The inevitable ‘McInnes is drawing on his loss to Celtic to exact revenge’ has gone to press, and what did we expect after last week?

Yesterday, the story we all knew was coming finally went to press.

Derek McInnes is drawing on the pain of losing a title to Celtic, and he’s going to use it to exact his revenge on us.

The only surprise is that it took them this long.

But what else did we expect after last week?

It was guaranteed.

Our media have been sitting on this one since the final day of last season, waiting for the right moment to run it.

Two derby wins in a row was that moment.

Because this is the ultimate fairy tale to them now.

The man who had the title in his hands at Celtic Park, watched it slip through his fingers, and has walked into Ibrox to come back and take it off us.

You can practically hear them typing it with tears in their eyes.

Bobby Williamson was the man handed the microphone for the opening instalment, in a piece in the Daily Record.

He’s back over here promoting a book, and he was a guest at Celtic Park on Sunday.

Here is what he said:

“Maybe Derek didn’t have enough in him just now to get Hearts over the line. But I’m sure he’s learned and he will continue to learn quickly at Rangers.

“The painful experience of last season will stand him in good stead for this campaign and will motivate him to want to go on and win the title with Rangers.”

In isolation, there is nothing outrageous in a single word of that, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise

Managers do learn from losing titles.

Ex-pros do get asked leading questions while they’re plugging a book.

Williamson answered the one he was asked.

That isn’t the problem.

And who am I to tell a former Ibrox player what he can and cannot say?

The problem is what the SMSM does with a line like that once it’s out in the wild.

Because this is page one of a script that has already been written.

We are going to hear about karma from now until May, and we all know exactly how that one goes

Celtic didn’t deserve that title anyway, remember?

Not after Fir Park.

That penalty has been loaded and ready to go since the day it was awarded, and this is the season they finally get to fire it.

We took the league off Derek McInnes with a decision that should never have been given, and now the football gods are going to even it all up.

That’s the line.

Sound familiar?

And then comes the best bit.

Staunch Del gets the last laugh.

The man who picked up a touchline ban for calling that decision disgusting turns out to have been right all along, and he gets his justice on the pitch.

It’s poetry, as far as they’re concerned.

McInnes has a steely determination about him now, you see.

A burning desire.

A point to prove.

Nobody, of course, is going to mention the one detail that actually explains where we are sitting

There’s a small thing missing from the fairy tale.

Those two points between us and the Ibrox side have got nothing whatsoever to do with Derek McInnes.

Not one of them.

They have everything to do with the men running our own football club.

This is entirely self-inflicted, and it always has been.

We sold Arne Engels, Daizen Maeda and Reo Hatate.

We went into a season playing a system we do not have the players for.

The result??

We watched a tactical disaster-class at Celtic Park on Sunday afternoon and lost a derby to a solitary goal.

Derek McInnes didn’t do any of that to us.

Dermot Desmond and Michael Nicholson did.

And here’s the thing that really gives the game away.

Williamson was actually at the match on Sunday. Here is what the same man made of the football, in the very same piece:

“I didn’t think it was a great game, to be honest. I didn’t think there was a lot of chances created.

“I’ve not seen a lot of creativity for either team.”

And that is the derby that is supposedly the first chapter of the great Derek McInnes redemption story.

A poor game.

Very little created at either end.

One goal in it, and Ryan Naderi got it.

Hardly the stuff of legend, is it?

I personally thought we were shite, but so shite, that we made them look like world beaters.

The same man who is being used this week to build the revenge narrative sat there and told the Daily Record that neither side could create anything.

Funny how that part won’t be making the back pages.

Fair play to McInnes, because he has taken exactly what was put in front of him and no manager alive would have refused it

I’ll give him that much.

He’s got them organised, he’s got them believing, and he’s won the two games that matter most to his support.

He had a slow start at Ibrox and he’s turned it around.

Nobody should be pretending otherwise, least of all us.

But he hasn’t beaten us with a burning sense of injustice.

He’s beaten us while we’re a Celtic team that has been hollowed out by its own board and then handed to a manager who cannot find a shape for it.

Any half-decent manager in this league would have taken those six points.

He just happens to be the one standing there with a story attached to him.

So brace yourselves, because we are getting months of this now.

Karma, justice, redemption, the lot.

And not one word about the people who actually created the opening.

Karma didn’t do this to us.

Our board did.

End of.

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