So it would appear imminent that the 2019/20 season is about to be called and subsequently Celtic will be crowned as Champions.
I’ll wait until it’s official before I start reviewing the campaign which has ended in unprecedented circumstances but there’s no doubt who the Champions should be and that’s Celtic FC.
With no football played since the 7th of March, the last two months have been dominated by Rangers quite frankly pitiful and self-serving attempts to draw all of Scottish football into civil war in order to get the season null and voided and deny us a ninth consecutive league championship.
We waited with bated breath for their mythical ‘dossier’ to be revealed in advance of last Friday’s EGM which they had called – backed by Hearts and Stranraer – in order for all member clubs to vote for an independent investigation into the SPFL.
The ‘dossier’ was supposedly going to produce damning evidence of bullying, coercion and corruption within the SPFL and primarily by its Chief Executive Neil Doncaster and Chairman Murdoch MacLennannot to mention the governing bodies lawyer Rod McKenzie.
The ‘dossier’ was delayed several times but eventually got its grand unveiling eight days ago on the eve of the EGM and within it was essentially 200 pages of innuendo, hearsay, faux outrage and ultimately no actual evidence.
A waste of time in summary that tried to pad out accusations of incompetence and a critique of the shortcomings within a hierarchy that Rangers themselves have been part of for years.
No smoking gun though or anything even remotely of that nature.
Just hot air basically.
Rangers chief executive Stewart Robertson claimed the organisation was deeply dysfunctional whilst simultaneously refusing to acknowledge that he’d sat on it for years without as much as a peep or indeed comment on the convenience of the fact that all of these deep-seated issues suddenly became of vital importance after a vote to end the Scottish football season outwith the Premiership didn’t go their way.
Not surprisingly it failed to convince the 75% of clubs required to vote for the proposed investigation.
Of the 42 member clubs, twenty-seven voted against, two abstained and thirteen voted in favour.
Of the thirteen Aberdeen’s Dave Cormack tried to come across as some sort of peacemaker by saying he’d vote for it knowing full well it would likely fail and has alienated a large section of his own support in doing so.
Rangers obviously did as well along with the other clubs who have been negatively affected by ending the season prematurely such as Hearts, Partick Thistle, Falkirk, Stranraer, Edinburgh City, Stenhousemuir and Airdrie Utd.
Then there is Livingston who voted for it due to their alleged disgruntlement at the collapse of league reconstruction talks – reconstruction that ironically Aberdeen publically voted against – and Inverness Caledonian Thistle whose Chief Executive Officer Scot Gardiner is an openly dyed in the wool Rangers man.
Gardiner left Hearts in 2017 after the fiasco surrounding their main stand reconstruction which saw it run way over budget, past its deadline and with the omission of tiny details such as a manger’s office.
He also was the man who appointed Rangers ‘legend’ John Brown to the hot seat at Dundee – I’m sure all Dundee fans thank him for that – when he was the chief executive there and is now currently overseeing a complete financial basket case at ICT who had projected annual losses of about £875,000 even before the recent pandemic shut down the game.
In the past week, he’s been called out as a liar by the chairman of Dunfermline Athletic and Greenock Morton and it would appear that he is working with only one club’s interests at heart and it sure as hell isn’t the one who pays him.
He literally wanted the season null and voided even though it would be of zero benefit to his club and could potentially cost them hundreds of thousands of pounds in prize money.
Why the hell anyone is taking him seriously is beyond me. The man is a serial failure and a clown. Expect him to be a candidate for the Ibrox chief executive role when Robertson eventually stands down.
I mentioned the reconstruction talks failing earlier which was inevitable.
The proposed 14-14-12 model would have saved clubs from relegation but would also have denied some promotion and probably most pressing of all it would have diluted TV money payouts in the top league. No surprise then there wasn’t much stomach for it.
Back to Rangers and they claim that they are going to press ahead with legal action against the SPFL in any case despite having little backing amongst fellow clubs something which based on their track record versus Mike Ashley’s Sports Direct group they will likely fail to achieve anything from outside of a series of long protracted judicial defeats and hefty legal bills.
Keeps the laughs going for everyone else I suppose. ‘Banter Years’ and all that.
Amazingly they have also backtracked on what they originally claimed was the central reason behind the ‘dossier’ now insisting that they never actually made allegations of bullying and coercion which would be an insult to your intelligence if you were even taking any of this crap seriously.
In summation, Rangers knew they were never going to win this but had to be seen to be doing something in the eyes of their fans in order to stop an inevitable ninth consecutive league championship for Celtic even if it meant taking a flamethrower to their relationship with the governing body and the majority of their fellow Scottish football clubs.
So in that respect, it’s mission accomplished.
They have huffed and puffed more than even the likes of Hearts and Partick Thistle who actually have somewhat legitimate gripes and will suffer actual significant consequences on and off the pitch, unlike the Ibrox club.
Along the way, a few of their sycophants in the media have made fools of themselves and now have their cards marked for ever more. Rather than hold their hands up and admit they backed the wrong horse the likes of Tom English, Gary Ralston and Ewan Murray doubled down, dug themselves deeper and have been left with egg on their faces though of course, their hubris will stop them from ever admitting it but…………..they know.
Anyway, the word is that all 12 Premiership clubs – including Rangers – have now accepted that the season is over after two months plus of downtime and no end in sight.
That will invariably mean we’ll be crowned champions at some point in the next week.
Bitter bluenoses will talk about asterisk titles – something they should well know all about considering their past financial doping and EBT misdemeanours – and claim they don’t acknowledge it etc but it’s all front and who even cares what the hell they think.
What The Hell Do We Care?!
For We Only Know That There’s Gonna Be A Show And The Glasgow Celtic Will Be There!
Here’s how we did it last year which is how it would have looked this year if life had continued as normal:
....Always A Tim! 