The season is over and Celtic have ended it with another Scottish Premiership title and a League Cup in the bag.
Yes, Celtic’s defeat in the Scottish Cup final to Aberdeen still stings, however, when that disappointment recedes, the bigger picture cannot be denied.
Celtic are still top of the tree domestically, and in the Champions League, they more than stood toe-to-toe with Europe’s elite.
However, now that 49ers Enterprises’ takeover of Rangers is completed, could Celtic’s domestic dominance now be under threat?
I was invited into the BBC Sportsound studio yesterday afternoon to discuss that, Celtic and the Scottish Cup final along with a fan from Rangers and Motherwell.
Photo by Ric Tapia/Getty ImagesRangers sent strong Celtic message after completion of 49ers Enterprises takeover
Kenny McIntyre invited me [Patrick Sinat], Motherwell fan Kevin Torrance and Rangers supporter Scott Cameron into the BBC studio to talk to Tom English and Ian McCall about issues around Scottish football.
When McIntyre asked if Celtic should be concerned about the Rangers takeover, I replied on BBC Sportsound, “I don’t know if I would go as far as to say we’re concerned.
“I think for Celtic, it’s just business as usual. I think we’ve got such a good structure at the club that it’s Rangers’ job to catch us and we just keep doing what we’re doing.
“I mean, if you look at what Celtic have done in the past, when we lost the Scottish Cup semi-final [in 2016], we brought in Brendan Rodgers.
“When we lost the league in 2021 we tried to get Eddie Howe, one of the hottest young coaches. As it stands, we got Ange Postecoglou and the rest is history. Then we go and get Brendan Rodgers again.
“So whenever the question has been asked, Celtic have come up with the answers. So I think for us, we just need to keep doing more of what we are doing, and ask the question of Rangers, rather than the other way round.”
67 Hail Hail rejects BBC’s man’s proposal about Rangers closing the gap to Celtic
Speaking about closing the gap to Celtic, pundit Ian McCall reckons one bad transfer window for Celtic and Rangers having a good one will close the current gap between the two clubs.
McCall said, “If Celtic, in this window sign two or three players that don’t quite work, and Rangers sign four or five players, and you’ll never get four or five, but three or four of them turn into a Nico Raskin or a Daizen Maeda or whatever, and get a proper manager, obviously, and it was the same ifs when Celtic appointed Postecoglou, I think it can be done far, far quicker than people say.
Sinat: “Well, we are talking about Celtic are due a bad window, we didn’t exactly have the best window when Brendan Rodgers came back.
“I mean, of the 10 signings we signed there, I think Luis Palma was probably the only player that kind of made his mark.
“But then he fell off a cliff in December when he scored the bulk of his goals in his first six months, so we’ve had a bad window, and we still went on to win a double that season.”
McCall: “That’s a fair point, but your bad window didn’t coincide with a good window for Rangers.”
Sinat: “That’s true. That’s a fair point. But we’ll see what happens in the summer. We’ll see how Celtic respond. As I say, it’s not up to us to answer questions. It’s up to Rangers to try and keep up with us.”
McIntyre [laughing]: “A nice wee look across the studio there, shots fired!”
English: “But it’s true.”
McIntyre: “Of course it is!”
English: “Two things are going to have to happen. Rangers are going to have to start making really, really good decisions which they haven’t done for many, many years and Celtic are going to have to start making really bad decisions. Then the gap starts to narrow.”
The narrative surrounding Rangers’ takeover seems to be that Celtic need to be worried. That’s simply not true.
Yes, keep your eye on what’s going on across the other side of the city but Celtic have got nothing to prove here.
Time and again new owners have come in at Rangers and promised to end Celtic’s domination since 2012, and time and again the Parkhead club have blown them out of the water.