No guilt about innocence
A draw is a disaster. A defeat is a catastrophe.
I said that at the start of the season regarding Celtic, Rangers and the contest to see who would win the Premiership championship.
The words carry even greater weight now as the championship race resumes after the winter break on Wednesday night.
The ongoing rows between both clubs and the SFA since the turn of the year have underlined the extent of the animosity and hostility which exists between Celtic and Rangers off the park.
It is as tiresome as it is unhealthy and does not bode well for the conclusion to what will inevitably become a toxic title ending.
The other inevitability is that baffling and erroneous refereeing decisions will heighten the malodorous tension which already hangs thick in the air.
No Rangers fan believes Celtic would have won the Betfred Cup final earlier in the season had Willie Collum and his assistants not missed the fact that Christopher Jullien's winning goal was scored from an offside position.
The Scottish Cup kicked off for Celtic at the weekend with another referee, Alan Muir, failing to give an obvious penalty kick when Jeremie Frimpong was pushed to the ground.
The match official then compounded the felony by mistakenly awarding a penalty kick to Partick Thistle after the luckless Frimpong was adjudged to have brought down Dario Zannata.
Somewhere, sometime between now and the end of May, incidents like those are going to be repeated and will contribute towards Celtic winning Nine in a Row or Rangers preventing that from happening.
You know it. I know it. We all know it. It's better to be prepared in advance for the awful fall-out that will accompany the day of reckoning.
In the meantime, it's nice to think that other, more normal, factors will come into play so far as the progress of the championship is concerned.
St. Mirren go to Ibrox on Wednesday night. It is hardly going out on a limb to suggest this match is as close to a walkover as Rangers can get.
If your hopes of winning the title for the first time in almost a decade are partly dashed by losing at home to a side engaged in a weekly struggle to avoid relegation then that is your own fault.
Celtic at Kilmarnock on the same night is a different matter.
Rugby Park has an artificial playing surface. Celtic habitually struggle on artificial pitches.
Their most eccentric result of the season to date was the undeniably awful performance at Livingston while losing by a two goal margin to a team who did not win another game after that for three months.
There was also a tortuous one goal win over Hamilton Accies on the car park surface which passes for a pitch in the shadow of several Lanarkshire supermarkets.
Synthetic surfaces should not be allowed in the top flight of Scottish football, but they are and you just have to get on with it.
Celtic can look visibly pained when they play on them, but that might not actually be their biggest problem on Wednesday night.
Regardless of whatever business has been done in the January transfer window, irrespective of Leigh Griffiths' heart-warming return to the forefront of the game at the weekend, there is one glaring misgiving where Celtic are concerned.
Neil Lennon's side are no great shakes at the back.
Kristofer Ajer missed Saturday's cup win in Maryhill and remains a doubt for Wednesday's match.
Nir Bitton, his understudy, went off with what looked like a long term injury problem at Firhill.
Jozo Simunovic, who last played in August, looked well off the pace as Bitton's substitute.
And Jullien was, let's say, unconvincing at the heart of the defence.
Simunovic also has a well documented aversion to plastic pitches, so Celtic's defensive selection in midweek could well make for interesting reading.
As interesting as how they cope with a Kilmarnock side who whose defining characteristic at the weekend was aerial goalscoring during a six goal romp against Queens Park.
The nature of the opposition must be taken into account, of course, but defending cross balls into their penalty box could never be described as Celtic's forte.
It is refreshing, however, to wonder how a purely football related issue might affect the outcome of a game.
Every now and then it's nice to have a game of football break out amidst the endless bickering and suggestions of the the progress of the season being influenced by dark forces at work to undermine somebody's situation.
Abuse and acrimony are on the rise and the atmosphere surrounding the game as it applies to Celtic and Rangers is decidely unpleasant.
You'll need to hold your nose and have a strong stomach to survive what lies ahead between now and the end of the season.
So it's good to know there is still room for innocently wondering if a game might be determined by the performance of a defence who occasionally give the impression that couldn't keep pigeons out of a loft.
It brings innocence into an atmosphere of endless suspicion and nobody should feel guilty about that, should they?