Celtic are in a title race... but it's just not with Rangers

Every so often a team comes along that is so impressively consistent, so ruthlessly relentless, that its closest challengers are not those they share a division with but the ghosts of history itself.

Such is the state of play with this Celtic side. 

Ange Postecoglou's men have run roughshod over Scottish football all season long. Just two barely-perceptible blots stain their copybook domestically: losing to St Mirren in Paisley on September 18 and drawing with Rangers on January 2.

The rest of the time, well, the SPFL just hasn't been able to live with them. While Postecoglou is rightly preaching his one-game-at-a-time mantra - as he did last term after assuming pole position following the 3-0 February derby demolition - the reality is that the Hoops are champions-elect in all but name.

No 2022-23 title race there may be but those ghosts are another thing. It's been almost seven years since Brendan Rodgers' maiden season ended in unprecedented, record-setting success. 

That 2016-17 team was statistically the most dominant single-season force Scottish football had seen since the Lisbon Lions (who, it should go without saying but needs to be anyway, no Scottish team of any description can ever hope to touch). 

Rodgers' side entered three domestic trophies and won three domestic trophies. They suffered no defeats at the hands of anything fair Caledonia had to throw at them, with only the European arena able to humble them somewhat.

It has been thus with the Postecoglou class too. They sit pretty at the Premiership summit, have the League Cup in the cabinet and swaggered their way into the Scottish Cup semi-finals recently too. 

Like seven years ago, Champions League results did not align with their impressive progress at home. They won plenty of admirers for the manner in which they went about things at the big table nonetheless.

This season's team cannot match that 2016-17 side's undefeated campaign nor their feat of scoring in every league game - having drawn a blank in that St Mirren defeat - but they can still match them in trophies and better them in several other ways.

So far this season's team have 79 points from 28 matches. That's an average of 2.82 points per game; the Invincibles managed 2.79. 

Taking 28 points out of the final 30 available will see Postecoglou's men break the 2016-17 Invincibles side's UK league points record. Nine wins and a draw in the last 10 matches for a team in this kind of form - and with this sort of depth - does not seem unreasonable.

If they go one better and win all 10 then they set a new world record of 109 points from a 38-game league season, beating the 2020-21 Red Star Belgrade team by one.

Then there are the goals - both scoring them and keeping them out. This term's team have 90 in the bank already (an average of a whopping 3.21 per game). The Invincibles ended the season with 106, an average of 2.78 per game. 

Continue scoring at their current rate - easier said than done, admittedly - and Postecoglou's men could even reach a ridiculous 120 for the Premiership campaign. 

For context, and simply to reinforce that earlier point about the 1966-67 team, the Lisbon Lions side bagged 111 in a 34-game league season meaning they averaged even more per match at 3.26. 

Guardian writer Jonathan Wilson wrote recently that "football is in an attacking phase... with more goals per game than at any point for 60 years". Regardless, it seems safe to assume that this crop, relentless or not, will be incapable of reaching the 196 goals that the 1966-67 Celtic squad gobbled up across their five competitions (184 if you don't count the Glasgow Cup, although you should).

But back to the Invincibles. Rodgers' side were not just an attacking behemoth but possessed a sturdy defence too. They conceded 25 goals in their 38 matches (0.66 per game). This season's team are currently on 20 in 28 (0.71 per game) so a run of clean sheets in these final 10 matches would be required to top that.

As it stands their five post-split fixtures will be against Rangers, Hearts, Hibernian, Aberdeen and St Mirren. Their combined record against that quintet in all competitions this term is 14 wins, a draw and a defeat from 16 matches in which they've scored 51 for the loss of just 12. 

Substitute St Mirren for their closest top-six challengers Livingston and it's even more one-sided (14 wins from 15, 45 goals scored and nine conceded).

Celtic will have played 17 home and 16 away matches by the time the split takes effect meaning they will likely be slated to have two home fixtures post-split to make up the even 19-19 scheduling composition.

This is all, of course, just Scottish football hubbub to the Celtic manager.

"There's always a lot of noise, a lot of talk," Postecoglou said after the Hearts game recently. "I've heard a lot of talk. Our role within that is to try and stay really disciplined and focus on what's important to us. 

"The lads have embraced that, they understand that if you take your eye off the ball you're going to trip up. We won't and we never look beyond the next challenge - not because it's a cliche but because we know that's the only way we're going to achieve what we want to achieve."

One at a time it is then. But keep ticking the games off in the manner they have been and this Celtic side might find that those ghosts they're chasing are already in their rearview mirror come summertime.

This piece is an extract from the latest Celtic Digest newsletter, which is emailed out every weekday evening with a round-up of the day's top stories and exclusive analysis from The Celtic Way team.

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