Celtic: Sealing the deal

After a shaky start to the season and having already been denied a couple of cracks at sealing the SPL was there a danger that Celtic would stutter to the finish line?

No.

A 6-0 thumping of Kilmarnock and that was that. The title done and dusted by 2.45pm on the 7th of April. Efficient.

That the championship champagne has popped so early is in no small part to the bonfire of the vanities that is being played out at Ibrox.

Are Celtic supporters being pulled three ways at the moment?

Celebrating a title. Taking more than a little joy in the Rangers implosion. Feeling the need to justify the former in light of the latter.

They shouldn't be.

This league championship should be celebrated without caveats. It's a triumph that has been both hard earned and deserved.

The ten points that a succession of crooks have cost Rangers might have allowed the victory party to kick off early.

But it was the way that Celtic reacted to their own bad start that mattered.

That brief but very real 15 point deficit. That moment at Rugby Park - and how fitting it was that an emphatic win at Kilmarnock should seal the title - when they found themselves 3-0 down and staring infamy in the face.

The reaction was magnificent. Celtic bulldozed their way through the SPL, overhauled Rangers and nabbed control of this league season. And they did all that before the administrators finally neutered their only real rivals as a competitive force.

An achievement that will mean a lot to Neil Lennon. Maybe only he will know just how much.

I've said before that you don't need to like Lennon. Football fans tend not to like opposing managers. That's football.

Two idiots sending a football manager a bomb in the post. That's something else.

To have stuck at the job so single mindedly and to have secured the trophy he so desperately wanted represents a very personal triumph for the Celtic manager.

His players will likely dominate the various awards shortlists this season. Lennon has the most talented squad in Scotland at his disposal.

He's used it wisely. He seems to have kept the players happy, he's shown the confidence to change things to meet immediate challenges, he's fielded sides strong enough to win games when not at their best.

Those are essential ingredients for a title winning side. Lennon's Celtic have been the only club in the SPL to have come close to meeting those challenges this year.

That's why they've won the league. It must also be heartening for Celtic to see the way in which players have improved over the course of the season.

I found Charlie Mulgrew's brace in yesterday's clinching win fitting.

The modern Celtic manager is charged with two important tasks: win titles, of course, but also take players that aren't yet the finished article and turn them into the sort of players that can deliver those titles.

That's the rider that goes with Lennon's dream job. He's pulled it off with aplomb this season even if it's a boardroom approach that might yet rob him of the chance to build a side to compete with the vintage Celtic teams of old.

Mulgrew's season has perhaps been a vindication of both the club's approach and the manager's ability to meet the full remit of his role.

Football historians will one day devote chapters and chapters to this strangest of Scottish football seasons. Humble chroniclers of the game will be musing on the fallout for years to come.

But we are all still here for the football. And the only thing that matters right now is that Celtic are the SPL champions and they've achieved that by having the best team and a manager able to give that team the platform to realise its potential.

A shot at a double lies just around the corner. There might be a golden opportunity to turn this Celtic side into the catalyst for a dominant domestic dynasty. European tests await.

That's the future.

For now we can acknowledge that Neil Lennon's Celtic are the best team in the country and the league champions.

Even in the dysfunctional world of Scottish football that is exactly how it should be.

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SPL Play-Offs: What If...

In one of the more predictable developments of this Scottish football December, perennial third placers Hearts have backed calls for the top four SPL teams to be involved in a championship play off competition.

I can't figure out the appeal for third placed Hearts at all.

Again, I don't think Dundee United's Stephen Thomspon was being genuine with his proposal. He was using it to get the message across about how unhappy certain clubs are with the SPL/McLeish Report stitch-up of last week.

But, just for fun, I thought I'd see which teams would have benefited from a top four play off over the 12 years of the SPL. Unsurprisingly Hearts come out on top.

I've estimated earnings based on an equitable four way split of crowd attendances from the three games totalling four million pounds. I still award all championships to either Celtic or Rangers as no team has beaten either side of the Old Firm in a Scottish Cup semi final in the same year that they have finished third or fourth in the SPL.

The most risible reaction to Thompson's plan is that it would result in more teams winning the championship. It almost certainly wouldn't, given the Old Firms dominance of all three of our national trophies.

Only Hearts and Dundee United have finished in the top four of the SPL and won the Scottish Cup in the same year, neither of them playing the Old Firm in the semi finals or final. So it's not a great leap to imagine that play offs over the last 12 years would have resulted in the same two sides winning the championship.

