make sure Celtic are not champions.
On the surface, that might sound reasonable. It isn’t.
When you break it down, it is one of the dumbest theories floating around right now. It is spook-story, scare-house bullshit. It might work on a ten-year-old, but it will not frighten those of us capable of taking the argument apart.
Because even a surface-level understanding of it collapses on contact with reality.
What we are being told is that stopping Celtic will be a major driver and motivator for them. That this will push them to be at their very best.
But how seriously are we supposed to take that?
They will be pushed to be at their very best to prevent a Celtic title, but they could not push themselves to be at their very best to win the title themselves?
I find that logic absurd.
If I were an Ibrox fan, contemplating that state of affairs, I would be offended by it. I would be asking whether the people in my dressing room are more interested in beating their rivals than hoisting silverware for their own club and their own supporters.
I would be pretty angry about that.
I know there are Ibrox fans rubbing their hands together in anticipation of this, but instead of doing that, they should be asking hard questions about their own club. They should be asking what actually drives the people in their dressing room. They should also be asking hard questions of their manager.
Why would he be able to tactically outfox a rival manager in a game that no longer matters for his own title hopes, when he seemed so scandalously unprepared in the two games that actually did?
The media will say they are still playing for second place, and that second place is still worth something to them.
Well, big deal. Second place is not first place. If they are trying to tell us that the motivation to finish second is greater than the motivation to finish first, I call bullshit on that.
Obviously, I do. We all should.
Is stopping Celtic a motivation for them?
Yes, of course it is. Just as stopping them would be a motivation for us in the same circumstances. But if I thought there were people in our dressing room prioritising one derby game over the games that could actually win us the title, I would be concerned.
For Celtic, the importance of this game is simple. It is next.
The opposition does not matter. If the fixtures had been ordered differently, the most important game would still be the next one. That is how it works when you are in a title race where you cannot afford a single slip.
The game in front of you is the one that matters.
That is obvious when you think about it for five minutes.
Yet already I have heard journalists make this weird suggestion that the Ibrox club will be more motivated to win at the weekend because they can stop Celtic winning the title. More motivated, presumably, than they were in the previous two games, which would have kept alive their own chance of winning the title.
How are we meant to take that seriously? If that really is the thinking at Ibrox, then that is bizarre. That is wrong. And that is why they find themselves out of it already.
This is supposed to scare us. It is supposed to make us worried about the fixture. We are supposed to tremble because their manager has described the run-in as three cup finals. But at the start of this run, he was describing it as five cup finals.
As Paulina beautifully illustrated in her piece, he wouldn’t know, since he has never managed in one. His players wouldn’t know either, since almost none of them have played in one. Those who have usually end up on the wrong side of the result.
So, comparing these games to cup finals, when your club has won three trophies in thirteen years, is probably not the comparison I would have made.
If these were five one-off games where winning each one brought its own prize, then the cup-final analogy might stand up. But that is not what this is.
They were knocked out of the title race when they lost to Motherwell.
That result put them four behind Hearts and three behind Celtic. From that moment, it was no longer in their hands. Even if they had won their final four fixtures, they were still out of luck if Hearts did the same.
So, the first one really was a cup final.
And they didn’t win it.
Now Röhl is trying to motivate his team after the real opportunity has already passed them. The media is trying to find motivation for them as well, and all of it is hilarious.
They can spare us any attempt to frighten us with this idea. Even when you break it down to pride and bragging rights, it still doesn’t hold up.
Bragging rights?
In case nobody ever told them, bragging rights do not go into the history books. “We stopped you from winning something” is a pathetic last straw to clutch when your own season has ended without silverware. If you take consolation from that, then you are already admitting how low your standards have fallen.
Let me say what I have said several times before when this bragging-rights question has been put to us. They are worthless. They have absolutely no value at all.
In the context of the season, they have just had, where once again they have made a lot of noise and finished with nothing, the idea that they can claim some mythical victory by delaying Celtic is laughable.
We have knocked them out of two cup competitions. We are on the brink of winning one of them. We are still in the title race. They are not. That is the reality.
Whatever way this is dressed up, it is all hot air.
We are playing a demoralised, weakened, psychologically crushed team with nothing meaningful left to play for. Whatever motivation they invent, whatever slogan they come up with, it will not equal what has motivated us from the start of this run.
Win the games and win the title.
That is the difference.
If they suddenly find something that lets them raise their game beyond what they were able to do when their own title hopes were on the line, then that does not make them dangerous. It makes them losers.
Because if they can only do it when there is no real pressure on them, when there is nothing at stake in terms of their own success, then that club is exactly where it deserves to be.
If Celtic show up for business, Celtic will win.
I am not in the least bit concerned about what they might try to do. If we approach the game in the right way, in the right frame of mind, I expect the three points.
Nothing less will do.
We are not going to kid ourselves about two more cup finals after this weekend. If we lose this weekend, it is over. There is comfort in that, strange as it sounds. There is strength to draw from it, because we know exactly what is required.
We know the stakes. We know the job.
When the chips are down, this team has shown that it can rise and meet adversity head on. We are not the mental weaklings our friends across the city think we are. In fact, right now, we are everything they would dearly love to be.
Choose The CelticBlog as a ‘Preferred Source’ on Google News for quick access to the news you value.
The post Ibrox being “motivated to beat Celtic” is mad when you break down the theory. appeared first on The Celtic Blog.
Continue reading...
