Hugh Keevins: There was a time and it's time it returned

It’s a pretty flimsy managerial defence of a tortuous, torpid, turgid Scottish Cup performance against East Kilbride to say that the Celtic fans will forget all about it if their team wins the competition.

Would that be the same Celtic support who booed Ronny Deila’s team off the park at half-time and then full-time at the Excelsior Stadium on Sunday?

The same Celtic support who brought out the first “Sack The Board” banner of the new Millennium because they want to know why, amongst other things, Deila’s still in his job?

If the Celtic players and management could play as well as they can talk then there might not be visible and audible signs of the fans’ anxiety over the remainder of the season.

But they’re having to live with the criticism that followed Deila’s assistant, John Collins, saying Celtic were too clever for the rest in the Premiership.

And with team captain Scott Brown stating that Celtic were certainties to win the title race, an observation which acted as the motivation for Aberdeen to draw level with the defending champions on points at the weekend.

Now Deila has put his team into the final of the Scottish Cup before the draw has been made for the quarter finals. Even the Ronny Defence League must be running out of ways to defend their builder of teams and nurturer of young talent.

Attention to detail with regard to the latter is called into question when one youngster is left out of the squad at the weekend because he’s still suffering the psychological effects of being held overnight in police custody following allegations of drink driving.

Still, it wasn’t all bad. At least there were two contenders for Goal of the Season against East Kilbride. Not.

Maybe the game looked as bad as it did because it followed the Edinburgh derby at Tynecastle. That was the tie of the tournament so far, and by a considerable distance.

Congratulations, too, must go to St. Johnstone and Aberdeen for their seven goal thriller in the league.

All you can ask for as mid-February approaches is that there is a viable championship race, and only the resolutely delusional would contest the fact that Aberdeen have to be in with a chance of the title while Celtic are as mediocre as they have become.

A game of managerial Russian roulette has begun between Deila and Derek McInnes. One false move against Ross County at Celtic Park on Saturday and Ronny might have located the chamber with the bullet in it.

But, in the interest of balance, if Celtic win and Aberdeen drop points at Inverness next Monday night then the Dons will be the ones looking down the barrel of failure and the premature end to their season.

What will be, will be. But what Celtic really need to lift the club is the arrival of Rangers back in the major league to sharpen focus.

There was a time when a stuttering display of ineptitude against a semi-professional club who are only five years old would have prompted a storm of protest, but some Celtic supporters deserve a humanitarian award for the way they have united to protect their manager from any form of criticism.

There was also a time when Rangers’ failure to use home advantage to dispatch a struggling Kilmarnock would have brought forth demands for better.

This is the Kilmarnock who have been rank rotten since the season started with a 4 – 0 league defeat at home.

A slump followed by a succession of results so bad the manager had to be got rid of as the team fell to second bottom place in the table on the back of conceding more goals than anybody else in the division.

You would think Rangers might at least have managed a goal against them at home when even Mark Warburton concedes there is no such thing as a gap between the lower reaches of the Premiership and the higher echelons of the Championship.

But a replay at Rugby Park is all part of the ‘Journey’ blah,blah, blah.

The sooner Celtic and Rangers are in direct opposition, the better. It’ll force the pair of them into bucking their ideas up when the distance between them in a league table is a constant source of concern and the fans go from being supine to super insistent that mediocrity isn’t an option.

There was a time when that was a given.