Dan Neil goes from zero to hero after his two goals against Celtic – isn’t it ironic that a couple of weeks ago after Jablonec they wanted him gone?

Dan Neil has Celtic to thank for his new hero status at Ibrox.

Let’s get that one out of the way before the week runs away from us.

Because a fortnight ago, the very same punters now calling him a world beater wanted him gone.

Their forums were a picture.

A waste of a jersey, that was the verdict.

A midfielder who couldn’t impose himself on Jablonec, of all people.

A pub team, by the standards the Ibrox support like to set for themselves.

And now, after ninety minutes against us, he’s the leader they’ve been crying out for since the old club stopped existing.

Funny how that works, isn’t it?

Two goals against Celtic, and a man they wanted shot of is suddenly the heartbeat of their team

Look, I’m not going to sit here and tell you the goals weren’t good.

They were.

Two strikes from the edge of the box, both of them right out of the top drawer.

And Scott McDermott in the Daily Record is right when he says they’ll go into that fixture’s folklore.

Fair play to the boy, he took them brilliantly.

But there’s a question nobody over there is asking this week.

Why was he allowed to hit them?

He didn’t beat Celtic on his own – we handed him twenty yards and invited him to be a hero

That is the bit that matters for Sunday.

Dan Neil flourished because he was given the space to flourish.

Nobody picked him up.

In fact, nobody even got near him.

Nobody in our midfield decided that the man sitting in front of their back four might be worth a tackle.

He was allowed to take the ball, turn, look up and pick his spot.

Twice.

Against a Celtic side that never once put a foot in.

Make no mistake, that is on us as much as it is to his credit.

Because this is a player who had shown us next to nothing in that jersey up until Sunday.

Ask their own support, they’ll tell you.

They were telling anyone who’d listen a fortnight ago.

So what changed in a fortnight?

Not him.

Now, I’ll grant them this much.

Derek McInnes got his shape, his system and his tactics spot on that afternoon, and he deserves the credit for it.

The Daily Record piece even has Neil telling Bojan Miovski and Vanja Dragojevic to calm down during the lap of honour.

Keeping their feet on the ground, apparently.

Already thinking about Celtic Park.

And who could blame him?

Well, good.

Because I’d rather he was thinking about it than not.

If Dan Neil runs the show for a second time inside a week, that one is on Martin O’Neill

This is where the learning has to happen, and it has to happen this week.

Martin O’Neill and his coaching team watched the same game we did.

They saw where the goals came from.

They saw who was left free in the space between our midfield and our defence.

So there is no excuse for a repeat of it on Sunday.

None whatsoever.

If we can’t stop one midfielder we’ve already watched do it to us on Sunday, then what exactly have the last four days been for?

Nullify Dan Neil, and a fair chunk of what they did at Ibrox goes with him.

Let him dictate it again in front of 60,000 of our own, and we will have learned nothing at all.

And that, quite frankly, would not be a good look.

Not for the manager, not for the players, and not for a support that has been patient long enough.

Of course, it isn’t just about one man.

Richard Gough was out this week saying that winning a derby at Ibrox is one thing, and doing it at Celtic Park is what makes or breaks you over there.

He’s not wrong.

False dawns have been a stock in trade at that club for over a decade now.

They are still five points behind us, remember.

They’ve won a quarter-final and reached a semi, and that is the sum total of what they have achieved.

Nothing more.

Yet to listen to them this week, you’d think the title was already engraved and sitting in the Govan trophy room.

Half of them had written this player off before the Jablonec dust had settled.

Every single one of our players has to raise it on Sunday, because the alternative is a fortnight of hell

That’s the reality of it.

This is not a game where we can carry two or three passengers and hope somebody produces a moment.

We’ve tried that already this season, and we all saw where it got us.

Sunday needs eleven men who want it more than the eleven in front of them.

It needs somebody in our midfield to get tight to Dan Neil and stay tight to him for ninety minutes.

It needs the tempo we couldn’t find at Ibrox and couldn’t find in Linz either.

And it needs the manager to pick a team that looks like it’s been chosen to win a football match.

Because if we get this wrong, we don’t just lose a derby.

We go into the international break with all of it hanging over us for two weeks.

Two weeks of their punters crowing about Dan Neil.

Two weeks of the SMSM telling us the balance of power has shifted.

Topped off with two weeks of wondering what we’re going to get when the football starts again.

I don’t fancy that, and neither do you.

Do we really want to spend a fortnight listening to that?

So let’s make Sunday the day the boy goes back to being what he was a fortnight ago.

Anonymous.

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