Healthy SPFL, you know it’s over when the enablers bale
It took until 5th October but Celtic are top of the Scottish Premiership for the first time. The valiant stand by the Highlanders went the way of Culloden but whereas the competition for first place us over for the season, the league has a promising look to it.
The SPL suffered for many years not exclusively because Celtic and Rangers dominated but because those teams who should have been snapping at their heels – the city clubs – were hugely underachieving.
Motherwell have done enormously well finishing ‘best of the rest’ for three years but they are inhibited by being the third best supported team in Motherwell (population 30,311). Their coaching and scouting infrastructure would provide a completely different platform if they were one of the top-flight clubs from Edinburgh, Dundee and Aberdeen.
Below Celtic sit Motherwell, and the other very well run SPFL club, Inverness, but behind them are Aberdeen and Dundee United, who for once sit above the detritus (sorry, Kilmarnock, but you are a terribly run football club) and plucky upstarts (Ross County, from Dingwall, population 5,026). Even Hibs are rallying. They will return to the top half of the table if they beat Partick Thistle tonight.
Of the big city clubs, only Hearts (in Administration) are off the pace, and even their league status is bound to be rescued when Kilmarnock’s name is inevitably written with the accompanying parenthesis.
As we’ve noted here often before, when the Daily Record finally acknowledges the reality Celtic websites have long explained about the Rangers group of clubs, you know it’s too late to do anything about it. Today’s piece in the newspaper confirms what we’ve known for a long time, the white flag has been raised. If they were more circumspect before declaring the unquestionable business acumen of the Ibrox key-holder, at any point over the last 15 years, the spivs would have been unable to fill their boots.
All those fawning pieces simply enabled the misdeeds.
While we are on the topic of enablers, what is the price of loyalty? £825k, apparently.
Congratulations to all who participated in the Great Scottish Run for 1254125. It turned into a great Celtic day with participants ranging from the dedicated athletes to those on the high side of 20st who grabbed the chance to make a different to their own lives, as well as others.
It’s happening again next year, so you have plenty time to get ready. The sooner you start preparing the better.
My sincere thanks to the many people who contributed to the 1254125 MyDonate page I put up on Friday. It now sits at an incredible £935, I’ll leave it up for a few days more to see if we can break into four figures.
Thanks for all your help.
Order Sean Fallon, Celtic’s Iron Man, below.