CELTIC LOSE, ABERDEEN WIN: WHY ARE RANGERS FANS CLAIMING A VICTORY?
- BY LIAM CARRIGAN
- May 25
- 3 min read
Updated: May 28
Yesterday was not a pleasant day to be a Celtic fan.
We’ve enjoyed unprecedented success over the past two decades, to the point where winning the league almost every year has just about been normalized.
With the prospect of a 9th treble now off the table (at least for another 12 months), many people were unhappy yesterday, and rightly so. It was an utterly insipid performance from Celtic.
However, we support Celtic because we love the club, the history and culture around it, and the principles that our supporters stand for. We can’t win every single tournament, and an occasional loss is, if nothing else, good for keeping egos in check, my own included.
Aberdeen came with a game plan to try and stifle Celtic’s creativity at every opportunity. This made for one of the most boring games of football I’ve seen in a very long time, but that’s not Aberdeen’s problem.
Their mission yesterday was to win the Cup by any means necessary, and they achieved that.
So fair play to them. It is Celtic's failing that, not for the first time this season, we failed to pick apart a deep-seated defense.
Celtic Lose: a Reminder of Just How Hard it is To Win a Treble
Trebles aren’t easy. Celtic are as dominant now as the old Rangers were in the 90s, yet still neither side could win every domestic tournament every single year.
It doesn’t excuse the fact that we should have won yesterday. Aberdeen managed to take the game to extra time despite not managing a shot on target throughout the first 90 minutes.
What struck me as truly bizarre though was how many Rangers (Requiescat in Pace) fans couldn’t wait to celebrate this win by clogging up our post-match stream with all manner of barely legible spelling mistakes, grammatical errors and their usual, extremely unhealthy, fixation with child abuse.
They truly are a weird bunch. But I thank them for providing me with a much-needed source of amusement and comfort after yesterday’s disappointment.
Look at it this way, I know we, the Celtic support are hurting today. But that will pass. We will win more trophies next season. We will continue to press on in Europe and domestically.
Attempts at mockery from Rangers supporters because we lost in the final of a tournament they were eliminated from in February, show how just accepting of their own utter mediocrity they have become.
Ask yourself this, honestly, if the roles were reversed and Celtic had been knocked out the cup by a lower league side in the early stages, and Rangers were playing Hearts yesterday, what would you do?
Personally, I’d probably go hiking, maybe take a day trip to a hot spring or something. I certainly wouldn’t spend my entire afternoon hate-watching two teams I detest.
I definitely wouldn’t then take my barely literate self onto every Celtic post-match YouTube stream I could find to joyously celebrate the fact that the team I hate slightly more than the other were the eventual losers.
We can take comfort in that. Celtic had a bad day yesterday, one that will sting for a while. But we will never be reduced to the trophyless, shameless, husk of a reanimated corpse that is the current Rangers team, and their zombie followers.
Celtic will never slip so low that we celebrate a Rangers defeat more than our own victories.
That’s the difference. Much like the new year Glasgow derby, yesterday was as bad as it can get for us, and as good as it’s likely to get for them anytime soon.
Onwards and upwards. Celtic have a huge task this summer, getting the squad in the right shape, in terms of personnel, tactics and mental fortitude, to defend our league title next season.
I am confident that we will do so. As for our wannabe rivals. Well, I'll say this:
Much like their fanbase’s eternally disappointed romantic partners, the Rangers aren’t coming anytime soon.
