Old Firm splashing cash like drunken sailors leaves rest of SPFL all at sea
SET aside for a minute Aaron Ramsey’s missed penalty. When Rangers went head-to-head with Eintracht Frankfurt in the Europa League final, Scottish football remembered how it felt to be relevant again. Even the pub league bores took the day off.
By Thursday night, a steamy day in Seville began to feel like a heat-induced mirage. And you wondered if Brian from Bristol’s nan really could get a game in the SPFL.
Motherwell’s performance against Sligo Rovers, a team languishing fifth in the League of Ireland, was a dismal and humiliating business. A display so abysmal and inexcusable that Graham Alexander paid for it with his job.
Over the course of a 3-0 aggregate defeat, the Fir Park team offered nothing. There was no fight, no flair, no threat to the opposition goal at all. It was a European performance so far removed from Rangers in Dortmund you found yourself wondering if the two sides actually compete in the same league.
The reality is that they don’t. The SPFL marketing men will tell everyone that an exciting new Premiership season begins in Livingston today, with 12 teams playing for the trophy.
But if you accept that Sligo should have no real chance of beating Motherwell, then by the same logic there should also be an acknowledgment that Motherwell — with their inferior budget — have no right to live with Celtic or Rangers.
It’s now 37 years since a team from outside Glasgow were crowned champions of Scotland and there is now an acceptance that the Premiership is two leagues within one. Season 2022-23 will see Celtic and Rangers jostle for the crown, while the other ten teams compete to be the best of the rest.
For Rangers, at least, the status quo provides comforting proof that the trauma of 2012 is finally over. The famous hedge towering over the touchline at Brechin’s Glebe Park is 67 yards long. Ten years ago, it could have been ten times that size and it still wouldn’t have covered the chasm between the Ibrox outfit and Celtic.
A chastening first season outside the top flight began on July 29, 2012. With Rangers scrambling to secure conditional membership of the SFA hours before kick-off, a Ramsdens Cup tie in Brechin felt like a freakish aberration.
Lee McCulloch scored in extra-time in a Biblical downpour, which summed up the plight facing Ally McCoist and his players. A financial tsunami had swept a raft of key players out of the building on free transfers. Replacing them with the likes of Sebastien Faure and Emilson Cribari, Rangers were toiling to keep their heads above water.
Offered the certainty of three or four years of domestic dominance and a free run at the Champions League, the gloating from Celtic fans was unrestrained. While their bitter rivals were slumming it in Brechin and Annan, the Parkhead side went to Moscow and secured their first-ever away win in the group stage. A fortnight later, they beat Barcelona to tee up a last-16 clash with Juventus.
Scottish football’s age-old twohorse race had become a one-team procession. And while Steven Gerrard completed The Journey a year ago when he secured the first Rangers title since 2011, challenging Celtic’s financial advantage off the pitch has taken a little longer.
When Ange Postecoglou regained the crown to secure automatic qualification for the Champions League, it felt as if the Parkhead club had put some distance between themselves and their bitter rivals once more. Few factored in the impact reaching a Europa League final would have on Rangers’ fortunes.
A record club transfer sale of £20million for Calvin Bassey followed £10m from Southampton on Joe Aribo. They spent £4m of that cash on Ben Davies from Liverpool, a similar fee on Ridvan Yilmaz from Besiktas, £2.7m on Rabbi Matondo and another £1.8m on Antonio Colak. If Rangers progress past Union Saint-Gilloise and then a play-off to secure a golden ticket to the Champions League group stage, the days of signing Kevin Kyle and Ian Black on free transfers will feel like a sweat-inducing nightmare.
Celtic are hardly sitting back. This summer, the champions spent £16m on Jota, Cameron Carter-Vickers and Alex Bernabei. In a message to the Stock Exchange, they predicted end-ofyear financials ‘significantly higher than market expectations’.
None of this is good news for domestic rivals on the opening day of a new campaign. Forced to slash costs during the pandemic, Celtic and Rangers are now back on their feet. Motherwell claimed fifth place last season despite winning a mere three league games after the winter break. Earning a place in Europe their form barely deserved, a humiliating defeat to Sligo is a damning reflection on Scotland’s top flight.
Alexander paid the price for that defeat with his job. Lee Johnson of Hibs, Stephen Robinson of St Mirren and Callum Davidson of St Johnstone are also peering over their shoulders after poor results in the League Cup.
Going back into battle against Celtic and Rangers must hold all the appeal of a night out in Dundee with Jacob Rees Mogg. For one or two others, the relative strength of the Glasgow giants has brought unexpected spin-offs.
Thanks to Rangers and Celtic in Europe, Scotland’s coefficient improved enough to earn Hearts a guarantee of group stage European football until Christmas. To celebrate, the Tynecastle club treated themselves to a £600,000 splurge on Lawrence Shankland. Finishing third has never been more rewarding.
That explains why Aberdeen have used the cash generated by the sales of Calvin Ramsey and Lewis Ferguson to sign nine new players. And why Dundee United — losing £3m a year — have spent money they don’t really have on striker Steven Fletcher and Welsh international Dylan Levitt. None of this will make much difference to who wins the league. The destination of the title will still come down to results in Old Firm games.
Gearing up for another season in the Highland League, Brechin City must look back with nostalgia to the day they gave the mighty Rangers a run for their money.
After a summer when the Glasgow giants have thrown their money around like drunken sailors on shore leave, Aberdeen, Dundee United, Hibs and the rest will soon know exactly how they feel.