for the rest of your lives. If not, then look away now because unlike the
dross which passes for Scottish journalism it is not written to pander to
Tims or feed their paranoia further than it already is.
On Monday evening I finally got round to reading the Sunday papers and it¹s
clear that fearing the worst, the hacks were already getting the excuses
out. Gerry McNee in the News of the World first of all says he¹s going to
Ibrox, but reading on it¹s apparent that because he watched Hearts when
Celtic won the title on goal difference in 1986 he believes history will
repeat itself. i.e. his heroes will win the title if he¹s not there! He
should have listened to Ronald de Boer explaining that ³lucky underpants
don¹t work²!
However, he then goes on to come up with a system under which Celtic would
actually win the league. Let¹s change the rules just as the season
reaches climax to a system that would ensure a Celtic win. He proposes
that teams are separated by the results between them rather than goal
difference! Great idea we won¹t let you know the rules until we see who
it favours. All this does is put the idea firmly in the minds of the
Sellick fans that if this had been the Champion¹s League then they would
have won how unfair is that?
Don¹t stop there Gerry. Why not have a rule that says when a final is at a
neutral venue then the team that travels furthest gets to count away goals
as double? That way the UEFA cup would be back in Glasgow. Allowing all
Sellick players two goes at a penalty might have brought the CIS cup to
Porkheid too, and if you give me long enough I¹ll come up with a reason why
the Inverness victory doesn¹t count either. The quadruple is back on!
Meanwhile, over at the Sunday Times, Simon Buckland writes the ³Rangers²
bits for their pre-match coverage and fills it with gems. First of all we
couldn¹t really win the league in his view. ³Whether Rangers can properly
claim to have surpassed Celtic if the title is decided on goals scored is
debatable.² What is there to debate?
Look at the final league table it has Rangers at the top, look at the
Ibrox trophy cabinet yes that¹s the SPL trophy. He also finds the need to
point out, ³If Rangers debt is confirmed at £70m it would become
unacceptable.² To whom? You, Simon? ³It might determine who he (Alex
McLeish) can afford to retain.² Here¹s hoping.
It¹s now a fact of football life that any club will take a decent bid for
any player. We know that signing long term contracts is all about making
sure you get money when they go. So there we have it if you win you
haven¹t really, and even if you do you¹ll have to sell all your best
players, so ha ha!
So we go out and do the necessary, and then we get Chris Sutton coming out
and accusing Dunfermline players of cheating! Anything to take the focus
away from the fact that they lost the championship. Or to ignore the claims
from Gordon Marshall (no friend of Rangers) that he was berated for not
lying down to his former employees that should be investgated by the SPL,
but there¹s as much chance of that as Mutton being taken to task for his
outburst. Slapped wrists and a £5 fine will be the extent of it.
And is he related in any way to the famous diver Chris Sutton. Even his
fans in the press box give it away. ³Chris Sutton won a penaltyŠChris
Sutton won a free-kick². Penalties should be ³conceded² by clumsy or
malicious defending, not ³won² by the so-called ³clever² forwards taking a
dive.
Monday¹s Scotsman saw Glenn Gibbons come up with no more flattering
adjective than ³appropriate² to describe the title win, and thought it
necessary to give us his opinion that the penalty (which was irrelevant in
any case) was ³soft as eider down² at the start of the report and that
McCann ³simply fell over² at the end of the report.
In the Gerald, Ewing Grahame feels the need to point out that this was a
time when the ³title should be shared² sure he would have thought the same
if his beloved hoops had won on goal difference and also reminds us the
penalty was ³rather soft². OK, so the title race was close, but normally at
the end of the season everyone reminds us that the best team always wins the
league. It¹s not just the last game, it¹s the whole season and whether you
win by 21 points or better goal difference it¹s still a title. By the way
did I miss all the articles about achieving a world record 50 league titles?
So there we have it. For us it was a brilliant if somewhat testing day
out. But before the game we are being told that even if we win, we aren¹t
really better than Celtic, match reports choose to highlight a soft (in
their minds) penalty which didn¹t matter, Sutton¹s remarks are given so much
air-time that radio bulletins focus on that rather than our title win (and
feed the paranoia of the Tims) and instead of Trevor McDonald in between the
two episodes of Coronation Street we are treated to a documentary about a
team of losers! Unfortunately I felt the need to watch Fifth Gear on
Channel 5 at that time.
The double is secured in fine fashion and one more performance will make
that a treble. We won the league, therefore we are the best team in
Scotland bar none, and regardless of how narrow the margin was. Finally,
a message for Robert who sits next to us in the Govan Rear. Get well soon.
We look forward to seeing you back for the start of the new season.
IAN GRAZZA