IN the three bitterly disappointing and trophyless years that Gary Gillespie spent as a player at Celtic back in the early 1990s, there was an almost constant backdrop of supporter unrest on the terraces.

Fans of the Parkhead club were deeply unhappy about how poorly the team was performing on the park and incensed with how ineptly the board was running affairs off it during that troubled era.

An organised campaign was launched to oust the reviled regime, attendances plummeted and some matches were boycotted altogether before Fergus McCann finally seized control.

Yet, at no stage in his time at his boyhood heroes was the former Coventry City, Liverpool and Scotland centre half ever subjected to the sort of treatment the current side has endured in the past fortnight.

Gillespie has been staggered by the extreme and at times ugly reaction to the Betfred Cup defeat to Ross County and the Premiership draw with St Johnstone given the unprecedented success Celtic have enjoyed in the past nine years.

“We didn’t have missiles thrown at us or have our bus attacked,” he said. “We didn’t experience anything like that in my day. Some supporters are too quick to show their anger now. I think it is misguided and misdirected. If they think they’ve got it bad now they should have been there during the 1990s.

“They have short memories. They have to put it into perspective. It isn’t as if Celtic haven’t done well. They are going for the quadruple treble this month. They still have the time to turn things around as well.”

Gillespie believes that Celtic’s total dominance of the domestic game has been responsible for the fans’ response – manager Neil Lennon has faced calls be sacked and chief executive Peter Lawwell and major shareholder Dermot Desmond have also come under attack - to their dire slump in form.

“There is always discord when you aren’t winning football matches,” he said. “Especially in a city like Glasgow where it is all about Celtic and Rangers. If your near neighbours are doing well and you’re not the fans are always going to be upset.

“But there is a generation of Celtic fans that has been brought up on solely success. When that doesn’t happen and when things don’t work out the way they think they should there is going to be unrest.

“I can understand the fans’ unhappiness at this moment in time because they have been brought up on nothing but success. When that s all you have known and suddenly you are not winning that causes problems.”

Gillespie continued: “But they have to remember, that only lasts so long, it can’t last forever. Unfortunately in football there are always two teams. You just can’t win everything all the time. It’s just an impossibility.

“You have got to give Rangers a little bit of credit for how they have dragged themselves up and got themselves into a dominant position. But of course I know Celtic fans won’t do that.

“There hasn’t been anything like this at Parkhead for a long time. You have to go back to when I was at Celtic and Rangers were on their way to winning Nine-In-A-Row.”

Gillespie played at a time when there was the infamous biscuit tin mentality at Celtic – which had led the Glasgow club to the brink of bankruptcy by the end of his tenure - and their city rivals were lavishing millions of pounds on foreign stars.

Having spent eight years at the all-conquering Liverpool team of the 1980s and won three English titles as well as the European Cup at Anfield, it was something of a shock to his system.

“It was certainly different,” he said. “Liverpool was like a smoothly run ship. But the Celtic stadium was needing renovated, there wasn’t an awful lot of money getting spent, the board of directors were coming in for flak.

“We played second fiddle to Rangers for a long time. We would look across at Ibrox and see their stadium, the players they were bringing in and the money they were spending. Liam Brady tried to change that by bringing in myself, Tony Cascarino and Tony Mowbray. But we continued to struggle.

“If you’re not winning football matches you can expect to get a bit of criticism. The players did feel that on the pitch. But as a football club, Celtic were a million miles behind Rangers, not just on the field, off the field as well.”

Gillespie feels the fact that Celtic, who are bidding to make Scottish football history by winning 10-In-A-Row in the 2020/21 campaign, have vastly superior resources to Rangers has increased the disaffection among the supporters.

But he is adamant that Lennon and his players, who take on Lille in the Europa League on Thursday evening and then Kilmarnock in the Premiership on Sunday, can still recover.

“If any football club is to be successful it starts at the top as much as at the bottom,” he said. “You need to have a good board of directors and you need to be on a sound financial footing. In the early 1990s that wasn’t the case at Celtic. But it is now. The football club is run pretty well. It is a far more level playing field now.

“But Celtic can still win the league. Sure, they are not playing well and are 13 points behind with two games in hand. But it is far from decided at this moment in time. I think the manager and the team deserve greater support at this time given the success that they have had in recent seasons. It is a bit premature to be calling managers out and the board of directors out just now.”