It doesn’t take much for Celtic and Rangers to fall out. Scottish FA punishments for the disorder at Ibrox in March sparked another disagreement over whose fans were to blame and the old chestnut of away-ticket allocations.
Clubs who used to be good for a few coefficient points now spend midweeks bickering over who is the biggest embarrassment in Europe. Bandying words over which side is doing the most to drag the nation’s reputation down the plug hole.
Kudos to Hearts for being this week’s best dressed man in Albania. The Tynecastle club celebrated a battling victory over Rapid Vienna by a posting a salty social media post reminding Celtic that winning European play-offs in Austria isn’t for everyone. Parkhead fans responded by reminding them that neither is winning league titles. Fat lot of good that final-day drama did the Scottish champions when they were battered from pillar to post by LASK in their latest Champions League collapse.
Throwing away a four-goal aggregate lead to blow yet another play-off, most fans lay the blame for an eighth Champions League failure in 10 on directors who sent the team into battle with the lowest number of new signings of any club in Scotland. The insistence on banking money for a rainy day has turned that rainy day into an annual event.
Manager Martin O’Neill can’t escape scrutiny either. Leading 4-0 in the tie with an hour to play, even a team lacking in physical and mental strength, never mind fitness, should have found a plan to manage the game out.
A collective calamity, the club hierarchy will now spend the final days of the window trying to bolt the stable door when the horse is already halfway to Hamilton.
Facing some tough-looking games in the Europa League, Celtic currently have 23 senior players, two short of a full 25-man UEFA list. Of those 23, Jota and Alistair Johnston are long-term injuries, while Reo Hatate is on the way out.
The Europa League signing deadline falls at 11pm on Wednesday and PSV Eindhoven’s A ticket-allocation dispute has rekindled between Celtic and Rangers ahead of their Premier Sports Cup this month Joel van der Berg won’t be the only signing. Scrambling around to fill the gaps, the final days of the window will be more frantic than they should be.
After 48 hours spent laughing up their sleeves, the Rangers competitive streak kicked in and they decided to give their bitter rivals a run for their money.
Owner of the San Francisco 49ers and Ibrox co-owner, Jed York, was arrested in Ohio as part of a prostitution sting this week and it was still nowhere near the most embarrassing thing to happen to the club.
Derek McInnes called the Conference League play-off defeat to Jablonec “mortifying”, and while a low-quality three points against a poor Aberdeen side was timely and overdue, these remain dangerous days for the Rangers manager.
An army of new signings show no sign of improving things at all. You almost have to hand it to the club which signs so many midfielders without managing to sign one with a creative bone in his body.
Right now it feels as if McInnes still has no real idea of what his strongest XI is, what shape works best or which players he can trust.
A strategy of signing players with leadership, character, a strong mentality and a familiarity with Scottish football is all well and good so long as the players who “get it” and stand tall in a pair of brown brogues have the firepower and creativity to blow a hole in their opponents.
Despite spending over £50million on 29 players in the last 14 months, Rangers mustered one shot on target over 120 minutes against the fifth best team in the Czech league last season. The team bears all the cut and thrust of a water pistol. And the responsibility for that lies as much with the people running the club as it does with the manager.
Andrew Cavenagh and the 49ers were supposed to herald a new beginning. The banter years would come to an end with no more mention of EBT tax-case hearings, Lord Nimmo Smith, Sir David Murray, Andrew Ellis, Craig Whyte or Charles Green and the Texas Rangers. No more Easdales and Mike Ashley, 10pm statements from Duff and Phelps, Three Bears, the Blue Knights, questions over the NOMAD, Bomber Brown demanding to see the deeds, police raids on the City of London or deadend journeys on a Parks of Hamilton bus.
Read more:
- Derek McInnes learns Rangers dugout ban fate as appeal decision made
- Why Celtic and Rangers got same punishment for cup tie crowd unrest
The club was supposed to be moving into the hands of serious, sober professionals with pots of money and a fabled reputation. Surveying the desperation of this season so far, it’s hard to believe that much has changed at all. When the pressure is on after a bad result you can always rely on football clubs to throw out a deflection statement playing to the cheap seats.
The scenes at the Scottish Cup quarter-final between Celtic and Rangers at Ibrox in March were unacceptable. So unacceptable that the SFA have ordered the clubs to play their next home cup games behind closed doors and hand their opponents £100,000 in compensation.
Strict liability in Scottish football won’t be the silver bullet some people think. Delinquents in SpiderMan masks don’t especially care when the suits in their boardroom are fined a six-figure sum.
Away clubs usually claim 40 per cent of the ticket revenue from cup games. That could leave the next visitors to Ibrox or Parkhead out of pocket. The SFA also take a 15-per-cent cut of cup revenue and 15 per cent of an empty stadium amounts to nothing at all.
That said, Scottish football has to try something. And two clubs basking in a laughable state of victimhood can’t be trusted to take the lead.
Celtic and Rangers can hardly lecture misbehaving fans on how much they are harming their own clubs when they are making a rip-roaring mess of things in their own football departments.
It’s quicker and easier to bang out a one-eyed statement giving their own idiots a virtual free pass while deflecting blame onto the other lot, launch another tedious ticket war or express shock and outrage at the proportionality of their punishment.
After a week of bruising headlines, there was nothing more predictable or embarrassing than that.
