There will be no asterisk beside Celtic’s name when history records them as the best team in Scotland over 2015-16. There will be nothing to indicate they are the first champions ever to lose their manger because he couldn’t get good enough performances over the last six months of the season. They have reached five consecutive titles on a campaign of colourless and forgettable play. Instead of throwing their arms in the air, as winners do when they cross the finishing line, they might have covered their faces in mild embarrassment. They have made heavy weather of winning a league in which their wage bill is higher than the other 11 clubs combined.
There is no need for an asterisk because champions are champions, and Celtic’s coronation is on its way, given that Aberdeen can equal their points total but have no hope of overtaking their goal difference. Celtic have been disparaged and derided this season, with their own supporters prominent among the chorus line of critics, but there is a point at which even the harshest detractors must fall silent. The answers to two questions confirm Celtic’s worth as champions. Have they been the best team in the Premiership? Yes. Do they deserve their title? Yes, again.
It is being said that Aberdeen might feel haunted about not winning the league this season and that they will “never have a better chance”. That is another debate, and one which ignores the slow but unmistakably process by which Celtic (and Rangers) have been forced to downsize, have assembled poorer squads, and have shown far more vulnerability to domestic challengers than they did a decade ago. But this season Aberdeen fell well short of lasting the course with Celtic. By all but one of the significant yardsticks Celtic were their superiors.
Ronny Deila’s team now stand nine points ahead and cannot be overtaken (they were 17 points clear after the full 38 games last season). They have won more games, lost fewer, scored more goals and conceded fewer. Their goal difference is better than Aberdeen’s by 35, an enormous figure. The one measure by which Aberdeen have been better than them is in their head-to-head meetings although, if that goes to form, Celtic will win the final meeting of the season at Celtic Park on Sunday to leave both of them with two home wins.
The thing about Celtic is that most of their victories this season almost became invisible. There was no story, no fuss, when they routinely took care of any club other than Aberdeen. There was no real media attention when they went on winning or unbeaten runs; it is expected, it is familiar, and it almost goes unnoticed. The backbone of another title-winning season was quietly assembled, built up either side of the occasional stumbles and falls which gave false hope to their challengers. Celtic dropped points in three of their first nine games this season.
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They were beaten twice by Aberdeen and by Motherwell at Celtic Park. They also drew against Kilmarnock (twice), Hearts (twice), Dundee (twice), Hamilton and Ross County. All of those generated negative publicity. But they also went six unbeaten at the start of the season; they went ten without loss between the first Aberdeen and Motherwell defeats; they went five unbeaten between Motherwell and the second defeat at Pittodrie on February 3, and they haven’t lost in the league in 11 games since then. Those runs — ordinary, unremarkable — were where the league was won. That unspectacular but methodical accumulation of points set a steady pace which Aberdeen could not match. Celtic went top on October 17, just 11 games in, and stayed there, even if it needed goal difference to keep them ahead of Aberdeen at one point in February.
In a season disfigured by awful European results, numbing defeats in cup semi-finals they were hugely favoured to win, and near constant attention and speculation about Deila’s future, all the mundane league victories got lost. Celtic have scored in all but three of their league games. With three games left, they have won 24, lost three and taken 80 points, compared to 27, four and 85 at the same stage last season (being five points worse off indicates decline).
Leigh Griffiths weighed in with 30 league goals, responsible for 17 points alone. Another half century of league goals were spread around but the next highest scorer was Tom Rogic on seven. Celtic must scratch their heads about how they can have four strikers on the payroll (Anthony Stokes, Stefan Scepovic, Carlton Cole and Colin Kazim-Richards) who have a single league goal among them from a combined 16 appearances. Only seven of their wins were by more than a couple of goals, most notably the 8-1 annihilation of Hamilton Academical in January.
The defence, not good enough in the Champions League or Europa League before Erik Sviatchenko’s arrival in January, was capable enough in the league. They have delivered 14 clean sheets so far and the goals against column stands at 27 (up from just 17 conceded last season). Kieran Tierney’s emergence was a real boost but Jozo Simunovic, the expensive addition, is either desperately unlucky with injuries or he’s made of glass.
It isn’t straightforward to pick Celtic’s “big”, season-defining league wins. They swatted Aberdeen away at Celtic Park on October 31, their lead stretching to seven points when it could have been cut to one. On January 2, they were goalless at home to Partick Thistle, with Nir Bitton sent off, until Griffiths scored in the 90th minute. On March 19, Aberdeen could have gone top of the league by a point: instead Rogic scored a 90th minute screamer for a 1-0 lunchtime win at Kilmarnock and Aberdeen lost at Motherwell later. It was a pivotal afternoon. On April 2, Celtic went a goal down at home to Hearts but recovered to comfortably win 3-1 and stay seven points clear; it had been a game in which Aberdeen hoped they would stumble. And, on April 9, Griffiths’ 75th-minute winner at Motherwell eased them eight points clear again after Aberdeen had lost the previous night at Tynecastle. Aberdeen’s slip-ups were a big factor. They fell to four defeats and a draw in their nine games before beating Motherwell at the weekend, dropping 14 points out of the last 30.
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Yet Celtic cannot claim to have always felt in control. A year ago Kris Commons said he felt Celtic had not been truly pushed: that the push from Aberdeen in 2014-15 wasn’t real. A view persists that only Rangers can mount an authentic title challenge. This time Celtic’s anxiety and self-doubt were evident on that March afternoon at Rugby Park: it showed in the club subsidising ticket prices in an attempt to swell the away support, in the explosive celebration of Rogic’s winner, and the return of the manager’s abandoned “Ronny Roar”.
They hadn’t been sure, that morning, whether five in a row definitely would be theirs. They are now.