SPL Season Preview

With no international tournament to worry about, again, Scotland can go ahead and make a nice early start with its flagship domestic football tournament. So the new SPL season starts 3 days before the end of July, when some England-based players will not have begun pre-season training.

What’s going to happen this time around? No one seems to know. Last season was so surreal that predictions for the forthcoming campaign would appear to be a waste of time. So let’s waste a little by giving it a go, eh?

Celtic will want to get their title defence off to a strong start. The problem is that strong starts aren’t really Gordon Strachan’s forte. The teams he managed in England tended to begin their campaigns shakily, before either recovering their form and finishing well, or recovering well and getting relegated anyway because they didn’t pick up any points until October.

As Martin O’Neill is such a hard act to follow, Strachan must have been desperate to have settled the nerves early on last season. Instead, he took his side to Bratislava for a Champions League qualifier and they got thumped 5-0 by a team no one had heard of. It was such a bad result that it brought back memories of John Barnes’ farcical reign, when Celtic got dumped out of the Scottish Cup by Inverness Caledonian Thistle (then a Division 1 side) and The Sun wrote its best ever headline: SUPERCALEYGOBALLISTICCELTICAREATROCIOUS.

Still, Celtic recovered last season to win the championship, and it’s perfectly possible they’ll do it again. His young side have had their teething troubles during their ludicrous pre-season world tour, but Strachan has invested wisely. By poaching Derek Riordan and Gary Caldwell from Hibernian, Celtic have pulled off the classic Old Firm trick of strengthening their own team while simultaneously weakening an SPL rival, and Jiri Jarosik will surely adapt well to the pacy, direct style needed to win trophies. Kenny Miller has experience and self-belief in spades, yet despite seeming to have been around forever is still only 26. Stilian “Mr Consistency” Petrov’s likely departure will be a loss, but (unlike Hibs) Celtic should get a decent fee to help with buying a replacement.

Most importantly, though, Strachan seems to have the strength of character needed to survive in the Glasgow goldfish bowl, where every word and deed is picked to the bone to see if there’s something that can be held against you. It’s an environment that has seen many men crack. He’s rebuilt an ageing side by shifting the veterans off to England, and simply risen above the inevitable fall-out cooked up by the disgruntled players and complicit journalists. Most impressive of all, Roy Keane joined and then left again without reports of any fuck-ridden screaming matches reaching the papers. Keane was obviously signed against Strachan’s wishes, but rather than grumble, he simply dealt with the situation as calmly as possible. Keane proved just one point during his brief stay in Glasgow – if you’re too old and too battle-scarred for the Premiership, the same applies for the SPL.

The Old Firm have dominated Scottish football for so long that Celtic and Rangers have long assumed that the league had only two places in it – 1st and 2nd. Anything lower was unthinkable. That was until the new mad, bad Hearts came along, and split the Glasgow giants. Ultimately, the 2005/6 season will be remembered above all for the crazy antics of the Jambos, a club that could be both utterly dysfunctional and hysterically good, often on the same day. They started last season so well that they obviously had to sack their manager, George Burley, replacing him with Graham Rix, the very definition of a short-term appointment, who they naturally allowed to bring in 11 players during the transfer window, before getting rid of him (and, of course, the Director of Football who’d been at his desk for a matter of days) and then winning the Scottish Cup and finishing in the runners-up spot.

Anyone who claims to know what Vladimir Romanov is really up to is a liar, yet the majority of Hearts fans appear to trust him. What is clear is that the team looks weaker than last term, and the lack of signings so far this summer is perplexing for a club entering the Champions League for the first time in their history, and attempting to fill the 60,000 seat Murrayfield stadium at the same time. The owner seems to have lost his wallet at exactly the time a bit of cash would come in handy. Rudi Skacel is determined to leave, and while it’s debatable whether he’s good enough for the Champions League, Neil McCann certainly isn’t. Andy Webster’s off, too, and the centre back was excellent at the heart of the Hearts last year. He’ll be missed, no question.

A lot of people are backing Paul Le Guen to have the same kind of impact at Rangers that Martin O’Neill did at Celtic, and not all of them have Unionist tattoos on their forearms. The self-styled disciplinarian’s arrival is a real coup for the Ibrox club, and entirely due to the persuasive ability of the chairman. If Vladimir Romanov had an expensive last year, it was nothing compared to David Murray, who sunk another £50m plus into Rangers to pay off their crippling debt.

