A fresh round of Old Firm bleating

Surprise, surprise. Rangers appoint a new chairman who's a director of IMG, the global marketing company that believes heritage and tradition are only useful if they can be exploited for their own profit, and the prospect of the Old Firm leaving the SPL is back in the media again.

We all know the routine by now. Rangers use what residual power they believe they have to make threatening noises about "needing to leave" Scottish domestic football, presumably in the hope that the authorities will bow to the pressure and cut them a deal.

Celtic, meanwhile, play the humble card, with Chief Exec Peter Lawwell this week saying that the club would only leave the SPL if they were invited to join somewhere else, and only in the interests of "telling the Celtic story". This being a euphemism, of course, for "hoping to make even more money".

Dutifully, though, the media have once again been sucked in, with even Jim Spence on the BBC (normally a journalist who speaks a lot of sense) blogging about the chances of the Old Firm leaving.

Others in the Weegie mafia, meanwhile, breathlessly reported the news that FIFA have said that a move is "possible", as if this has any real value. It's "possible" that George Foulkes could become Scotland's next First Minister, but that doesn't make it any more likely.

At least Rangers are being honest about their intentions, while Celtic are becoming increasingly devious. Lawwell's latest reasoning is that the English Premiership might invite the Old Firm in order to increase the competitiveness of the league, ignoring the fact that such a move would destroy the competitive integrity of the league system - namely, that any club can go up or down.

As Mark McGhee said, who shouldn't Aberdeen (incidentally, the last non-OF team to win the championship, not Dundee Utd, Mr Lawwell) apply to join the Premiership? Or what would happen if Celtic or Rangers, having joined the English top flight, got relegated? Could another Scottish team replace them?

So many questions, so few answers - but then, Celtic and Rangers have never been interested in anything other than themselves. Hence the creation of an SPL rigged to favour the top two teams, which they then point to and say - look at how uncompetitive this league is; we have to leave.

Who knows where this story will end. The only certainty is, we have a lot more of this bleating to come, unfortunately.