Entitlement? No. Expectation? Yes.

So, we come to match one of the Europa League on the back of a chastening defeat at Ibrox which saw us eliminated from our second competition of the season. We are midway through September and this is not the start we hoped for.

Fine, we have picked up maximum points in the league, which Martin O’Neill designated as our priority for the season ahead. That’s all well and good. It is the default primary ambition for Celtic in any given season and hardly needs to be stated.

What followed our humbling on Sunday has been a fury from Celtic fans which I have rarely witnessed. The reaction from many media channels to that furious outpouring of frustration has been to suggest that years, even decades, of domestic dominance have led to a sense of entitlement.

I disagree.

No Celtic fan believes that we are entitled to win every match and every competition we enter. Of course not. We have no God-given right to win any particular football match. It is a sporting contest, after all.

Yes, it is true that we may expect, given the advantages we enjoy compared with all other football clubs domestically, to enjoy our fair share of success over any given season. We believe we should be strong enough to win the league and possibly a domestic trophy or two.

We do not believe that these trophies are owed to us.

They are not sitting there waiting for us to swan in and take them. We know this. Every club will do its level best to prevent that from happening. That is sport, that is football and that is also the burden of being perennial champions.

We are targeted because everyone wants to stop us. Our rivals want to break our stranglehold on Scottish football. To an extent, they did that with their admittedly superb performance at the weekend. It is possible that not many, including McInnes himself, would have seen that performance and result coming.

However, the unfortunate thing for us ‘entitled’ Celtic fans is that many of us saw exactly what was coming.

We saw the signs long before the collapse against LASK. The signs have been there for an eternity.

The miracle of last season was exactly that. We had no right to clinch a league and cup double in the circumstances in which we did. Yes, it was joyous when we achieved it, but most reasonable Celtic fans would have been very aware that something is deeply dysfunctional across all areas of Celtic Football Club.

The only healthy thing about our great club right now is our bank balance.

Significant upheaval has befallen Celtic over the past year or so. Changes to manager and backroom staff. Changes in the boardroom. A club hierarchy that continues to agitate against its own fan base at every opportunity.

We have a notoriously silent CEO, an even more silent and absent majority shareholder who does not hold an executive seat on the board, and an interim chairman still in post after 10 months.

We have a 74-year-old football manager who will leave at the end of this season, if not before. No sporting director. No actual football department to speak of. A dubious coaching staff. Stadium facilities that are questionable by all accounts.

We are not a smart-thinking club with any strategic plan for the future. We haven’t been one for a long, long time.

There is simply no structure throughout any area of the operational shambles that we are. Player trading profit seems to be the only buzzword. That and the merch. The pushing of every conceivable piece of merchandise you could possibly have no need for, at shameful prices.

Then I’m reminded of the ticket packages available to fans for our Europa League matches. I’m told there has been a 47% hike in ticket prices compared with last season.

I would expect that a club with its stated ambition of reaching the Champions League, and which failed so spectacularly to achieve it, might offer its loyal fans discounted ticket prices. A small consolation for such a massive disappointment.

But no. Not Celtic.

We punish our fans, apparently. In every way imaginable.

It is a shocking state of affairs.

I did not want to go down this road in my match preview of tonight’s fixture against Ferencváros, but this whole idea of Celtic fan entitlement is for the birds.

We are rightly angry, but it is not simply because we lost a football match. It is the manner in which we lost, and the manner in which the club we love so dearly is being run, that we rage against.

To put it bluntly, it is not Celtic fans who are entitled.

It is the so-called custodians of our club.

I will touch on the match ahead, but only in the briefest way possible. Because as much as the people who run our club appear unfit for purpose, there was not a lot to admire about the performance we put out on the field on Sunday.

Many people suggested Donovan was one of the better performers on the day, but I would only give Scales any credit. And that is not a compliment.

That apart, it was yet another abject display from players who looked lost, in all honesty.

When critics mention entitlement in regard to Celtic fans, yes, of course we can be entitled.

We should be entitled to see players in the hallowed hoops who run, who fight, who step up, who take the punches and get up for more.

Players who show some technical prowess. Some passion for the badge. Some acknowledgement of how privileged they should feel to be here.

Every Celtic fan would trade places to be on that pitch tonight.

That’s not entitlement.

That’s a demand.

The players who take the field tonight must rise to meet it.