Listen up Mr Tony Mowbray and the Celtic-minded press junket. It's a simple statement - your football team, tactics and players are not everything that you think they are.
This weekend, Mr Mowbray, Celtic's swashbuckling manager, the man who brought scintillating attacking football the likes of which has of course not been seen since the continent shifted it's eyes breathlessly en masse to the next evolution of attacking football that Sir Alex Ferguson pioneered, had his say on Walter Smith and Rangers.
At the weekend, Tony insinuated that the football that he and Walter Smith impliment stem from completely different philosophies. He's right. They do have different mentalities and philosophies from one another. The difference?
Walter Smith knows how to play the kind of football that wins you silverwear, yet sadly for him, not enough plaudits.
Somehow I don't think that bothers Smith too much. He is more than happy to let his strong, silent, dignified demeanor and the football his men play on the pitch do the talking. Happy to only come out fighting when he feels his team or club have been backed into a corner.
Simply, the most potent strikeforce in the country and one of the best defences in Europe. Mix that with a strength of character, a determination to win and the craft and guile of a balanced midfield then you have the type of football team that fans want to watch.
Yet, somehow, many green tinted glasses wearing supporters and staff seem to think that Mowbrays Celtic are the second coming.
A footballing deity, down from on high to bring to his followers the kind of football that brings twitches to trousers and trophies to his teams.
But where's the evidence Tony? Where is the strength of your false confidence? We can see through the interviews and soundbytes Tony, we know you're worried.
His free flowing Celtic have stuttered with form - the players seem unconvinced too Tony.
Even in just the last six games; Celtic have won three games, drawn one and lost two. An overall record of 53 goals scored (nicely significant number) and 29 conceded is simply not good enough to win a championship. It certainly shouldn't be good enough to have football purists screaming your name as they fumble towards an attacking climax.
The aformentioned kind of form doesn't win you titles. Even when you're going through temultuous injury crises and bedding in new players; you have to be able to grind out results to win titles. Yet of course, when the Scottish referees, the SPL, the SFA, the NWO, MI5 and the FBI are all against you, what chance do you have?
A sporting chance.
Just consider the sentiment of Celtic and Scotland legend Jock Stein, quite rightly considered a special manager - and listen up Billy McNeil; "If you're good enough, referees don’t matter."
Can you hear that Tony? It's the scurrying noise of your followers and faceless members of your employers running to the press and anyone that'll listen, proclaiming that your team isn't good enough.
Compare the form of Celtic to that of Rangers. Played six, won five and drawn one. Goals scored this season? Sixty two. Goals conceded? Nineteen. To put it simply, Celtic aren't in the same league as Rangers this season and the points on the board show exactly that.
Mr Mowbray proclaims that he is building for the future. That the Celtic fans need to put up with the stop start and ungelled nature of his current squad in the short term for the betterment of the team in the long term.
He broke down and sold off the sturdy bedrock of his playing staff in January in order to sculpt his own new look squad; one that's there for the long term and one that will grow with his tactics and philosophy for as long as he is Celtic manager.
He signed three first-team loan players to add to the one that was already playing week, in week out.
That's four players out of eleven starters that will simply walk away from Tony's project come the summer. If they were signed to breathe new life to Celtic's title hopes for this term, then why try to resusitate at the same time as building for the long term?
Surely the good management practice would have been keeping the existing squad skeleton and fleshing it out and accentuating it with these 'quality' (and expensive) loan signings? Not for Tony, no.
Walter Smith has had his hands tied in the transfer market and to my eye, the squad and team-spirit is better for it.
We have burgeoning and blossoming youngsters breaking through into a very settled squad that has been over every type of course and through pretty much every testing scenario that a player might have to deal with.
Initially, Walter brought calm, then he brought functionality and steel, then unrivalled and apparently effortless success and now some pretty attractive and tactically astute football.
Does he get the credit for it? No. He's still seen as ruling with the tactical iron fist of stuffy, counterproductive and stifling football.
Smith has himself came out fighting in support of his squad and himself yesterday and truer words have not been heard:
"A lot of teams get a reputation for a specific level of play. People’s perception of Rangers has been formed more by our success on the European stage a couple of seasons ago, when we played a certain way in a defensive sense. Everyone now looks at our team and says that’s the way we are when we are playing domestic football."
“But we don’t play like that in domestic football. If we are asked to defend, then we defend. But we set out to go forward and try to win the games. I have been like that in Scotland for the majority of games, the exceptions being maybe a few trips to Celtic Park. But in 98% of the games in Scotland, we try to go out to win, home and away."
“Now we have that defensive reputation, though, that when we actually play well, everyone just ignores it anyway. They say ‘Och, Rangers ground out a result’ or ‘Rangers are resilient’, or ‘Rangers are this, that and the next thing’. We actually play some decent football at times. Look at the Old Firm game a couple of weeks ago. In open play, we had our left-back Sasa Papac forcing a corner in the last minute. We try to get our full-backs forward generally. We do get people forward and play in an attacking manner.”
After reading those quotes and considering the man himself, what superlatives are left for a man like Walter Smith?
It really should be the case that the Scottish press and supporters look to Smith as a modern-day legend. He's as relevent and astute now as he was as prociding over Rangers sucesses of the 1990's; yet he has only won Manager of the Month once this season.
Craig 'we beat them on corners' Brown, has won it the last two months consecutively due to his turning around of Motherwell - is his form record comparable to Smith's? Has he won it due to the context in which he is working? If that's the case then the context that Smith has excelled ever since his return to Rangers deserves him the knighthood that he should ultimately receive.
To put it simply, comparing Tony Mowbray and Celtic to Walter Smith and Rangers this season is much akin to comparing a rusted Vauxhaull Astra with a high performance engine plonked inside and body kit sellotaped to the outside to that of a purring, highly tuned and reliable 4x4 that is capable of driving across and through any course with unparralelled strength and dexterity.
The cream will rise to the top this year and with the potential for Rangers to wake from their financially enforced coma towards the end of this season, the future is starting to look rosier at Ibrox.
The doomsday scenarios are slowly beginning to fall by the wayside and matters on the park are the best that they have been in a long time.
Sitting abreast of the league by a comfortable buffer is the perfect time to stop and take stock of exactly what Rangers have going for them - a fantastic management team, very watchable and winning football, a unified dressing room and settled team.
Rangers should be being lauded from all quarters for where we are right now - if no one is going to do it for us then we'll just do it ourself. I'm surprised many remember Mr Mowbray's name.
As ever, Walter Smith is leading the way for us all.
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