Dilly Ding! Dilly Dong!

Better to face up to reality and keep a cool head.

Celtic supporters have been used to mocking Rangers for so many years that they can't break the habit.

Now there are some who are in danger of failing to see what is staring them in the face.

Rangers are re-born under the leadership of Steven Gerrard and money has been found to build a team with the ability to challenge Celtic for the league title.

Gerrard has turned out not to be the rookie manager with no chance of taking on his former boss, Brendan Rodgers, and Sunday's matches at Kilmarnock and Ibrox have brought us to a symbolic happening.

On September 2 Celtic beat Rangers and moved four points ahead of their greatest rivals in the league table.

On September 23 Rangers beat St. Johnstone and went one point ahead of Celtic following their defeat at Rugby Park.

A five point swing in twenty-one days and the cue for the defiant in denial to protest that this was an early season blip and of no consequence whatsoever in the overall context of the league championship.

I would beg to differ.

A club with an annual wage bill of £59m, as revealed in published figures last week, has now won one point away from home in three league matches and, by virtue of Rangers leapfrogging them in the league table, rendered their Old Firm win meaningless.

The eight points conceded in Brendan Rodgers' first season as Celtic manager has now been equalled after six league games of his third season.

And a squad which has been allowed to become big in number shows signs of being short on quality.

There is now no wiggle room for Celtic.

The wage bill that is astronomical by Scottish standards is covering a squad of players containing too many who might not be able to make the difference between Celtic winning the league title and failing to do so.

And you can't win Ten in a Row if you don't get to eight in a row.

Celtic's squad, as listed in the Kilmarnock programme on Sunday, was thirty strong, but there are too many who have become surplus to requirements.

Will Johnny Hayes, Christian Gamboa, Ebouie Kouassi and Scott Allan be able to make a significant contribution if Rodgers calls upon them?

Have the likes of Scott Sinclair, Mikael Lustig and Youssuf Mulumbu got it in them if push gets to shove?

And is it too early to ask the likes of Jack Hendry, Lewis Morgan and Mikey Johnston to turn around a team that's watching the wheels fall off at the moment?

Some of those who thought they should be in the team were in the team at Kilmarnock and the end result is that Rodgers now has to make a return visit to the drawing board.

He tried to freshen his side and it didn't work. He tried three substitutes to improve on the performance of his starting eleven and that didn't work because Celtic failed to beat Kilmarnock for the fourth time in a row.

Just as they had failed to beat newly promoted St.Mirren in their previous away match. The same St. Mirren who were then taken apart by Hamilton Accies at the weekend.

Celtic's next game, co-incidentally, is away from home in Perth on Wednesday night and the defence of the Betfred Cup is no small matter.

The concept of the triple treble is at stake in the quarter finals of the cup and with it Celtic's domination of the home front.

The side who made history with a double treble need to be comforted by the thought the dream of a treble treble is still on.

Otherwise the defiant and those in denial will turn hostile, and when that happens you'll know the temperature has risen.

Rangers are cruising and Celtic are struggling. You can jump up and down, stick your thumb in your mouth or throw all the toys out of the pram, but that is the current state of affairs.

And it's the Celtic manager who'll need to come up with a solution to tide him over between now and the opening of the next transfer window three months from now.

Because it's his reputation which is on the line at the same time.

Rodgers has performed miracles at Celtic Park. He has deserved every last ounce of adoration that has come his way from an adoring support.

But how will it look on his c.v. if he fails to win the domestic title in a country where his team's annual wage bill is greater than the budget available to every other club in the league?

Brendan, therefore, has to solve a conundrum.

When Celtic beat Rangers three weeks ago their football was of the highest quality and Gerrard's side were comprehensively beaten.

Since then, they have been somewhere close to rubbish.

The woeful display at St. Mirren was followed by a European tie where the crowd were five minutes away from demonstrating their anger before Leigh Griffiths popped up with a face saving goal against Rosenborg.

The bottom line is that Hearts are top of the league but won't stay there.

The title will be, in the old fashioned way, the business of Celtic and Rangers and nobody else's affair.

It's illogical to say Gerrard doesn't have the players or the personal experience to threaten Celtic.

If Rangers had scored one more goal in the demolition of St. Johnstone they would, over the course of one game, have equalled Celtic's tally of league goals for the season so far.

At the same time, Celtic took a defensive wobble while losing at Kilmarnock.

If you can't defend and can't score then there's a bit of a problem somewhere, is there not?

And there's no point in mumbling about the hierarchy at Celtic Park while looking for a get out clause.

Peter Lawwell didn't fail to mark properly at Kilmarnock's winner on Sunday. Dermot Desmond didn't fail to score a goal against St. Mirren.

The money to pay Celtic's wage bill is substantial enough to be held in Fort Knox.

But points are being thrown away like a drunken sailor's wages.

So, here we are, in the middle of a proper competition, and the sooner some people get used to the idea, the better it'll be for their own peace of mind.

Competition is healthy.

It's hard when you've had it your own way for so long to discover that you're under threat.

But just because you don't want to see something it doesn't mean it isn't there.

As the wonderful Claudio Ranieri once put it for the hard of understanding while he was in charge of Leicester City, "Dilly Ding. Dilly Dong.

• Hugh Keevins