Here's the list:
Hearts 6 top 4 finishes = £6 million
Aberdeen 5 top 4 finishes = £5 million
Hibs 4 top 4 finishes = £4 million
Kilmarnock 3 top 4 finishes = £3 million
Motherwell 2 top 4 finishes = £2 million
Dunfermline, St Johnstone, Dundee United, Livingston 1 top 4 finish = £1 million each

Now, again, this is all hypothetical. But what a difference this money - even based on my simpleton accounting - would have made to these clubs.

Interesting to see that Thompson's Dundee United would only have benefited once in the 12 years of SPL football.

As for a gap closing device to reel in the Old Firm? Doesn't work as both would have earned at least twice what any other had managed.

* Quick bit of research after a question on Twitter. I think I've checked right back to the Second World War and the only time another side has won the Scottish Cup after the Old Firm have been kept apart in the semi-finals is Aberdeen in 1983.

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Finished

Spot the difference.

Whatever the final table, we're now done.

Rangers have their trophy, Falkirk are relegated.

Spare a thought for Motherwell: anybody would think nine goals in the final two games would be enough to wrap up fourth place. Not quite.

Instead Hibs finally won a game to steal past Motherwell at the death.

I'll revisit my start of season predictions - and my laughable attempts to predict the outcomes of games - over the course of next week.

Our next big SPL fixture? Tomorrow. What will the clubs decide at their end of season gathering? Stay tuned.

The end

That's almost that then.

The season has been far from vintage. From European disasters to SFA cock-ups, bad pitches to managerial casualties, a one sided championship race to a third place challenge that never happened.

Aye, we're all doomed, Captain Mainwaring.

The final match day throws up the top six clashes, the creme de la creme. A nation yawns.

What's left to play for? Hibs and Motherwell - fresh from that game - are still locked in the battle for fourth. And Hearts need a result to finish on more points than the team below them in the league.

Can't wait.

Dundee United v Hibs

It had been said that Hibs struggled to hold on if they were a goal ahead. Now they can't limp to full time with a four goal lead.

Dundee United will be looking for a decent send off before heading to Hampden. Home win.

Hearts v Celtic

Neil Lennon's on-the-job job interview continues. I'm still not convinced by his prospects but I think he'll heap more pressure on the board today. Away win.

Rangers v Motherwell

We arra party people. The trophy is delivered back to Ibrox. Time to enjoy an afternoon without talk of managerial resignation, takeovers, tax debts and financial black holes.

Motherwell need only match Hibs at Tannadice to clinch fourth. A defeat should be enough. Home win.

Keep an eye on today's goalscorers. If Anthony Stokes can get a couple at Tannadice and Kris Boyd draws a blank at Ibrox, Hibs' striker could finish the season as top scorer. He'd be the first player outside the Old Firm to claim that honour since Tommy Coyne's 16 goals took Motherwell to second place in 1994/95 (the last season that the big two finished outside the top 3.)

You win again

When I guested on the twofootedtackle podcast last week (what I've done there is use the blog to plug a podcast that I plugged the blog on - nice) I mentioned that I didn't think the Old Firm dominance of the game was a massive problem in Scottish football.

Obviously Rangers or Celtic winning the league every year Is Not A Good Thing. But my point was that it has ever been thus so there's no real reason why even this extended period of dominance should have produced the current default feelings of doom and gloom.

Thinking about it a bit more I decided to do a quick check of the Old Firm dominance through the decades.

In terms of non-Old Firm dominance, the 9 year period of the 16 team format between 1946-47 and 1954-55 was the best:

• Four non-Old Firm winners in nine seasons
• No season where the Old Firm finished 1st and 2nd together
• Celtic had 5th, 6th, 7th (twice), 8th, 9th and even a 12th finish during this period

But what has each decade produced in terms of sustained challenges to the duopoly? Time to go back to the beginning, starting with the first championship in 1890/91 when Dumbarton and Rangers shared the spoils:

1890/91 to 1899/1900: Celtic (4), Rangers (3 - including 1 shared), Hearts (2), Dumbarton (2 - including 1 shared). Rangers or Celtic finish second 6 times.

1900/91 to 1909/10: Celtic (6), Rangers (2), Hibs (1), Third Lanark (1). Rangers or Celtic finish second 3 times.

1910/11 to 1919/20: Rangers (5), Celtic (5). Rangers or Celtic finish second 7 times.

1920/21 to 1929/30: Rangers (8), Celtic (2). Rangers or Celtic finish second 4 times.

1930/31 to 1938/39: Rangers (6), Celtic (2), Motherwell (1). Rangers or Celtic finish second 5 times.

