Everyone who follows football knows there is a time and a place for the Ugly Victory. As football fans we’ve seen it all before; not every win can be characterized by glorious play and swift transitions and fantastic goals. Today was won by a fantastic goal; that is all the positive commentary I can bring to it because on the whole it was ghastly.

There was none of the fluency that destroyed Hearts. I considered it an inferior performance to the one we turned in against Motherwell a few weeks ago. Still, it was enough and a great goal decided it and on an afternoon where there were very real doubts we would even see the game at all we should be grateful for small mercies.

The injury to AJ, whatever that was, is awful beyond words. That kid must be gutted. He was on the verge of a big money move and it fell through over injuries. Who knows if that chance will come again? He is a fine player, but clubs increasingly look at the injury records of players and factor that in when talking business. The club will be gutted at not being able to net the fee; I’m more concerned about where AJ’s head is. I hope this isn’t bad. I hope he’s back with us soon.

We have big problems here and this win will not even paper over the cracks. It was turgid awful stuff, and there are those who will blame the conditions and they’d have a point, but that doesn’t excuse our inability to pass the ball properly. On top of that, I thought it was a stinking performance from the officials. None of that means we were better than we looked. We were exactly as bad as we looked.

I’ve stopped trying to predict what we’ll see from this Celtic team. Even on our really good days you can see signs of wobble and the missing pieces are clear; we need defensive reinforcements badly, we need that guy who can control the midfield. There are positives, of course. I thought Duran’s goal was superb and worthy of winning three points. Another player I want to talk about – and I’ll do it in a fuller piece later – is Mika Baur. Kasper continues to frustrate; the service to him today was virtually non existent though and I’m not expecting any striker to conjure chances out of thin air.

How do you know when things are bad in a game? You know things are bad when fans are not praying for another goal but for the final whistle to blow, sparing them from the sort of long week with which we’ve become horribly familiar lately. That was all of us, I think, this afternoon once it became clear the third wasn’t coming. The whistle means we can all sleep a little easier until this midweek when we have Dundee Utd at home, and they still buzzing from their win yesterday.

You look at the league table right now, at our four point lead, and at our vastly superior goal difference and you can see how hard it is going to be for teams to catch us because you also know that we’ve watched another wretched display today and been good for the three points; certainly, we deserved to win.

And that’s the problem when we go into Europe of course; we can turn in a display like that in a domestic game and still win it. When we come up against continental sides who punish every mistake we get what we deserve. Some of those misplaced passes from today would have put us in real trouble against a better team … and better teams and bigger challenges are waiting for us.

In Europe at least. I always say the league table never lies but it does on occasion exaggerate. We’re in a reasonably commanding position for this point in a campaign and it isn’t exaggerating at all. We deserve to be here and we deserve to consider ourselves favourites for the title, and that’s a problem in and of itself. Because we are miles from where we should be, and the more you recognize that and then see the points piling up here at home the more you realise that’s part of the problem.

We’ve restored a four point lead on a day when we’ve just not been that good. Once upon a time I would have said this was a sign of strength. Now I wonder. I wonder if it’s not just a reflection on where we are and where Scottish football is.

Three points was what we all wanted and we got them. We’ve come back from a goal down and showed some balls. All to the good. Signs of life, sure, but a different sort of life than maybe the Hearts game promised us. And for all that we have to be happy with it and glad we go into Wednesday having put the pressure on Ibrox.

But that wasn’t enjoyable in the classic sense of the word. It was uncomfortable when it wasn’t dull. We were not at our best. We didn’t have to be.