Forget Helicopter Sunday. The league title was won officially by Rangers two weeks ago.
This is Track and Trace Sunday at Celtic Park.
One team is on track for the domestic season they’ve wanted for 10 years. The other one is sinking without trace.
And you wouldn’t need extra sensory powers of perception to work out which one is which.
The price of calamity is collapse and Rangers fell under the weight of their own calamitous inefficiency against Slavia Prague on Thursday night.
The last 16 in Europe appears to be their glass ceiling.
But one man’s glass ceiling is another man’s roof caving in – and Celtic have had nothing to talk about in Europe during the years they’ve been cannon fodder for a variety of sides of varying standing on the continent.
Today is about the possibility of Celtic, and their fans, having to reset their ideas on the club’s internal structure, the way the team plays football and the supporters’ attitude towards building towards a better future.
The much talked about RB Salzburg coach Jesse Marsch, linked with the job of succeeding Neil Lennon, speaks of projects and building without being obsessed by results to begin with.
Celtic supporters would need to rid themselves of the urge to flood the car park and clash with police after losing a Betfred Cup tie to Ross County in that case.
The football world is moving on and Celtic are being left behind.
How far behind might be assessed by the course of this afternoon’s game.
The club, and their fans, might need to accept the best way to get up to speed is to copy the structural model possessed by their biggest rivals.
There might have been some Celtic supporters who wouldn’t have been too unhappy if the First Minister had gone through with the threat of cancelling today’s derby for fear of public disorder.
It would have spared them the risk of a going-over from a team who start the game with a 20-point lead over them.
When battle-hardened veterans of a league season without defeat so far come up against players who look like the equivalent of conscientious objectors you might be excused for thinking there can only be one winner.
Any time Celtic have been shown a challenge at domestic level this season they’ve demonstrated a disinclination to rise to the occasion. Today is about team and fans upping their game. Tribalism is all very well, but a sense of perspective is better.
It’s highly appropriate Glasgow is hosting the climate change conference for global leaders later this year.
The environment, as it applies to both Celtic and Rangers, has not changed for over 130 years.
Greta Thunberg, the Swedish icon of environmental welfare, will never have experienced such a thing before.
And there’s no vaccine yet available that is able to stop the transmission of the toxic intolerance that exists between both clubs.
But it can’t be the height of the Celtic fans ambition to simply draw today.
That would mean their team’s invincible run through the league under Brendan Rodgers will be better than Rangers’ invincible run under Steven Gerrard – by a single point. There has to be more to life going forward than avoiding a total whitewash at the hands of their rivals and gleefully taking that as something that was salvaged from a wreckage.
I know there’s small print in the unwritten contract between the Old Firm that says there’s no triumph too large or too small that can’t be celebrated in a totally disproportionate fashion by the fans.
But what would any of that do for anybody in the grand scheme of things?
Celtic supporters have been relatively quiet so far on the issue of who should be the club’s next manager.
Today’s result has the potential to trigger a significant change in attitude before it gets dark this evening.
The absentee landlord, principal shareholder Dermot Desmond, would then need to condescend to speak to the tenants who pay their dues sometime soon in the event of a watershed moment.
When I first knocked on the club’s door for professional purposes in 1970 it was answered by Jim Kennedy, a former player from the 1960s who determined who was fit for entry.
If you got past Jim you then met Irene MacDonald, who ran the club’s daily affairs politely and efficiently.
Then you got to speak to Jock Stein. And that was it.
Three people, one historic European Cup win two-and-a-half years earlier. It was borderline miraculous.
But now we’re in a PowerPoint, data based, futuristic world by comparison. And Celtic need to get on message.
The only piece of technology we don’t need today is the daft-o-meter.
Celtic Park has, regrettably, been turned into a militarised zone in anticipation of disturbances.
But if anything happens today we really have a hopeless case on our hands when it comes to public order.
The government is watching.
The television company who under-write Scottish football is watching too.
They could turn a £125million, five-year contract into fish-and-chip paper if we get trouble followed by the
consequences of misbehaviour.
Nobody could really be that stupid, could they?
