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Will Scottish Premiership return to two-team title tussle?Image source, SNSImage caption, Martin O’Neill, Derek McInnes, Wouter Vrancken and Alfred Johansson now lead last season’s top-four finishersByTom English
And in the relative blink of an eye, the new Scottish Premiership season is upon us with much to live up to compared to last time, an epic campaign that looked like making the impossible possible for month upon month.
How Scotland, and other parts of the world, became entranced by the fairytale only for the reality of sport’s essential brutality to hit them square between the eyes at Celtic Park on denouement day.
If there is a non-Glasgow team capable of roughing up the big two as Heart of Midlothian did repeatedly last season then we’re in for a wild ride.
If this league campaign goes to the final three minutes on the final day, if the domestic football story to beat all domestic football stories is in touching distance as the campaign swings for home next spring then we’ll be blessed.
If. Nobody will be betting a brass farthing on history repeating itself, though. True, nobody really saw Hearts coming last time, but does lightning strike twice?
Hearts are in transition under new management and a raft of new players in the post-Derek McInnes, Lawrence Shankland age. They’ll take time to settle.
Is there a different bolter out there? Motherwell, so easy on the eye last season, have had their guts ripped out in the summer and are also rebuilding, albeit playing with the same easy style as before.
Aberdeen? It would take a brave soul to support any claim for an Old Firm-challenging run, but in Stephen Robinson’s first full season, they should go a whole lot better than last term.
Hibernian have the potential to push hard for third, but consistency problems follow them around year upon year. Falkirk, the other top-six club, would see a repeat of last season as a fantastic outcome, which it would be.
The plaintive cry is that young Scottish footballers get a chance to play a part in all this, that clubs trust their youth for a change. It’s an appeal made this time every year and, for the most part, ignored.
We look to be back in the realms of a two-horse race and the two horses have experienced jockeys now, not two Old Firm apprentices like Russell Martin and Wilfried Nancy.
Hearts did so many outstanding things in taking the race to the wire, but both of those hapless characters helped them on their way. In Martin O’Neill and McInnes, the capacity for Celtic and Rangers slapstick, and that of an outsider causing them tremors, has been dramatically reduced.
The surreal cameos of Martin and Nancy and Hearts’ thrilling surge that reverberated around the UK, Europe and parts of the wider world were just a few of things that made last season unmatchable in terms of drama and genuine gobsmacking moments.
The fall of Brendan Rodgers, and Dermot Desmond’s startling evisceration of a celebrated manager, could only be rivalled if Celtic’s major shareholder suddenly takes a flamethrower to his relationship with O’Neill.
Desmond’s son, Ross, thought it a good idea to declare football war on the club’s own supporters at an annual meeting that was promptly cancelled. On the really dark side, Peter Lawwell, the titan of 20 years at Parkhead, left while citing intolerable abuse of a section of the support that lost the run of themselves.
O’Neill’s return was astonishing, his second return almost every bit as remarkable. Danny Rohl came and went at Rangers. Jimmy Thelin exited Aberdeen. St Mirren won a League Cup in thrilling circumstances and then almost got themselves relegated. Everybody fell in love with Jens Berthel Askou’s Motherwell. Praise was heaped on the quality of Falkirk’s football.
At the start of the season nobody foresaw much, if any, of this. What was more predictable then, as it is now, is the toxic nature of some of what goes around the biggest games.
As a club, Hearts have every right to remain livid at the crass goading of their players during the invasion that greeted Celtic’s title win – and the tokenistic sanction that followed it.
The Scottish FA’s independent review of the disgraceful scenes before, during and after the Old Firm Cup tie at Ibrox in March was thunderously critical of all parties – clubs, governing bodies, police.
Their recommendation, one of many, was that the SFA and Scottish Professional Football League start to get serious with stand closures and then stadium closures as a direct consequence of misbehaviour. Enough is enough was the mantra.
How long before the mettle of the governing bodies is tested? And how long before the independent report, in the face of resistance from the most powerful clubs in the land, is quietly forgotten about?
In the coming seasons, the narratives don’t just begin and end on the pitch. The off-pitch stuff is compelling, too.
The standards of refereeing will be under the microscope like never before after the contentious and title-defining calls came in a mad flurry at the end of last season. We want the drama and the storylines of much of the campaign just gone, but we could do without the poisonous way it all finished in the final week or two.
Controversial decisions, threats to officials, a noxious atmosphere culminating with Celtic fans squaring up to Hearts players – it was a pitiful end to what been a thrilling season.
Image source, SNSCeltic have signed Kasper Hogh from Bodo/Glimt and Camilo Duran from Qarabag
There will be surprises ahead, but at this remove it’s hard to argue against the familiar sight of old rivals going head-to-head for the title.
The Celtic board spent much of last season and practically every day of the summer getting monstered by elements among their own support. They have, though, delivered two significant signings for huge money – Kasper Hogh and Camilo Duran.
Hogh is the pedigree striker that Celtic have lacked since Kyogo Furuhashi was around. Duran is more of a replacement for Daizen Maeda. At a revealed £17m for the pair, Celtic have flexed their fiscal muscle.
There is consistent talk that midfielder Arne Engels and right-back Alistair Johnston might be leaving, so the Celtic of this week might still look considerably different to the Celtic of the coming months.
Even with another few comings and goings they’re still the most settled side in the country – and the most proven. Fit-again centre-half Cameron Carter-Vickers will be like a new signing. If winger Jota can make a return to something close to his old self then Celtic will be hard to contain.
Rangers, under McInnes, have added beef and leadership, doughty characters rather than the flighty articles they have been attracted to for so long. McInnes will make them organised and robust.
Whether they have the creative wit to go with the physicality is another question. In Scottish terms, Rangers’ American owners have spent colossal money, splurging tens of millions on the creation of a team, and an environment, that can win a league and do something in Europe.
From Martin’s capricious management to the cold-blooded pragmatism of McInnes is some leap for Rangers. McInnes has broad shoulders, which is just as well, because there’s a heavy burden of expectation there. There’s enormous pressure on him.
He’ll see it as an opportunity, of course. The biggest of his managerial life.
O’Neill versus McInnes looks to be the story of the season, unless there’s another delicious sub-plot lurking in the long grass.
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