A rising in the East

Ian Bell

Thanks to that affliction they call work, I didn’t get to Easter Road last weekend. A few glimpses of Setanta and a tape proved, nevertheless, that something is going on in Scottish football. At last.

A colleague who did make it to the game provided further confirmation. Some of the spectators had travelled a very long way, he tells me, to take in this fixture in the frequently-derided SPL.

Several English clubs had despatched their emissaries and they were not, with the best will in the world, there to be impressed by a Rangers side enduring one of the toughest first 30 minutes of their lives.

There is a buzz about the Scottish game at the moment, and the reasons are not too hard to find. If you treat a league campaign as a kind of story, Scotland has provided some very dull narratives for a very long time. To put it kindly, the only thrill was in wondering which portion of the Old Firm would be taking the honours for granted. No longer.

In England, by tradition, the old procession has been a handy source of mockery. The assumption, generally, has been that the SPL is close to pointless.

Only the thought that Rangers and Celtic might somehow barge their way into the Premiership has attracted much media interest. How times change, possibly to the chagrin of David Murray, certainly to the puzzlement of those who promote the Premiership as the best league in the world.

In point of fact, that title currently resides in Spain, as anyone who watched Barcelona dismantle Real recently could confirm. There is a difference, though, between “best” and “most interesting”.

There are no Ronaldinhos in Scotland – perhaps you had already worked that one out for yourself – but the SPL story, after years of tedium, has become gripping. We don’t know how this one will end. And that, at the most basic level, is why people buy tickets.

Compare and contrast with the Premiership. Get odds on Chelsea throwing the title away. Study the doleful reports of falling attendances and the claims that, too often, the star-studded football is just a tiny bit dull.

The argument can be overdone, of course, but stick with the theme: the point of a league is drama. Whose star is rising, who falters, where are the surprises? If you can bet, before Christmas, that Jose Mourinho will be boasting again next spring, the fun evaporates.

Scottish football is fun these days, though not, I grant, if you are a Rangers fan. Paul Le Guen is “interested” in receiving the poisoned chalice from Alex McLeish? Good luck to him.

If Rangers lose their claim on European football next season there will be a meltdown of historic proportions at Ibrox and none of Mr Murray’s huffs with the pernicious media will disguise the fact. Decisions necessary to avert the crisis should have been taken months ago. Too late.

For those who do not view the Scottish game through a blue mist this is not, however, entirely a bad thing. If you remove the green filters, equally, the wobbles suffered recently by Gordon Strachan’s Celtic are not of cosmic significance. The holy grail sought by the SPL since the league was cobbled together may just have been found: for once, it is competitive. The Old Firm’s divine right to take things for granted has been revoked.

There are few leagues in Europe of which such a thing could be said. Money from the Champions League translates into buying power and power tends, inevitably, to accumulate. Add a couple of billionaire benefactors here and there. Result: what economists like to call distortions in the market.

Scotland, poverty-stricken by comparison, has been liberated. Celtic won’t spend, Rangers can’t spend, and Edinburgh has struck a seam of talent.

You can wonder about the willingness of Hibs to pay Tony Mowbray what he is obviously worth, or question Vladimir Romanov’s bizarre decision to dispense with George Burley.

The fact remains that Hearts and Hibs have made the SPL a contest.

These uprisings have been witnessed before, of course. Sometimes Edinburgh, sometimes Aberdeen, sometimes Dundee: they tend not to last.

Last week’s contentious BBC documentary on Romanov and his revolution left you wondering how secure Hearts can hope to be, in the long term.

Hibs fans with long memories will meanwhile reach for the salt cellar when Rod Petrie, Easter Road chairman, claims that a young squad brimming with talent need not be broken up. Let’s revisit that one after the January transfer window.

For now, at any rate, the Old Firm’s grip has been broken. In some quarters, this is seen as a kind of catastrophe. How can we possibly cope if Rangers struggle and Celtic lose to otherwise-struggling teams? If you are not wholly Glasgowcentric, the answer is obvious: easily.

Unless and until the Scottish game is defined as comprising more than a pair of clubs it is headed for terminal decline. And that, ironically, is why the Old Firm wanted out of the SPL in the first place.

Doubtless attempts will be made to cherry-pick the Edinburgh sides.

As Celtic’s historians will remember, that tactic got their club off the ground in the first place.

Rangers, in years past, operated a youth system that resembled a trawler netting all that swam into view. For now, however, there is more suspense in Scottish league football than you will find anywhere in Europe.

And there, I promise, is a sentence I never expected to write.

04 December 2005

Taken from the Sunday Herald