You will of
course be aware that last weekend saw the semi finals of the Scottish Cup take
place. Both ties went to penalties with
Sunday’s first meeting of the Old Firm since the liquidation of Rangers being
the most promoted.
Before I go on, a
point needs to be made. Rangers were not
just ‘relegated’ as every news outlet (that should know better) mentioned. They got into financial difficulties, thanks to
David Murray’s deployment of a tax avoidance scheme and HMRC’s. The thing that tipped Rangers into
administration and then liquidation though was Craig Whyte’s many misdemeanour's. Readers of Private Eye
will have been well aware of Whyte’s unsuitability long before anyone in the
Scottish football press. Rangers were
liquidated and were forced, quite rightly, to start again at the bottom. But I digress
Watching the game
on Sunday (or at least the 90 minutes), there were two thoughts that came to
mind. The first being that for all the
hype and puffery from all asundry – you could say the Scottish Football
punditeriat were ‘proper moist’ given the lavish praise heaped on the occasion
- the game itself was only reasonable.
There was very little skill and technique on show, you would be able to
set your watch by the amount of bad or misplaced passes on show.
Something that
completely bypassed the more ‘professional’ football commentator was that far
from being the best teams in Scottish Football, both sides had issues with
their teams. Rangers issues are borne
from a calculated assessment on how to set up the team. Their game is based on a high pressing game
designed to push teams into their own box.
The drawback to this is that Rangers are very susceptible to the quick
counter attack. If Rangers are to
successfully challenge for the Scottish Championship next season, then this is
an area that needs to be rectified as a lot more Premier League sides will be
equipped to exploit this weakness.
Celtic’s issues
are deeper, perhaps more serious, and relates to the quality and the ability of
their players. Maybe the departure of their manager Deila, will enable Celtic
to start to rebuild again, but that Celtic team needs to have serious time and
money invested in their recruitment.
Arguably this current Celtic is the worst Celtic team in 20 odd years,
while I am unable to recollect a worse Scottish Championship winning side. This brings me to my second point.
Whether it was
through bad management or an inability to perform under pressure, Aberdeen
have – and lets not beat about the bush here – bottled their championship
challenge. This year was their chance,
their best chance in 25 years. And due
to poor defending and a lack of fortitude, they will miss out again. It’s unlikely that Celtic will be so poor
again next season, while the other half of Scottish Football’s ugly sisters
returns to the top flight. I would think
that Hearts will be building on their strong foundations too.
Of course, the
championship isn’t technically over, but an 8 point gap going into the post
split fixtures is a big hurdle for Aberdeen to overcome. They would need Celtic to have as big a collapse
as Rangers did 25 years ago, they led by 8 points going into the last quarter
of the season but saw their advantage whittle away over the course of those 9
games. Interestingly, the league have
scheduled Aberdeen’s post split match with Celtic for the third post split
match. The match that Celtic could win
the championship.
If you were
expecting a cheerleading ‘thank goodness we’ve got the Old Firm back’ article,
sorry, you’ve come to the wrong place. The same issues with Scottish football
are still there four years on, with no agreement on how to tackle those
issues. At least we have seen different
teams winning trophies, that at least shows that there is life in Scottish
Football. If only the media would
refrain from their arslikan act with Scottish Football’s ugly sisters.
