Celtic will start as underdogs when they face Rangers on Wednesday night.
Second favourites to win on their own ground.
On a night when the only Rangers fans there will be in the away section of the directors box and on the television gantry.
How could it be any other way?
Ange Postecoglou will be without his captain and inspiration Callum McGregor and his top goalscorer Kyogo Furuhashi. Not to mention his most creative midfield player Tom Rogic.
I am on record here as saying I think Rangers will go through the remainder of this season without losing a game.
I would have tipped Giovanni Van Bronckhorst to get out of Celtic Park with nothing worse than a draw no matter who was playing for the home team.
But with half a team out due to injury and international football being played on another continent, the odds against Celtic winning are even greater.
Matt O’Riley made a wonderful debut in what was an outstanding win for Celtic at Tynecastle on Wednesday but he said on television afterwards that the atmosphere in Edinburgh was unlike anything he had ever known in the game before.
That means he faces two choices in what is the most keenly-awaited, and highest- profile, fixture of the season so far.
Sink or swim.
Because the tension and excitement surrounding what could be the defining game of the Premiership will be of a type he didn’t even know existed.
That will go for Reo Hatate as well but these are all player-related issues.
The fact of the matter is the game that has the potential to shape the course of the title Race is going to be decided by mistakes made by the referee Bobby Madden and his back-up team.
Match officials in the Premiership are on a journey.
They are on their way from lamentable to laughable if recent weeks are anything to go by.
In terms of sound judgment, there’s not a consistently reliable ref left in the country.
This game is therefore a high-octane hostage to fortune. The phantom letter-writer of Ibrox will be hovering with a stamped addressed envelope on Wednesday night, ready to deliver the SFA a bullet-pointed condemnation of the referee’s performance if anything goes wrong.
Celtic’s chairman Ian Bankier will have the words “told you” forming on his lips if his club are on the angry end of any eccentric decisions. Bankier told shareholders at the club’s last AGM that referees were a persistent source of concern for Celtic.
He might have been playing to the gallery on that occasion but the gallery will be 60,000 strong on Wednesday night and they’ll believe his every word if inefficiency comes to the fore at their team’s expense.
The level of debate surrounding this fixture is never quality at the best of times.
It begins and ends with mutual loathing and that doesn’t tend to lend itself to tolerance and understanding.
Referees are also now being held in contempt and viewed with suspicion.
Paranoia and persecution have reached paranormal levels.
The ref is not so much a match official as the accused.
And the verdict is delivered pre-trial as a rule.
But I refuse to believe, as some are convinced, that any man would take charge of an Old Firm game with a premeditated intention of ensuring that he would do his best to guarantee one team was the beneficiary of his decision-making.
In front of 60,000 eye witnesses? On live television?
In defiance of the consequences where his career was concerned?
I acknowledge the existence of honest mistakes but I have also witnessed officials who did not come up to standard.
I sincerely hope that’s not the case on Wednesday.
If ever a man had to rise to the occasion, it’s the one in charge of the game that could decide who wins the title.
