Celtic fans now expect nothing less than a treble every season, but is that kind of expectation realistic?

I remember when Celtic won the treble back in 2001 under Martin O’Neill in his first season at the club.

It was seen as a huge achievement back then.

Having been a Celtic fan for 17 years already at that stage, prior to that, I could only dream of the club winning trebles.

Especially after being through the dark days of the 90’s as a teenager and into my twenties.

The elation at winning that treble in 2001 was off the scale.

Back then, it certainly wasn’t something we would have expected the club to achieve on a regular basis.

It was seen as a huge achievement.

The fact that it has become routine at the club now, in my view, diminishes it somewhat.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve fallen in the category of a fan who just expects it as well.

I’ll never get sick of Celtic winning trebles.

Just like I’ll never get sick of us lording it over the Ibrox club the way we have for most of this century.

Believe me, if the shoe was on the other foot, their supremacist behaviour towards us would be off the scale.

Just as it was in the 90’s.

If we can keep that dead and buried for as long as I’m alive, I will never complain.

For those of you readers who didn’t experience the 90’s, you can consider yourselves very lucky.

They were the toughest of times to be a Celtic fan.

We endured horrible days and losses at the hands of Rangers 1872 in their pomp.

If I was to go down that rabbit hole and revisit all the injustices we experienced in that decade, I’d be here all day.

You also have to bear in mind there were no bloggers back then to expose the truth about the club across the city.

We had a handful of Celtic fanzines, and a media craven to David Murray.

They were in thrall of him.

Every day, we faced a pro-Ibrox media who labelled Celtic fans as a bunch of paranoid losers.

When we came out of that decade and into the digital age, I don’t think any of us imagine what was ahead of us.

In the 1999/2000 season, we had been roundly hammered again by Rangers 1872 in the league, trailing them by 21 points at the end of the season.

None of us, in a million years, expected to land a treble the following season.

Which is what made it all the more special.

All the more momentus an achievement.

Chris Sutton was also recalling what an achievement it was in the Record today.

In his article, he’s asking the same question as me, does Celtic winning trebles all the time diminish the achievement?

More to the point, Sutton wonders if it’s something Brendan Rodgers will tire of as manager of Celtic?

Nobody knows but Rodgers himself.

He says he’s the happiest he’s ever been in his career at the moment.

You have to assume the reason he’s that happy is because he envisages great things ahead for Celtic.

But how do you define great for Celtic now?

Winning trebles has become the norm.

It’s expected, but is that realistic?

Well, it is, in so far as the current climate we operate in allows for it to be routine.

So what lies beyond that?

We all know it would be next to impossible to win the Champions League.

Yet the Champions League is where we and Brendan Rodgers always want to be.

We definitely have it in us to win one of the other European competitions.

But in order to qualify for them, we need to not win our league, or drop out of the Champions League in the qualifying round.

Not something any of us wishes to entertain, as the finance on offer in the Champions League is far superior to that of the Europa League or the Conference League.

Which brings me back to the whole point of this article.

If we continue to dominate Scottish football in the way we that we have been this century, then we will continue to win trebles and continue to compete in the Champions League.

I’m happy with that, and as I said I’ll never tire of it.

But is the manager going to be?

Does he ever dream of winning the Champions League?

Of course he does.

And I’m sure he dreams of winning it with Celtic more than anyone else.

As does the dreamer in me.

But the realist in me knows it’s just not possible.

You have to go back to 2003/04 for the last time a side outside of Europe’s elite won this competition.

That was Jose Mourinho’s Porto side.

A side who defeated us narrowly in the previous season’s UEFA Cup final.

Which sort of shows you the level we were at back then.

Then again, we were also spending large sums of money around that time too.

But we were spending at an unsustainable level then.

We were spending to compete with David Murray’s claim that for every fiver we spent, he’d spend a tenner.

Peter Lawwell was brought in in 2003 to curb that level of spending and get it under control.

We went one way, and they went the opposite.

Which is why we find ourselves where we do today.

Celtic pretty much knew the spending at the early part of the century was unsustainable and acted accordingly.

Rangers 1872 didn’t, and they died.

Routine trebles are the rewards we reap for the action we took back then.

Which brings me along to the fabled takeover.

And a very realistic question.

What would Celtic fans prefer, an Ibrox side who pushed us to the limit?

Or an Ibrox side that cannot challenge us domestically?

At the moment, in their current state, they cannot lay a glove on us.

So, if the 49ers consortium is successful in their takeover bid, and they made them competitive, would that not be a good thing?

I know this would take a while, unlike the whole Sugar Daddy concept the Ibrox fans are drooling over.

The reality is that it will take a few years before they would really be in a position to challenge us.

And a lot of things would need to fall into place for that challenge to happen.

But I’ll put it this way, which do you think Brendan Rodgers would prefer as a football manager?

A league that was competitive, with our main rivals pushing us and challenging us?

Or a league like we have now?

With no competition.

Which would he derive more satisfaction from?

Winning easy?

Or winning hard?

Getting pushed all the way, or winning the league in April?

I know what I’d want.

But which scenario would be the most likely to keep Brendan Rodgers in Scotland?

Rising to the challenge of a resurgent Ibrox side?

Or winning trebles routinely, while hardly breaking a sweat in the process?

You know in your heart of hearts it’s the former.

Every football manager wants to win against the odds.

There is more satisfaction in getting pushed all the way, and getting it over the line at the very finish.

The takeover going ahead is more likely to keep Brendan Rodgers here than us just continuing the way we are.

Now, we’ve discussed the takeover from all angles in the Trinity Tims Podcast, we know it won’t be as straightforward as the Ibrox fans think it will..

We will probably still have the last laugh in all of this.

But I’d rather be having that last laugh at the end of a season where we fought tooth and nail for everything we won.

There is much more satisfaction in that.

Just as there was back in 2001.

For those of you who remember that treble, you know what I mean.

For those of you that don’t, maybe you’ll find out soon?

But whatever way you look at it, it’s an exciting time to be a Celtic fan.

Let’s just hope it stays exciting…