He’s a famously loyal chairman, too, and will back his new man to the hilt, but the transfer budget is tight. Murray is a self-made man, and unsurprisingly reluctant to throw in yet more bundles of cash. Last time he let his manager have free reign he ended up with Tore Andre Flo, the most expensive flop in Scottish football history. Unlucky for Rangers, then, that the squad is in serious need of rebuilding, and Le Guen will probably be haggling right up until the last minute of the transfer window to try and clear the dross out and bring in replacements.

It will help that Kris Boyd can’t stop scoring, but what Rangers really need is a good season from their captain, Barry Ferguson. For so long the most hyped talent in Scotland (in a weak field, to be fair), Ferguson returned from an unsuccessful stint at Blackburn with a point to prove. He still has a point to prove. His supporters say he’s been unlucky with injuries, but he looks like a player who doesn't look after himself well enough to help avoid those injuries. Tough guy Le Guen could make or break him. Rangers should improve this season (it would be hard not to) but it’s hard to see them finishing higher than second.

Below last season’s top 3 are the clubs living in the SPL’s harsh financial reality – piss all TV money (or the lucrative sponsors that come with it), small grounds, and no free-spending benefactor either. Hibernian are (nowadays) a well-run, financially responsible club, with arguably the SPL’s best manager and a production line of youth talent that defies their absolute lack of training facilities. Being well-run and financially responsible, they have decided that building a training ground is their number one priority for the next couple of years – a decision, incidentally, that was heavily influenced by the manager, Tony Mowbray. All very admirable, except it will do absolutely nothing to help them this season. The squad is undoubtedly weaker than last season and hanging on to 4th spot looks tough. Getting to the semi-final of any cup looks even tougher, let alone further. Their fans will be hoping that they consolidate the progress the club has made over the past couple of years, nothing more. Oh, except the hope that Hearts explode and go bankrupt.

Kilmarnock again exceeded expectations last season, given a player budget that makes Hibernian look rich, and they will benefit from a settled management team and player squad. Jim Jeffries knows how to organise the resources at his disposal, but while they managed to paper over the loss of Kris Boyd to Rangers in January, it’s hard to see them scoring as many goals this time around.

Aberdeen showed something of an aversion to scoring last season but still pushed into the top 6 with gritty, resolute displays (clichéd references to granite welcome here). Having Russell Anderson at the back helps keep the goals-against count down. Having Zander Diamond alongside him doesn’t. Great name though. Aberdeen, of course, still dream wistfully of the 1980s, when Alex Ferguson was their manager and the world was their oyster, and it must be nice to have fond memories like that when the present is so much more bleak. Like many clubs in Scotland, Aberdeen are up to their eyes in debt. Unlike many clubs in Scotland, they have proven in the past a willingness to take the fight to the Old Firm. Sadly, it won’t be this year.

Down in the bottom six, anything could happen, but they will probably be fighting it out amongst themselves. It’s hard to see any of these clubs getting up into the top half of the table.

Inverness Caledonian Thistle are derided as a plastic team by many in Scotland (as are Livingston), because they are a relatively recent amalgamation of two previous clubs, but could teach the more established names a thing or two about how to run a business. Their place in the SPL looks secure, and are probably the best bet to cause an upset or two (take note, Gordon Strachan). Motherwell have lost their long-serving manager Terry Butcher to the charms of a life down under, but his long-serving assistant Maurice Malpas has stepped into his shoes and is set to carry things on as they were.

Dundee Utd were woeful last season, continuing to spend their chairman’s money without a thing to show for it. Eddie Thompson has been so keen to burn his own cash at Tannadice he even got his own company to be the shirt sponsor, but the man must be at his wit’s end. He brought in yet another manager last season to try and stop the rot, and Craig Brewster will now have his first full campaign to try and show what he can do. Don’t hold your breath.

Down at the scary end of the table, Falkirk will be happy to avoid relegation, and probably will, while Dunfermline probably won’t. St Mirren, back in the top flight after storming Division 1 last season will probably have leapfrogged both of them come the end of the campaign.

Roll on July 28!