1946/47 to 1949/50: Rangers (3), Hibs (1). Rangers or Celtic finish second 1 time.

1950/51 to 1959/60: Rangers (4), Hibs (2), Hearts (2), Aberdeen (1), Celtic (1). Rangers or Celtic finish second 4 times.

1960/61 to 1969/70: Celtic (5), Rangers (3), Dundee (1), Motherwell (1). Rangers or Celtic finish second 6 times.

1970/71 to 1979/80: Celtic (6), Rangers (3), Aberdeen (1). Rangers or Celtic finish second 5 times.

1980/81 to 1989/90: Celtic (4), Rangers (3), Aberdeen (2), Dundee United (1). Rangers or Celtic finish second 4 times.

1990/91 to 1999/2000: Rangers (9), Celtic 1). Rangers or Celtic finish second 5 times.

2000/01 to 2009/2010: Celtic (6), Rangers (4). Rangers or Celtic finish second 9 times.

In no ten year period (discounting the Second World War years) have the Old Firm won fewer than half the titles, their lowest combined total coming in the fifties when they only snaffled five.

What is more marked now is their domination of the top two places with only six sides breaking into the top two in the last 20 years and only one in the last ten.

Does all this prove anything? Probably not much except to satisfy my own curiosity. And to show that, whatever else is wrong with the game, the problem of other teams not getting much of a look in when it comes to the championship is as old as the league itself.

Just champion

Finally, it’s my "well done" Rangers post.

At the start of the season I didn’t expect things to pan out this way. But they have and you can only admire (however ruefully) the stubbornness and resilience that Walter Smith has instilled in a team that looked like it might be on the verge of staleness.

Obviously they’ve not faced as keen a Celtic challenge as we’ve seen in the past. Even so there has been plenty to applaud about they way they have gone about their business. Most notably we can look back on December and a spurt of form that really ended the title race.

In one calendar month they won 3-1, 3-0, 3-0, 6-1, 4-1 and 7-1. That included big wins over Dundee United (twice), Motherwell and Hibs. If the rest of the top six were supposed to be clawing Rangers back somebody had forgotten to deliver the script to Ibrox.

Walter Smith, despite the frustration he’s clearly experiencing over Rangers’ finances, has proved himself again to be a redoubtable domestic manager.

How long he remains in charge, how long some of his players hang around, remains to be seen. But there can be no arguments that the right team won the title this season.

What the Celtic board would do to have a calm, reassuring figure like Smith waiting in the wings.

Walter At Ibrox: A Trophy Tale

• Scottish Premier League (9): 1990–91, 1991–92, 1992–93, 1993–94, 1994–95, 1995–96, 1996–97, 2008–09, 2009–10
• Scottish Cup (5): 1991–92, 1992–93, 1995–96, 2007–08, 2008–09
• Scottish League Cup (5): 1992–93, 1993–94, 1996–97, 2007–08, 2009–10

Right, that's quite enough of being nice to Rangers. We'll get back to questions of tax evasion and slagging off Kyle Lafferty as soon as possible.

Getting it wrong

I think we can probably now concede that Rangers have won the league. 13 points ahead after last night’s win they can now claim the title in just six games. Although even that might be quicker if Celtic, currently closer to fifth than first on points, throw anything more away.

A stunning achievement given the financial constraints and the sparseness of Walter Smith’s squad. Somehow Smith has kept them plugging away, although even he will be amazed by the way that Celtic have imploded.

More on all these things later in the season. For now though I thought I’d take a trip back in time. This is how I predicted the outcome of the SPL back in August:

Champions: Celtic, Celtic, Celtic. I said that last year but I'm even more convinced this time out that Rangers won't be able to match the pace Celtic set. Last year Rangers relied on a late push as Celtic stumbled. This year I'd guess their chance comes if they hit the ground running as Mowbray's philosophies and endless talk of looking players in the eye takes time to bed in. Even then I'd fancy Celtic to reel them in.

Was I alone in getting this so wrong?

The Scottish Football Decade: SPL Champions

It would be nice to be writing a different article. One where I could wax lyrical about the SPL being one of the most open and competitive leagues in Europe. But I can’t. I can’t because Celtic and Rangers dominated the league in the past decade to a far greater extent than they have ever done in the past.

The truth is the Clydesdale Bank Premier League, as it is currently called, is a league within a league. The rest are playing for third. It’s depressing and it makes all our teams weak. Unfortunately it's not about to change.

The SPL in its current guise was only a year old as the old century turned into the new millennium. In 1999/2000 Rangers overcame the non-challenge that John Barnes presided over at Celtic Park to win the title. It was a harbinger of the seasons of doom to come that Celtic, despite Barnes’ Colonel Blimp impression, finished second.

