Five weeks into the new season, and the SPL takes a breather for 2 weeks while the focus switches to international football, specifically the start of the Euro 2008 qualifying campaign. By the time league business resumes, the transfer window will have closed. So the clubs are pulled in two contradictorary directions - on the one hand, they can relax a little and take stock (especially those players not on international duty), but on the other hand, the managers will be working frantically to try and strengthen their squads before Friday.
It's been an unusual start to the SPL season, feeling something like a prelude before the real business begins in September. The league might have started early but the transfer window is the same across Europe, and so Scotland's clubs have had to deal with the same restrictions as everyone else, and wait until late August until finalising their business. Take Falkirk, who have been looking for a striker all summer, and finally sign a loan deal for an Arsenal academy player - Anthony Stokes - on Tuesday. As such, each team has looked much like a work-in-progress these past 5 weeks.
Celtic finally signed Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink just before the weekend, leading to the predictable and desperate "biggest name in Scottish football" puns in the papers. Having got rid of the archetypal target man John Hartson in the summer, Gordon Strachan has signed an archetypal target man, for 10 times the price. Time will tell if that represents good business or not, but it was £3.4m well spent judging by his debut, when he came on for the final 30 minutes against Hibs and scored the winner.
It's not all happiness and joy in the East End of Glasgow, though. Target men have 2 uses - scoring goals, and teeing up chances for others. Stilian Petrov, the man Celtic have relied upon to convert so many of those chances over the years, seems certain to go, probably to Aston Villa to link up with Martin O'Neill again. He wasn't in the squad on saturday and Celtic looked a bit lost without him, and were lucky not to lose the match, let alone get all 3 points. Thomas Gravesen may yet replace him, but he's not the same kind of box-to-box player, and certainly doesn't score as often.
Rangers still look weak on paper, and manager Paul Le Guen seems intent on riling the only person scoring goals for them at the moment, which might be genius mind games, but might just be lunacy. Hearts have signed lots of players all at once, and they will probably be as curious as the rest of us to find out how they gel. They're not all Lithuanians, either, but it's a curious feature of Hearts transfer policy that they exist almost entirely in their own bubble. This summer they have loaned or released a few players to other Scottish clubs, but during Romanov's reign they haven't bought a single player from a rival.
As for the rest... well, they all want strikers, pretty much, and there's a fair bit of horse-trading going on between them.
Celtic 2-1 Hibs
Hearts 4-1 Inverness
Aberdeen 1-0 Dunfermline
St Mirren 1-3 Dundee Utd
Falkirk 0-1 Motherwell
Kilmarnock 2-2 Rangers
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
Meanwhile...
While the SPL and the SFL bickered with each other over who's going to look after the affairs of clubs like Dundee and Partick in the future, there was football to be played. Results suggest that the SPL is a truly competitive league these days, although the truth is that no club seems able to string together a decent run at the moment.
Hearts could have consolidated their early leadership of the table and shown a lacklustre Rangers who was boss, but they lost 2-0 away at Ibrox. Celtic should have capitalised on this, but were held 1-1 by ICT. Poor old Kenny Miller still hasn't broken his duck for the Hoops since signing from Wolves in the summer, and is visibly shrinking by the week. Meanwhile, Falkirk ended their good run with defeat against Kilmarnock.
The biggest win of the weekend was at Easter Road. Hibs have compensated for losing both their top scorers from last season by packing the team with attacking midfielders who flood forward at every opportunity. So far the goals had proved elusive, but on Saturday they tore into a poor Motherwell and put 3 past them. Their season's up and running then, but before they get too carried away, they were playing Motherwell. Maurice Malpas' side have started the season so poorly he must be tempted to phone up Niall Quinn and compare notes.
Inverness 1-1 Celtic
Hibs 3-1 Motherwell
Falkirk 1-2 Kilmarnock
St Mirren 1-1 Aberdeen
Dundee Utd 0-0 Dunfermline
Rangers 2-0 Hearts
Hearts could have consolidated their early leadership of the table and shown a lacklustre Rangers who was boss, but they lost 2-0 away at Ibrox. Celtic should have capitalised on this, but were held 1-1 by ICT. Poor old Kenny Miller still hasn't broken his duck for the Hoops since signing from Wolves in the summer, and is visibly shrinking by the week. Meanwhile, Falkirk ended their good run with defeat against Kilmarnock.
