Brendan Rodgers plays to the gallery but his Celtic side fail to convince

Celtic could yet retain the Scottish Premiership. Any assertion that they will not – hardly wild on the basis of evidence available from the table or umpteen matches – seems to have irked Brendan Rodgers.

Not that it takes much to irritate the Celtic manager; his sour tone has been an intriguing, constant feature of this second spell in Glasgow. One has been left to ponder why he bothered cutting short a planned sabbatical from the game to return to Celtic last summer.

Celtic trail Rangers by two points and six goals with 11 league games remaining. In other leagues, this would be no cause for firm opinion but the weakness of Scotland’s top flight means Rodgers cannot rely on other teams nicking points from Rangers.

The Ibrox side have been completely rejuvenated by Philippe Clement, to the degree where they play with the swagger and belief of champions. Celtic have two key elements on their side: successive and deserved victories over Rangers in the Premiership this season, and a level of recent title specialism not at all evident across the city.

Still, when Rodgers claimed back-to-back championships at Celtic from 2017, he did so with Rangers 39 and 12 points adrift. A title race worthy of the name has Rodgers trying desperately to forge a siege mentality.

To Rodgers, the “narrative” is firmly against Celtic. He has scoffed at “crisis mode” perceptions. At the weekend, he pointed out that “there’s a story been written” about his group of players. Probing from a BBC journalist about what precisely Rodgers meant – a wholly legitimate line of questioning – led to the 51-year-old cutting short an interview and branding his questioner a “good girl”.

This condescending moment led to widespread criticism. Celtic’s silence