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Celtic don't fare well after a League Cup final.

That was part of the narrative heading into Sunday's Premiership match against St Mirren in Paisley - a ground where Ange Postecoglou had failed to see his team score a goal in two visits and where they suffered their only domestic loss so far this season.

Despite trailing 1-0 at the break the champions roared to life in the second half to win 5-1. In doing so, they ended the club's run of four winless post-League Cup final matches in a row.

Yet, like with any statistic, context is key. And the context for this one wasn't quite as foreboding as the raw numbers suggested. To investigate that, let's go back slightly.

In December 2016 a trip to Fir Park followed a comfortable 3-0 final win over Aberdeen. The Hoops went 2-0 down courtesy of a Louis Moult double but pulled it back to 2-1 through Callum McGregor before a mental three minutes saw Patrick Roberts draw Celtic level, Lionel Ainsworth edge Motherwell 3-2 in front and then Stuart Armstrong restore parity all over again.

Ultimately, it took Tom Rogic's last-minute intervention for Brendan Rodgers's side to win the day. They were already on a seven-game league win streak before this one but that got extended by a further 15 matches afterwards. Indeed, they wouldn't lose again for the rest of the season - drawing just three of their remaining 25 Premiership fixtures, sharing the spoils away to Manchester City in their final Champions League group game and winning the Scottish Cup too.

The 'jinx' started 11 months later. A 2-0 win over Motherwell in the final came after a 7-1 thrashing at the hands of Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League. Afterwards, it was the Steelmen providing the opposition with a trip to Fir Park.

Again Well went ahead - a Mikael Lustig own goal this time - and again it was a late strike that got Celtic something from the game. On this occasion it was Scott Sinclair from the penalty spot but only to salvage a draw rather than secure a win.

They would then, bizarrely, face Motherwell for a third time in a week and crush them 5-1 at Parkhead. A few weeks later Hearts ended Rodgers's unbeaten domestic streak at 69 games but it proved just a blip with the Hoops retaining the league at a canter - if not garnering quite as many points as the year before - and lifting the Scottish Cup again as well.

Fast forward 13 months and the 2018-19 showpiece saw Aberdeen defeated 1-0 thanks to a Ryan Christie goal a few days after picking up a rare European away win over Rosenborg in the Europa League group stage. For the third season on the trot, the fixture immediately after the League Cup final was Motherwell at Fir Park.

For the second campaign in succession it ended in a 1-1 draw thanks to a late equaliser - this time for the Steelmen rather than the champions. Although an uncharacteristic two losses in six followed - including a first Glasgow Derby loss in 13 - it mattered little as once again a resurgent run to end the campaign ensued. By the time May rolled around it was green and white ribbons on the Premiership trophy, secured with a five-point increase on the season before, and of course the Scottish Cup back in the cabinet.

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The next campaign - which would eventually become known as the Covid season after its early curtailment in March 2020 - it was a Glasgow Derby final remembered for Fraser Forster's heroics that saw Celtic lift the trophy. They went into that one after an outrageous game against Hamilton at Parkhead where the only thing later than Marios Ogkmpoe's 90th-minute equaliser was Scott Brown's 92nd-minute winner.

Afterwards? Although it was a fourth successive away fixture, for once it wasn't Fir Park but Stadionul Dr Constantin Rădulescu in Romania. CFR Cluj beat the Hoops for the second time that season but the context matters with this one more than most; Neil Lennon's side had already sealed top spot so he made nine changes to his team from the final and chose a bench stocked with names such as Conor Hazard, Grant Savoury and Karamoko Dembele. Hardly a hex, then.

With 13 league wins from the 15 they played after the final, Celtic went into the Covid-induced shutdown 13 points clear at the summit while averaging 2.66 points per game. They were already in the semi-finals of the Scottish Cup at that stage too, although it would be December before that trophy would be added for a historic quadruple-treble.

With St Johnstone grabbing a cup double in 2020-21 the Hoops had to wait until December 2021 before walking out for a League Cup final again. When they did it was with Postecoglou as manager and off the back of a dramatic 97th-minute Anthony Ralston winner in Dingwall. The final itself, the first of two that would be characterised by the boot of Kyogo Furuhashi, was widely touted as a springboard.

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While true in the tangible, trophy-room sense it is also a slight disservice to what was going on beforehand; the Hoops were already 11 league games unbeaten (nine of them wins). Despite a 0-0 draw away to St Mirren directly after the showpiece, they translated that good form into a 32-game unbeaten streak to end the campaign a comfortable four points clear at the top with their highest league tally since the Invincibles campaign.

And so we come to the Sunday just past. An away game after the League Cup final, again; Paisley, again; this so-called jinx fed extra fuel by the fact Postecoglou had yet to oversee a goal in his two visits to St Mirren Park; the 'unlucky' grey strip.

After a stodgy first half, Celtic went in at the break trailing 1-0 to a Mark O'Hara penalty. By the time the stadium clock ticked past the hour mark they were 2-1 up and would add a further three before David Dickinson blew for full-time.

So what lessons were we to learn from all this? Perhaps simply that the post-League Cup final supposed, sort-of, kinda jinx, taken in isolation, was an interesting stat but not the whole picture.

None of the blips developed into anything; in fact, the opposite was true. They often acted as a mild reality check on the silver-paved road to trophy after trophy after trophy after trophy.

The first 45 minutes in Paisley perhaps made it feel like another post-final reality check was coming; the next 45 made a mockery of that.

This Celtic side doesn't need one.

This piece is an extract from the latest Celtic Digest newsletter, which is emailed out every weekday evening with a round-up of the day's top stories and exclusive analysis from The Celtic Way team.

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