The last free pass was tossed away somewhere in the Arctic Circle on Thursday night.
But just when it seemed Ange Postecoglou was about to feel some heat, Rangers came to the Australian’s rescue with some quite unexpected carelessness of their own.
And so, a day which started with two dropped points on one side of the M8 ended with two more dropped at the other and Postecoglou still holding on to a lead he must have thought he had blown.
Motherwell’s two second-half goals at Ibrox will have done a great deal to lift the mood of a man who was in danger of becoming somewhat prickly after his side stumbled back on to home soil and allowed two crucial league points to slip through their grasp in Leith.
A 0-0 draw at Easter Road blew his chances of opening up a six-point lead at the top of the Premiership table and even though, ultimately, no damage was done Postecoglou will have made his way back across the country with much to chew on.
With a flurry of shrugs and increasingly exasperated facial expressions the big Aussie stuck doggedly to his guns and insisted that Celtic’s performance deserved a great deal more than a single point but, in the real world, he was fooling next to no-one.
The truth of the matter is that, while many a blind eye might have been turned to Thursday night’s calamity in European football’s Conference League, Postecoglou can’t reasonably expect to get away with arguing that black is white now that the fight for domestic supremacy is the be-all-and-end-all where his side’s season is concerned. There are no grey areas in this one.
Celtic’s supporters may have been willing to let a 5-1 aggregate thrashing from Bodo/Glimt slide on the basis that they had no desire to be dumped into that consolatory competition in the first place.
They are also minded to cut their manager a great deal of slack because they are grateful for the job he has done in such a short space of time.
But even so, they are unlikely to be quite so understanding if they feel their team is flirting with the idea of allowing Rangers to reclaim top spot in their own backyard.
Sunday, then, was a bullet dodged.
And especially given the meekness of Celtic’s performance, failing to force hobbling Hibs keeper Matt Macey into a single save worthy of the name.
The big Englishman had to have his goal kicks taken for him for most of the second half but even though Shaun Maloney’s side had a lame duck between the sticks, Celtic couldn’t find a way of testing what was left of Macey’s brave resilience.
They’ll have the chance to get back into their stride back at home on Wednesday night when St Mirren come calling and – with a trip to Livingston’s plastic pitch to follow at the weekend – Postecoglou had better hope they take it.
Having worked so hard and so impressively to turn last season’s aborted 10-in-a-row debacle into a proper, legitimate title challenge, this is not the time for them to start to wobble but that’s what it’s starting to look like now that they have climbed to the top flight’s summit.
If Celtic have suddenly become scared of heights then it’s up to the manager to shake them back to their senses and he can’t do that by pretending that what these players gave him at Easter Road was remotely close to being good enough.
Having given most of them the night off in Norway, with this game specifically in mind, he needed a great deal more from them in return.
Reo Hatate – who hit the ground running like a world beater just a few weeks ago – watched this one pass him by. Tom Rogic couldn’t get his long legs going, Daizen Maeda was completely anonymous in a central striking role and, on the flanks, neither Liel Abada nor talisman Jota could make any meaningful impact.
Of course, had Abada been more precise with a lobbed finish after being superbly played in by Jota after only 13 minutes yesterday then he would have found the back of Macey’s net rather than the side of it and Celtic’s afternoon might have become considerably more comfortable.
But the longer it went on the less likely they looked of doing any serious damage and it was the lack of urgency and purpose which ought to be the main source of Postecoglou’s irritation as he enters the final straight of his first Scottish title fight.
On the other side of the great divide, Giovanni van Bronckhorst has some fairly serious issues of his own to work on, regardless of the Europa League heroics which dumped Borussia Dortmund out of the competition on Thursday night.
He must have thought everything was in hand when his team raced into a 2-0 lead against Motherwell but his players ran out of steam when they needed a third goal and, not for the first time, they were undone by some slapstick defending as the visitors came back to level the scores and prove that some 2-2 draws are considerably better than others.
The uncomfortable fact of the matter for the Rangers manager is that, since returning from the winter break, his players have now dropped 11 points with draws against Aberdeen, Ross County, Dundee United and Motherwell as well as an Old Firm defeat at Celtic Park.
That’s just one point less than they lost throughout the whole of last season.
In fact, Van Bronckhorst was running out of free passes himself after that 3-0 thrashing in Glasgow’s east end and he too will find that all the European scalps in the world will count for little if domestic dominance switches from one side of the Clyde to the other.
Van Bronckhorst had better find a way to get them winning again on Wednesday night when they travel north to face St Johnstone before a visit from Aberdeen at the weekend.
With so much at stake, there can be no such thing as a free pass for either of them anymore.
