There’s not really such a thing as a quiet Rangers versus Celtic encounter. An incident here, a controversy there and right old stooshie just about everywhere?

The Old Firm tussles – and even that very title now just about provokes vigorous questions in parliament – tends to generate so much fall out, it’s surprising the Glasgow City Council hasn’t commissioned its own updated version of the Protect and Survive pamphlet that was supposed to help folk muddle through a nuclear winter back in the day.

Rangers took the points and the plaudits in the meeting of the old foes last weekend with a fairly comprehensive 2-0 win at Ibrox but bragging rights don’t show up on a roll of honour. And you can’t display them proudly in a cabinet alongside other great clumps of shimmering plunder and shiny spoils of footballing war. Scott Bain, the Celtic goalkeeper, is well aware of that.

“We weren’t great on the day, they deserved to win and they also had the right to celebrate with their fans but it speaks volumes for our team that that’s a (Rangers) team that used to celebrate winning trophies and now are celebrating winning matches against us,” said Bain in a gentle act of show-us-yer-medals goading that will no doubt generate the kind of indignant huffing and puffing that could whip up a tsunami at the Govan stretch of the Clyde.

The Rangers celebrations in the aftermath of Sunday’s success were typically robust. A couple of the club’s players took to social media, that great platform for pot-stirring and posturing, to declare that ‘Glasgow is Blue’.

“The city can be blue for the day,” added a smiling Bain of a city that, in terms of footballing one upmanship, is still a Dear Green Place. “Perspective comes into play the next day. We are going for another cup.”

Perspective is something that football fans the world over tend to forget about. One week, their favourites are the greatest thing known to man, the next they should be put on trial for high treason.

Losing to your local rivals always goes down like a sack of spanners but Bain prefers to take a more considered stance amid the knee-jerk fever.

“You can’t win every game, it’s impossible and there are going to be days when you don’t perform to the standards you have been used to,” he added. “The boys have performed at the highest standard the league has seen for a while.

“I know perspectives get blurred here when you lose an Old Firm game but this is a (Celtic) team that has won eight trophies in a row.”

The latest trophy will get dished out tomorrow as Celtic get presented with the Ladbrokes Premiership crown for the eighth successive year after a home match with Hearts.

With a Scottish Cup final against the same opposition the following week and the possibility of an unprecedented treble-treble, Celtic could just about agree a sponsorship deal with Silvo.

Bain, who has been Celtic’s No 1 since the end of 2018, has been a significant cog in the highly efficient works. Tomorrow’s lap of honour will be something to savour for the 27-year-old.

“I got a little taste for it last year on trophy day without having played a lot in the league campaign,” he reflected. “Just being able to contribute a little bit more than last year, it definitely means more.

“I’ll also actually get a medal this year, which is good. It’s important for us to have a good performance. It’s been a long season for a lot of the boys. Some of the boys are up at 60-odd games and that’s crazy for a year. We’ll try to perform, but we’ve already won the league.”

The will he, won’t he saga surrounding Neil Lennon and the Celtic manager’s job continues to divide opinion while lubricating the wheels of rumour, speculation and conjecture.

Despite silverware pouring in with such unrelenting regularity, the folk who look after the trophy room are in danger of running out of lint free cloths, there are plenty of a Celtic persuasion who are still not happy.

Success can be taken for granted and in this fickle old game, you’ll never please everybody. “At the moment, Celtic fans know nothing but success,” said Bain, who has enjoyed a miserly run of clean sheets during his prolonged run between the posts.

“I’m sure there will be times in the future when it is not going as rosy and it’ll take those days to really appreciate what the team has done here. The boys have one more step to create history again.

“There’s obviously a backlash from the last manager leaving but in years to come when people look back, they’ll say that these achievements are really unmatched.

“He (Lennon) has come in here and his task was to win us the league and get us to the cup final. He’s done both of those things.

“It was obviously difficult circumstances to come into with the uncertainty going about, but he’s come into a team which has a great group of players.

“People could have folded when a big figure like that (Brendan Rodgers) left but it speaks volumes for the team that the new gaffer has come in and we’ve not really missed a beat. There’s a lot of talk and noise from the outside but we’ve just got on with it and done our jobs the best we can.

“It’s been a long season and we got over the line.

“Hopefully, we can go on and win that cup final. Then it’s a fantastic story for him to come in and help us do that.”