Now Celtic must avoid 21-year low in closing games of season
The indignities may not be over for Celtic in their cataclysmic season.
It may seem the Parkhead club have nothing to play for across their final two Premiership games after failing to seriously compete for any honour. Yet, in harvesting only 73 points from their 36 league games, failure to win both remaining matches would see them post their lowest points total in a campaign for 21 years.
It is remarkable to consider that Celtic were able to claim the title with a mere 79 points in 2012-13; losing seven games and drawing seven in the first top flight season not to feature Rangers as a consequence of the Ibrox club’s liquidation.
Across the past two decades - even in the five seasons during that period they finished second - they otherwise have not failed at least to break the 80-point mark. In the illfated John Barnes season of 1999-2000, they snared a lowly 69 points. Notably, Rangers breezed to the title then by a 21-point winning margin. Currently, their lead stands at 23 points, and Celtic can do nothing about the Ibrox men eclipsing that gap.
Neither, of course, after failing to beat Rangers in a season for the first time in 21 years, can they now do anything to stymie their bitter rivals’ bid to achieve an unbeaten league campaign that would replicate their 2016-17 feat - which currently stands as the only ‘invincible’ top flight campaign in the past 120 years in Scottish football. In their encounters at home to St Johnstone a week on Wednesday, and the trip to face Hibernian four days later, Celtic have further misery to avoid, then.