How does the standard stack up this season?
Senior football writer and Friday columnist
IT is always amusing come the end of the season to witness the reverse ferrets of supporters as they react to where their team has finished in the league table, and what honours – or lack of – they have ended up with.
For some Rangers supporters, this has been an especially confusing time. A league they once said was the priority this season no longer matters, a change of opinion that has come about in equal parts due to Celtic winning it, and their own team providing the not inconsiderable consolation of a place in the Europa League Final.
It gets more curious still as a great many of them still proclaim Celtic to be a bang average team, led by a donkey of a manager. How that can be true when they have beaten a finalist in a major European competition over the course of 38 games isn’t clear.
It is partly put down to underperformance by their own team on the domestic front, rather than any great achievement on Celtic’s behalf, a claim that casts serious aspersions on their own heroes given that a great many also contend that the standard of the cinch Premiership this season is the worst it has ever been.
To be fair to those Rangers fans who hold such views, though, as contorted as they may be in their reasoning, they aren’t alone in holding this belief.
I have heard this theory at many grounds on my travels this season, usually – it has to be said – at clubs whose fortunes are floundering somewhat.
Does the claim stand up to scrutiny? Well, certainly, when it comes to individual teams, there are a few who would certainly fit the criteria to be described – to borrow from Partick Thistle manager Ian McCall’s lexicon – as “dugmeat”.
The Stephen Glass experiment crashed and burned at Aberdeen, and they would have to be in the running for the dubious honour of being the worst Dons team in recent memory over the piece, with the appointment of Jim Goodwin not yet bringing with it any great uplift in performances or results.
Shaun Maloney’s tenure at Hibernian was just as uninspiring and short-lived, though it may be argued in both of these cases that the chairmen at each club was a little trigger happy, hiring to bring long-term changes but giving their men the Old Yeller treatment after short-term struggles.
Still, it is quite something to see undoubtedly two of Scotland’s biggest clubs floundering about in the bottom six, with fans begging for the season to be taken out back and put out of its misery sharpish as well.
Even at clubs with more modest expectations, there have been struggles. St Johnstone of course have fallen off a cliff since they reached the heady heights of a cup double last season. It was always going to be a tough ask for Callum Davidson to follow up such unprecedented success, but no one could have foreseen that they would regress so far, so quickly, occupying the relegation play-off spot.
It might have been worse, too, had Dundee not been so dire upon their return to the Premiership, the Dens Park club at least doing Scottish football a service by reintroducing the always box-office Mark McGhee to the game, even if it did little for them on the field of play.
The most curious team perhaps in all the Premiership though is Motherwell. On the face of it, the feat of taking the Steelmen to fifth place, at the very worst, and securing European football for next season should see Graham Alexander carried down Fir Park Street on the shoulders of the club’s supporters.
However, talk to any of them, and you will be met with a certain incredulity that their team has managed to get to where they are, given their misgivings about their manager and his style of play.
Indeed, there are long-term supporters I know who argue that it is the worst football they have seen in all their years of following their team, pointing to route-one tactics, line-ups seemingly plucked from a tombola machine and the long stretch without a win after the winter break that had many of them convinced Alexander should be shown the door.
In the end, a scrambled injurytime equaliser at Livingston was enough to sneak into the top six and, incredibly, the three wins they have garnered from their 18 league games so far since the competition resumed in January was enough to seal a spot in the UEFA Conference League. Two of which came in the last two matches.
There are many fans of all hues who point to Motherwell’s lofty finish as proof positive of the poor standard of the Scottish Premiership this season, a thesis that includes a healthy dollop of recency bias, and rather disregards the nine wins they picked up in the opening half of the campaign.
The positive argument would state that the Celtic support have been thrilled by the football their side have produced as they have sealed the league title, while Rangers have proven the strength of the competition by seeing off some illustrious European opponents despite only being the second-best team in the division this season.
Hearts, too, have been impressive in reaching the Scottish Cup Final and making third place their own, a level or two clear of the teams below, but sadly still some way short of challenging the two above.
Has it been a vintage season in terms of the quality on display over the piece? Probably not. But the one thing that can be said with certainty about the Scottish Premiership this season, is that after 38 games, every team will be exactly where they deserve to be.