As a resurgent Rangers celebrate their first league title in 10 years and threaten to reinstate the old duopoly – after nine Celtic wins and four consecutive Trebles – it raises the old question that has been asked of top-flight Scottish football for 35 years: when will any other side win the title? The last time was Aberdeen in 1984/85.
Will it ever change? Can it ever change? The two Glasgow clubs are so financially dominant now that no-one else can even get near them. As a result, all the best domestic talent in the country tends to gravitate towards them eventually and they can supplement with purchases from outside the nation if needed.
While the league below them is very competitive and far superior entertainment to most English Premier League games, no-one has the resources to compete with Celtic or Rangers and it stifles the league from top to bottom.
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Plenty will give them a good game, and will occasionally win, but the outcome across a season is all but guaranteed. The gulf is so wide that Celtic have been relatively poor this season – 20 points behind their rivals – but are still 16 ahead of Hibernian in third. In other words, the big two can be poor by their own standards and still be far better than anyone else. Like Manchester City last season.
The obvious suggestion is to take them out of the league. At one point, the idea that they might join the EPL felt like a runner. They would certainly add much-needed spice, noise and popularity to the top flight. The money would transform them into at, the very least, top-six clubs. But the legals are pretty much insurmountable and the current EPL clubs would not want two clubs added to the league who are, by and large, far bigger than they are. Anything that threatens their money and status will be rejected. And on top of that, and more importantly, it is far from clear it is what the clubs or fans even want.
There used to be talk of some sort of a league for modestly-sized nations, like Belgium, Netherlands, Portugal, Denmark, Scotland, Wales, Ireland etc, so Celtic and Rangers might play the likes of Ajax, PSV, Club Brugge, Antwerp, Sporting Lisbon, Porto, Brondby, Bohemians, Linfield and others, some of whom also dominate their domestic leagues. This seems like a far better solution and any such league could set limits for transfers and wages to further compress the financial differences.
It sounds good, but it raises another problem. A big problem. All the other teams in the domestic leagues those clubs would be drawn from would be significantly financially poorer without those games against the biggest clubs. In Scotland so much income from smaller sides comes from their games against the Glasgow two.
Fans also enjoy seeing their teams playing other domestic clubs and may not be so keen on seeing them playing Portuguese or Dutch sides once the novelty has evaporated. All of which mitigates against such a set-up ever happening.
Yet, something has to be done. The same two clubs (or just one club in the last decade) winning the league all the time ultimately doesn’t do Scottish football any favours domestically or in Europe. But it is such an odd situation. The Scottish Premiership has three levels. Two absolutely and globally big clubs pulling 50,000-60,000 crowds, relatively small but locally important clubs like Ross County, Livingston, St Mirren and Hamilton who have grounds well under 10,000 in capacity. And larger clubs like Hibs, Hearts, Dundee United and Aberdeen that can pull in 10,000-20,000, have a history of winning trophies, who are bigger money generators than the small clubs, but still way behind the big two. Ultimately, because of the financial gulf – Celtic’s turnover in 2019 was £70 million, Livingston’s £2.3 million – no amount of capping or restraint measures will work.
When the disparity between these three groups is so huge, trying to level up the poorest and suppress the richest looks an impossibly wide gulf to bridge. But removal of the two richest clubs seems too problematic, so Scottish football is stuck with a very unsatisfactory situation, not helped by a much-criticised and derided SFA whose jobs-for-the-boys mentality and long-standing inability to find its backside with either hand has long been a block to progress.
It’s ironic then, that despite these issues, football in Scotland remains a fantastic, boisterous, robust, resolutely and enjoyably working-class sport. We never have to worry about players living behind the tinted windows of extreme financial privilege here. It still feels like the people’s game.
It has not sold its soul, though on occasions it may have tried and failed. It survives despite questionable governance and a paucity of resources. The result of this is a game which feels very different and is superior to the EPL in all the ways that really matter. Scottish football is criticised for being low quality, usually by people who couldnae find Albion Rovers on a map, but what does such criticism really mean? We’ve all seen games played by 22 international stars be boring, we’ve all seen pub teams lashing in 30-yard piledrivers. The crucial take-home point to understand is that Scottish football is great entertainment, and that’s what it’s really all about.
Better yet, it has wide, deep and lasting cultural roots which enrich and enhance life here. Yes, sectarianism, where it lingers, drags us all down and betrays a nation whose spirit is largely forward-thinking, increasingly green, open and progressive and with a great future ahead. But if you want to argue that the Premier League is consistently better, WBA v Newcastle Utd is just the most recent proof of the folly of such thinking.
We can all point to the dysfunction of that league south of the border, and we should, but if our top flight offered the chance for more clubs to rise to the top and win a title, we could truly set ourselves up as an example to follow.
So how about this as a solution? Each season concludes with an eight-team play-off, a random draw for the quarter-final and semi-final, no seeding, single-leg games. Most clubs have a fighting chance of beating Celtic or Rangers in a one-off game.
There’d be a trophy for finishing top of the league and entry into the Europa League (or similar), but the title winner that plays in the Champions League qualifier is the team which wins the play-offs. Those end-of-season games would be packed out, they’d be much anticipated, they’d generate a lot of income, and it’d be a chance for six other clubs to win a title and the money and European status that goes with it. It’s not perfect, no, but it’d be a start and an incredibly exciting end to every season. It’d be better than now.
With its huge number of great clubs both old and new, playing in some of the most romantic, community-based grounds, with its rootsy, unpretentious, non-corporate, civic, fan-based game, a game without the curse of corporate culture or of VAR, where you don’t need to take out a mortgage for a season ticket, Scottish football has so, so much going for it – far more than is either understood or appreciated by its more vocal critics.
But until it can resolve the issue of the Rangers and Celtic duopoly, it will always be open to the accusation of having an uncompetitive Premiership, where progress is forever capped.
And after all, that’s what it’s like in England’s top flight, a league many rightly have much contempt for up here.
That fact alone should persuade us to find a solution.
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