PREMIER LEAGUE DOESN’T NEED THE TROUBLE THAT CELTIC AND RANGERS WOULD BRING
WELL, it is that time again. The time when football falls apart and someone goes mad and suggests inviting Celtic and Rangers to join the league in England. It’s usually a club owner, down on his luck, in a briefing to a journalist. Phil Gartside, at Bolton, was often an advocate, but Bolton are no longer in the Premier League, and Phil sadly passed away in 2016. Anyway, here is why it would not work — and from four perspectives. The elite clubs do not want more competition, the closed-shop Super League proved that. So why would a six that currently does not go into the four Champions League qualification spots risk becoming eight once two very big, very well-supported clubs get access to Premier League money? They can’t handle the emergence of Leicester, let alone Rangers and Celtic. To accommodate the Glasgow giants, the top division would have to grow to 22 clubs — which it cannot do with the expanded Champions League calendar — or lose two existing members. That
would mean a season in which five of the 20 were relegated, a quarter of the league, to make room for three promoted clubs, plus two from Scotland. None of the 14 outside the Big Six would wish to take a gamble like that. Aston Villa, West Ham, Brighton, Southampton, Burnley, Newcastle and Wolves have all finished bottom five in the last 10 seasons but were not relegated. Why would they put themselves in further jeopardy — a giant financial loss — for a slightly better television deal and two bigger matches each season? Equally why would a club like Everton, who probably do not fear relegation, wish to decrease their chances of breaking into the elite? The Scottish Football Association is so worried about FIFA trying to clump the Home Nations together in a United Kingdom team that, at the London Olympics in 2012, it would not let its players join Team GB. The SFA have subsequently relented and Scotland’s women can be considered for Tokyo this summer, but a club competition that would include teams from England, Wales and Scotland would be considered dangerous. Clubs in Scotland would also move against the proposal, fearing being left behind in a truly minor domestic competition. Finally, you may have noticed recent events in Northern Ireland. Brexit has brought some dormant issues to the fore again. The Good Friday Agreement, borders, unification. There may be trouble ahead, if it isn’t already here. Why, against this backdrop, would the Premier League welcome two clubs whose cultural identity is forged in sectarianism? We have a lot of problems down here but that isn’t one of them. Yet just as an impressionable young fan who chooses to support Liverpool will enter a world in which it is wrong to buy the Sun, so a quick trawl through the fan culture around Celtic and Rangers will expose a person to some extreme views. Why would the Premier League wish to import that? Our clubs have got enough money. No one needs this.