If you looked at the calendar year 2003 you might be tempted to think that it was a bit of a disaster for Celtic. After all, Celtic ended up with nothing tangible to show for their efforts.
On the domestic front, Celtic lost out to Rangers where it really mattered. We lost the league, we lost the Scottish cup and we lost the CIS cup. However, upon closer scrutiny you might discern a different story as to the relative strengths of Scotland's top two teams. A year ago today, Celtic were well behind Rangers in the league and if you had believed the hun hacks, the league was all over bar the shouting.
In fact, January -May 2003 will go down as one of Celtic's strongest runs in their history.
They put together some very impressive results and succeeded in clawing back the Rangers'  lead to the extent that the league wasn't decided literally until the last kick of the ball. One also has to call into question the nature of just how Rangers were able to maintain their shrinking lead over Celtic. It was clear that in certain games in the run in, Rangers were given unfair and in some cases disgraceful assistance from match officials.
(For example, who will ever forget the notorious Dundee-Rangers game when the huns were awarded three penalties in quick succession after Dundee had gone into the lead!)

Then of course there was the somewhat supine nature of some of Rangers opponents, the same players who fought like tigers against Celtic seemed to be overcome with lethargy and fatigue when visiting Ibrox. There was also the conduct of the SFA which insisted that Celtic go to Ibrox after having secured a place in a European final just 48 hours previously. In other words, Celtic were punished for raising Scotland's profile and standing in Europe by the very people who run the Scottish game, you couldn't make this up!

Then there were the Old Firm games themselves where some very strange decisions took place. Who can ever forget the John Hartson 'offside' goal in the CIS final? A blind man could have seen that the big Welshman was clearly onside when he scored. There were also the numerous, far too numerous occasions when Celtic players were punished for misdemeanours whereas the likes of Ricksen, Moore and co were able to escape any form of rebuke after vicious assaults on Celtic players.

But what last year doesn't show is Celtic's remarkable run in Europe. Blackburn, Celta Vigo, Stuttgart, Liverpool, Boavista and finally Porto in Seville. Here was a club which had been afraid of its past, unable to get beyond the month of December in European games for over twenty years. Celtic were back big time, a new generation of younger Celtic fans getting a sense of what the club is really about. A big team in the biggest arena of football, a throwback to the magical years of Jock Stein. As the games piled up, Celtic just kept on winning sometimes playing two games a week with travel abroad involved. Then the climactic end to the season with Celtic hauling themselves back to Scotland after their narrow but epic defeat in Spain. Rangers against Dunfermilne and Celtic against Kilmarnock. The attitude of the Dunfermilne players and management team will forever cast a shadow on that once honourable  club. That day at Ibrox, they didn't just surrender, they lay down and died. Chris Sutton spoke for us all when he articulated the sense of injustice and anger about the innate corruptness of Scottish football. The statistics don't lie and a close examination will reveal that the number of penalties awarded to Rangers far exceeded those of any other club in Scotland last season. Strange too the number of Rangers opponents who were red carded in key games.

But Celtic are bigger than the parochial midgets who police the game in Scotland. Martin O'Neill took a leaf out of the book of Jock Stein by keeping his mouth shut and simply building on the progress of last season. And Celtic have progressed as the 2003-2004 is already proving. Celtic has established an eight point lead over Rangers with a derby looming next week which in all honesty Rangers must be dreading. Celtic's awesome home record has turned Celtic Park into a veritable fortress.
In Europe this season there was a sense of disappointment at the nature of our failure to proceed to the final stages of the CL. Our sense of disappointment was heightened by the fact that we knew we really should have gone further this time. However, it is a learning curve and Celtic are learning gradually as have other major clubs in the toughest of all club competitions. However, the disappointment was made more palatable by the fact that we are still involved in European football again after Christmas. The point surely is that our expectations have never been higher, now we EXPECT to be involved in the very highest echelons of football. An away game to Aberdeen no longer holds any fears.

Much was made of the club's failure to attract new talent during the summer to Celtic Park.
What was not mentioned was the fact that nobody of any real value actually left the club.
It was the 'invincible' men of Ibrox who found themselves in the strange position of having to rid themselves of their major stars because of the incredible debt they had incurred despite being treble winners. The truth is that Rangers (and the vast majority of Scottish clubs for that matter) are actually bankrupt and having nothing to offer Celtic in terms of challenge or financial security. The game in Scotland is downsizing at an alarming rate. When the signing of 34 year old Henning Berg is regarded as a major coup, it speaks volumes about the state some of us are in.

Celtic is a well run club and that simple message should never be forgotten. Of course, money could and should be spent on players that Martin O'Neill targets as being important to strengthen the club. We know already in the month of December 2003 that automatic qualification for the CL 2004 is well within our grasp. A victory on Saturday against Rangers would be a great start to 2004 and a perfect end to 2003, a great year despite what others would have you believe.