Turning full circle

It’s been a long wait.

For anyone who endured the Souness/Smith and early Advocaat era at Celtic, the memories are still raw. Rangers were signing England internationals. Celtic were signing Martin Hayes, Wayne Biggins and Carl Muggleton.

Rangers were playing in the Champions League. Celtic were losing to Neuchatel Xamax in the Uefa cup.

Rangers had cash in abundance. Celtic had biscuit crumbs.

Rangers had the Laudrup/Gascoigne halo effect. Everything Celtic had turned to Scheidt.

But maybe – and it’s only a maybe – it was worth it.

The late 80s and early 90s saw Rangers in full “we arra peepul” cry. And didn’t they let us know it. Ably assisted by their fans in the Scottish press, they took every opportunity to brandish their superior cash, their super stadium and their success. They mocked, condemned and humiliated Celtic fans, players and managers. But when people have egomaniac tendencies, they rarely have friends to advocate humility. The best they might have is a sensible wife urging them to watch their spending, save a little for a rainy day. Rangers lacked that – and it’s been bucketing down lately.

You can cheerfully ignore what the tabloids tell you. The evidence of Rangers’ decline is there to be perused – the third place finish last season, the offloading of their own youth development programme, giving up their retail outlets, the fact that they are about to embark on a fourth full overhaul of the squad, post-Advocaat, with ever-cheaper players coming in.

Meanwhile, Celtic are not satisfied with signing players like Thomas Gravesen from Real Madrid or a Dutch full international striker in Jan Venegoor of Hesselink – one of the best strikers in Britain – or even Shunsuke Nakamura, who must surely be tempting the aforementioned Real Madrid, given the fact that he is a far superior player to the right-sided free kick specialist who will be plying his trade in Los Angeles next season.

Why is all this relevant? Because, at long last, that hex sign that hung over Celtic Park for more than a decade seems to have moved south. Only football (and Nacho Novo) seems to have that quite merciless ability to put the studs in when a man is down and nearly out - the sort of thing that sees an already fragile club finding itself facing sanctions for signing a player who was injured before he could play a game.

We are now going to see just how much of a miracle-worker Walter Smith is – without the luxury of a Laudrup, Gascoigne or Hately, though there’s always a Coisty.

And somehow, it’s difficult to imagine Celtic messing up the position of supremacy that has been so hard won.

Many Celtic fans are wary of gloating too much over their rivals’ embarrassments – perhaps the memories are too raw; perhaps there is the superstition that pride will precipitate another fall; maybe it just seems like bad manners. And choosing not to seek out Rangers fans for harassment is certainly the more dignified and meritorious approach.

But remember this the next time you allow yourself a chuckle of schadenfreude. All the problems that Rangers are now enduring are the results of their crass "Loadsamoney” tactics beginning in the 1980s and carrying on throughout the David Murray reign.

They are paying for their vainglorious excesses. And, for all those Celtic fans who endured the jibes, the headlines and the cracked crests – you’ve paid for this time in full. Enjoy it – it’s yours.