Back in the summer of 2012, if you could suppress your laughter long enough at the chaos elsewhere, Celtic fans would have noticed a consistent and utterly idiotic mantra echoing across the Scottish establishment.
All Focused on One Club
From the papers to parliament, the cry was “Scottish football needs a strong Rangers”. Some even went further to say “Celtic need a strong Rangers”.
I totally disagree on both counts as does anyone lacking a vested interest in maintaining the rotten status quo.
What we need is a stronger league overall.
We need greater stability for our clubs, better income streams, and better exploitation of commercial opportunities. Most of all, we need to end Scottish professional football’s economic dependence on just 2 of its 42 member clubs.
Scottish Football Refused to Learn
The one lesson to come out of the death of Rangers in 2012 should have been “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket”.
Instead the SFA and its co-conspirators conjured up a secretive 5 way agreement that permitted a new club to enter Scottish football’s professional pyramid at a far higher level than their status merited. Indeed, were it not for fan pressure, this new club would have parachuted right into the top flight.
This same clandestine approach also allowed the “still the same club” nonsense to propagate unchallenged. Celtic also carry some of the blame in this regard for not being more vocal at the time.
We forget that this also deprived many clubs outside the top 4 tiers, who actually bother to manage their finances correctly, of a chance to enter the Scottish League proper.
An Opportunity to Reset Squandered
Any business environment that allows the emergence of an organization considered “too big to fail” is a seriously unhealthy state of affairs to begin with. Yet that was the line the authorities went with, and they were backed by their lapdogs in the press and their puppets in parliament.
Instead of saying “How do we save Rangers?” the question should have been “How do we make sure this doesn’t happen to any other clubs ever again?”
“How can we secure Scottish Football’s long term, financial viability, regardless of which teams are playing in the league?”
Sadly, all that was cast aside, because the Rangers were in trouble, and apparently Scottish football couldn’t survive without them.
Double Standards
Of course I don’t need to remind any of you that there were no such desperate calls for help or unity from the powers that be when Celtic needed it in 1994. We the fans along with Fergus McCann, Brian Dempsey and a whole host of other Celtic-minded folks with actual financial literacy, stepped up and did that job ourselves.
And we didn’t need liquidation, a pair of jokers called Green and Whyte or the backing of a compliant media to do it either.
The Past Proves, Scottish Football Doesn’t Need a Strong Rangers or Celtic
Whilst Celtic’s European Cup Triumph in 1967 and reaching the final again in 1970 stand out as Scottish football’s two proudest moments, many outside the Celtic support consider the late 70s and early 80s to be the game’s golden age in Scotland.
Back then we had Aberdeen and Dundee United, the so-called New Firm, challenging for and winning titles. Hearts came within an Albert Kidd of winning the league in 1986, and Scottish football was better for it.
For both Celtic and Rangers at that time, a trip to Pittodrie or Tannadice was just as daunting a prospect as a trip across Glasgow to play each other.
Coincidentally, Celtic were still doing reasonably well in Europe in those days too.
Aberdeen went one better, winning a European Cup Winners Cup, with Dundee United very unfortunate to lose out in their own European final a few years later.
Cheerleaders Don’t Want a Strong League
This all seems even further in the past when I look at this morning’s papers. The red tops have, as expected, whipped themselves up into a near orgasmic frenzy after Rangers beat Fenerbahce in the first leg of their Europa League tie.
Credit where it’s due, it was a great result for them, and one that I definitely didn’t expect.
However, I don’t recall anything like this same level of hysteria in the press when Celtic notched up any of their 3 wins in the Champions League this season. Wins that have done far more to boost Scotland’s European status than anything Rangers have done in Europe’s second tier competition this year.
Likewise there was barely a mention when Hearts made the group stage of the Conference League, another great achievement for a Scottish club.
And this is where the media show their true colors. It’s not about the welfare of the Scottish game. It’s not about seeing our teams doing well in Europe.
It’s all about continuing to perpetuate the lie, the myth that Scottish football has a symbiotic need for a club at Ibrox calling itself Rangers.
What Can we do About it?
The biggest change we could make for Scottish football’s benefit, and it’s not one that the clubs want to hear, is league expansion. We should have a 16 perhaps even a 20 team top division.
The Scottish Championship has, for a number of years now, been one of the most closely contested leagues in Europe. We saw when Falkirk came to Celtic park earlier in the season, and more recently when Queens Park knocked The Govan Dodgers out of the Scottish Cup, just how much Championship teams can bring to the table in terms of entertainment and challenge.
The Scottish Premiership would be a better, more accessible and perhaps even more marketable product with teams like Falkirk, Partick Thistle and Queens Park in it.
Clubs Need to Break their Addiction
Ultimately however, this can only happen if some of the league’s less financially stable clubs are willing to make a sacrifice. Hosting Celtic and Rangers at their stadiums at least once (definitely twice if they finish in the top 6) per season, is a guaranteed sell-out of stadiums that on all too many occasions fall well short of capacity.
This capitalist addiction gives the clubs the short term drip feed of money that they need to sustain their operations at their current level, but it is, I believe, ultimately self-defeating.
It leaves us with a less interesting, and in the end, less marketable product.
This weekend, Celtic will play Hibs in the Cup, it’ll be the 5th time we’ve played them this season, and chances are we’ll probably play them again in the league before the end of the season.
Now, this is not intended as a slight on Hibs specifically. They are a good team to watch and I'm sure Sunday's game will be a cracker.
But no wonder people say Scottish football is boring. No teams should play each other 6 times within a 10 month season. That's just not a good product.
TV Has Too Much Power, For Too Little in Return
The various TV companies that show Scottish football have, in my opinion, far too much power as well.
They get to dictate who plays who, at what time, and all to suit their schedules.
For this, we get thrown a micro-fraction of the obscene amounts of cash dumped into English football every year.
English clubs still maintain some say over when their games are played. In Scotland, we scramble to appease the TV companies for the crumbs they drop. And don’t even get me started on the quality of their so-called coverage. It’s bordering on contemptuous.
Anyone that thinks Kris Boyd is capable of providing fair and honest analysis should have their broadcasting license revoked on the spot.
No More Guaranteed Derby Matches
Perhaps the biggest obstacle to genuine and lasting reforms in our league structure is the insistence of TV companies that Celtic and Rangers must play each other at last 4 times a season, with all 4 games live on TV.
There is another form of sporting entertainment they show on TV where it’s all engineered to ensure maximum box-office with the most bankable match-ups. It’s called the WWE and it’s not a product Scottish football should look to emulate in any way.
Although admittedly, some Rangers fans and Hulk Hogan do seem to espouse similar political views these days.
In the Long Term, Our Current League is Unsustainable
This all has to change, and this is where it requires Celtic to show a bit of backbone. We need to stand firm and push through reforms, TV companies be damned. Truth be told, they don’t pay enough money to justify the abusive way they treat Scottish football and its fans.
Let others peddle myths of ongoing histories, 55 titles or sporting necessities. The fact is, Celtic are Scottish football now. This is our ball and it’s high time we started having a far greater say in who gets a kick of it.
Scottish Football doesn’t need any one club, but it does need strong leadership from its biggest club