John Barnes comedy failure did, in it’s own way, transform the landscape of the Scottish game. Surveying the wreckage of the Barnes experiment Celtic were forced to find a saviour. They duly appointed Martin O’Neill.

Just three months after O’Neill arrived in Glasgow Rangers spent £12 million on Tore Andre Flo. The pendulum of power had swung to Parkhead.

O’Neill won the title in 2000/2001 and successfully defended it a year later. By this time his foe in the Rangers dugout had transformed from Dick Advocaat into Alex Mcleish, poached from Hibs in December 2001.

And it was McLeish who was to earn the bragging rights in 2002/2003 when Celtic lost out on the final day – just days after their defeat in the UEFA Cup Final. O’Neill got the upperhand again the following year before McLeish nipped in again in 2004/2005 to deny O’Neill a final championship as he departed to move out of football temporarily to care for his wife.

That was to prove McLeish’s last title. Debates have raged over who was the better manager. In the end both won seven trophies, although O’Neill won one more league title and one more Scottish Cup. O’Neill reached a UEFA Cup Final, McLeish took Rangers into the last 16 of the Champion’s League. These comparisons are essentially pointless but, if I were asked to make the argument for either one, I’d have to go for Martin O’Neill.

In the end McLeish’s departure was messy and he took Rangers to third place in the league. That was their worst position in almost twenty years and, given the dominance the two clubs now enjoy, it's unthinkable for a manager not to guide them to first or second. It shouldn’t mask the good work that McLeish did but it remains a bad, bad addition to his CV.

With O’Neill gone it was the turn of Gordon Strachan to take the Celtic hotseat. It was the start of a relationship that had all the traits of a classic love-hate affair. Without the love. Whatever his battles with the Celtic fans, however hard he found dealing with the Scottish press and however embittered he eventually became Strachan delivered on his remit.

It was Strachan who became the only manager to win three straight SPL championships, the first Celtic manager to do so since Jock Stein. But for a late collapse in 2008/2009 he would have made it four before taking his leave.

Strachan also provided a stability that seemed lacking at Rangers. Alex McLeish was replaced by Paul Le Guen and Rangers had suddenly found their own John Barnes.

The story of Le Guen’s time at Rangers covers nobody in much glory. The players that undermined him, the board powerless to stop it happening and a manager who had failed to grasp the culture of the club. A shoddy mess.

In their desperation Rangers sent for Uncle Walter. The former manager had survived a bruising stay at Everton before rejuvenating his career by reviving the fortunes of the Scottish national team. Rangers had found their man and the Tartan Army were left to cry into their lager.

Walter Smith brought stability back to Rangers. And then he brought the league title back to them. For that he’s been awarded with the loss of his contract, conclusive proof that Rangers mismanagement of their affairs extended beyond Paul Le Guen.

Any survey of a decade of champions must make mention of Rangers winning their 50th league title: even Scotland’s uneven playing field can’t detract too much from that remarkable achievement. They’ve now got 52, Celtic have 42. And all the rest have 19 between them. It’s a gap that is only going to get bigger and bigger.

And what of Alex McLeish’s third place fiasco? It was Hearts who broke the stranglehold. Early in the season they looked like they might even win the whole shebang before Vladimir Romanov threw the first of a great many wobblies.

Some have begun to think that no team will ever repeat Hearts feat of splitting the big two. They might well be right. But as the decade ends and Rangers travel to Edinburgh to face third placed Hibs there might just be a glimmer of hope. A win for Hibs would throw them right into the title race. How heartening it would be if one of the last acts of this decade was to open up the possibility of a different name in the top two as the next decade begins.

NFL? Not Effing Likely

A bit of a tongue in cheek article on the ever busy Mirror football site the other day asking what football could learn from American football.

Thankfully noses are turned up at cheerleaders and overseas games. Salary caps (some chance) make the cut along with referees explaining their decisions on the spot (unworkable and ridiculous) and instant replays (similar technology is inevitable in some form).

Independent timekeepers get the thumbs up (officials will soon outnumber players), as do TV season tickets (unpopular with Sky?), players getting more involved with charities (clearly a good thing but the culture of philanthropy differs in the UK as, bluntly, does the education of sportsmen) and revenue sharing between clubs (ha, ha, ha).

The final lesson is the sale of beer at grounds. The Mirror seems to think that having handfuls of nachos and beer would make people less inclined towards violence. Never in my life have I seen a drunk back down from a ruck in order to have a bite to eat.

