As predicted, the victory at Parkhead by the Scottish champions has been portrayed as a controversial contest, not just by Celtic - that's a given - but by the Scottish sporting press and media which reports honestly and accurately about as often as Halley's Comet comes into view.
The relatively simple task of itemising the various incidents in the game has taken a back seat to airing Celtic-minded grievances, and the neutral would be forgiven for thinking that the referee had been plucked from the Rangers end instead of from the religious education faculty within Scotland's schools.
Referee Willie Collum's Catholicism is an important part of his life; he teaches the subject as well as strictly adhering to it, and it is this same R.C. faith which has been rooted at Celtic since 1888. While Collum is a dignified and decent example of his religious allegiance, Celtic FC is anything but.
Celtic gives Catholicism a bad name in Scotland with its incessant bitching, its failure to handle defeat graciously, its seeming willingness to imply that its failings are down to playing in mainly-Protestant Scotland, and its apparent eagerness to resort to foul play - and this was never more evident than in Sunday's game where green and white thuggery was commonplace - and less than adequately punished by a young referee who was faced, not just with a difficult task, but by an impossible one.
As Celtic's excuse-makers run riot in the newspapers, television and radio citing injustice and unfairness, the fact that Celtic finished the game with eleven players rather than a more appropriate six or seven has been revised away, and instead of being grateful for the lenience of the referee, they are using him as a convenient scapegoat for failings much closer to home.
For generations, Celtic has blamed match officials for its own inadequacies, usually with an implication that the Protestant ones are incapable of officiating honestly, and many in the Catholic community have bought into this wretched and sorry tale, but today we see a young man who spreads the Catholic gospel to Catholic school pupils made out to be incompetent and unprofessional, and all because Celtic lost to rivals they hate more than they respect themselves: Rangers.
Something stinks in Scottish football, and the stench grows stronger with every passing year. It emanates from Glasgow's east end where Celtic once gloried in European conquest, but now squats in embittered insularity, hateful of everyone and anyone who won't accede to its demands. Celtic has turned into a caricature of itself, and not even its tame scribes can bury the truth this time.
There are decent Celtic fans who feel the pain of defeat as much as the club's employees, but they are able to respond with a dignity that their club does not deserve, and maybe doesn't even recognise. To them I say only this; take your club back from the miserable pit it wallows and wails in, and stop it from being a prisoner of an imaginary history.