Having said that I personally wouldn't mind having a beer at the game but it would need to be managed properly.

The above is nothing new. Periodically football's administrators will cast an envious glance across the Atlantic and decide we need to import a little American stardust. That little something that will make the "product" that bit glitzier, that bit shinier. Each new initiative is, we are promised, the best cure for declining attendances.

All this leads us, admittedly at length, to the new SPL initiative to make football more family friendly. Undercover families will be sent to each ground to report on the welcome they get and the conditions they enjoy or endure.

Come the end of the season a team will be crowned SPL Fans Champions and receive a boxed set of The Waltons. Probably.

The idea to make the SPL more family friendly is laudable. This intiative comes from the league's new chief executive Neil Doncaster who tried the same thing with limited success at Norwich.

I say limited success because while attendances at Carrow Road grew the team still ended up relegated. How much the rising attendances was due to Norwich games becoming the family activity of choice in East Anglia rather than just a by product of fans returning to try and cheer their team out of a serious malaise is unclear.

There are certain things that can and should be done. Prices should be reduced, packages for families encouraged. Paying two quid for a lukewarm pie or more for a slice of congealed, anaemic pizza is unacceptable for anyone let alone a family of four.

The Family Champions scheme is at least a step in the right direction because it involves asking people what they want rather than simply steaming ahead with what clubs think they want. The cancerous growth of costumed mascots is a classic example of suits sitting in a room thinking “this will show we're down with the kids.” The football mascot is the sport's equivalent of your dad disco dancing.

Some things the clubs can't control. We've all seen the young, sometimes very young, kids being dragged along to the games by the dad's who have been left in charge of them for the afternoon. Watching your dad sitting drinking with his mates before sitting in a cold stadium, ill protected from the elements, while your dad rants and raves like a madman is not a nice day out for a three year old. How many of those kids when they are old enough to decide for themselves tell their dad to stick it up their bar stool?

But why does anybody go to a football game? Not for the pies or bovril, not to see bizarre proof that it is acceptable for a grown man to hug and kiss the children of strangers as long as he is dressed as a lion, not to see cheerleaders or seven year olds take penalties at half time.

We go to watch the football and to keep us going there must be some entertainment. This is a country where a much feted manager told people to go to the cinema if they wanted to be entertained.

How can that be acceptable? I watched Kilmarnock lose narrowly the other week with a game plan based around launching the ball at a tall centre forward. This was football nirvana as imagined by a bad youth team coach in 1984.

Grown men were weeping at the sight. How can we expect mum and dad to subject the three kids to that on a regular basis?

I'm not against Mr Doncaster's plans and applaud him for at least trying to halt the decline in attendance. But to hear him talk about how his masterplan worked at Norwich despite performances on the pitch getting worse is to hear a businessman with no feeling for the game ignore the very essence of watching football.

We enjoy the highs, we endure the lows. That's football. But we have every right to demand excitement and skill on the pitch. Everything else is pretty much irrelevant.

To guarantee that the SPL, the whole of Scottish football, needs massive change. By focusing on nothing more than window dressing Mr Doncaster is failing the fans and is destined to failure within the status quo.

No wonder he so impressed the SPL chairmen at his interview.

Over

And that was that. The much hyped Judgement Day endeth. Against large, if not quite all, the odds the SPL helicopter has landed on the streets of Dundee. The streets of Aberdeen run with the tears of a hastily reworked treble dream that has crumbled into dust like that quadruple dream of only eight days ago.

The final battles were the story of the season. Celtic somehow know how to win. Rangers just lack the quality to take the final step.

Gordon Strachan becomes the first Celtic manager since Jock Stein to win three titles in a row. Will that be enough to secure him a place in the hearts of the faithful? This might still be the valedictory moment of a Celtic career that could have delivered little more.

Where now for Rangers? A Novoless cup final where Queen of the South will surely fancy getting fired into a team that looks dead on its feet. A team that is struggling not just because of fixtures but because the sheer strength of will that carried a mediocre team this far was always going to exhaust them.

Did Celtic deserve it? Does the league table ever lie? Difficult to know. We can say that all Celtic could do was storm down the final straight. Each Celtic victory seemed to have the effect of Kryptonite on Rangers' group of Clark Kents. Every faltering step that Rangers took the stronger Celtic's claim seemed to look.

And now that's it. A season that has been tragic, farcical, controversial and exciting. A season that has been short on quality but strong on incident. A season that will no doubt be falsely remembered as a classic because of the way the title was decided.

What can we do but look forward and wait for more of the same next season?