The biggest win of the weekend was at Easter Road. Hibs have compensated for losing both their top scorers from last season by packing the team with attacking midfielders who flood forward at every opportunity. So far the goals had proved elusive, but on Saturday they tore into a poor Motherwell and put 3 past them. Their season's up and running then, but before they get too carried away, they were playing Motherwell. Maurice Malpas' side have started the season so poorly he must be tempted to phone up Niall Quinn and compare notes.
Inverness 1-1 Celtic
Hibs 3-1 Motherwell
Falkirk 1-2 Kilmarnock
St Mirren 1-1 Aberdeen
Dundee Utd 0-0 Dunfermline
Rangers 2-0 Hearts
The SFL sits on its hands and grumbles
The Scottish Football League is not exactly a proactive organisation. It's the oldest football league in the world, and it acts like it wishes it was still 1890. Surprisingly, they do have a website, but it is clearly the website of an organisation that resents the invention of computers and wants to punish the people who use them - it's ugly, hard to navigate and out of date.
Rather than try and modernise, then, the SFL have their own way of dealing with today's fast-paced world: moan about it.
Take, for example, their reaction last week to the announcement that the Scottish Premier League, who broke away from the SFL in 1998, want to invite another 10 teams into the fold, to create an SPL2.
"I'm very disappointed. This has all been done very quickly", moaned the SFL president, John Smith. He went on to suggest that the proposal to create an SPL2 had been a complete surprise to his organisation. The SFL secretary, Peter Donald, didn't go that far (probably because trying to claim they were surprised by the announcement was ridiculous) but he, too, was shocked at just how quickly everything had happened. "Football is looking for instant solutions to financial challenges", he surmised.
Let's make it clear: last week's announcement was neither surprising, nor sudden. There have been proposals knocking around to create an SPL2 for at least 5 years. Many of the clubs in the second tier of Scottish football (currently SFL Division One) have been complaining that the current financial position is unsustainable for a lot longer than that. At the beginning of this summer, a few of them launched proposals for changing the structure of lower league football. And if none of that was enough to get the SFL off its arse, there is currently no league sponsor and the proposed TV deal with Setanta isn't finalised, meaning there is no money coming in.
The message isn't that hard to understand: SOMETHING NEEDS TO BE DONE.
There is a chance - just a chance - that the SFL might wake up soon and realise this, before they are cut out of the picture altogether. But don't hold your breath.
What we have at the moment is a proposal that meets the short term needs of those Division One clubs, and provides a little more income for the SPL, with some vague thoughts about what might happen to rest. Naked self-interest, then, but that's to be expected. Left to their own devices, clubs will always look out for themselves. What is needed is someone to rethink Scottish football at every level, and come up with a long term strategy. Anyone? anyone?
Rather than try and modernise, then, the SFL have their own way of dealing with today's fast-paced world: moan about it.
Take, for example, their reaction last week to the announcement that the Scottish Premier League, who broke away from the SFL in 1998, want to invite another 10 teams into the fold, to create an SPL2.
"I'm very disappointed. This has all been done very quickly", moaned the SFL president, John Smith. He went on to suggest that the proposal to create an SPL2 had been a complete surprise to his organisation. The SFL secretary, Peter Donald, didn't go that far (probably because trying to claim they were surprised by the announcement was ridiculous) but he, too, was shocked at just how quickly everything had happened. "Football is looking for instant solutions to financial challenges", he surmised.
Let's make it clear: last week's announcement was neither surprising, nor sudden. There have been proposals knocking around to create an SPL2 for at least 5 years. Many of the clubs in the second tier of Scottish football (currently SFL Division One) have been complaining that the current financial position is unsustainable for a lot longer than that. At the beginning of this summer, a few of them launched proposals for changing the structure of lower league football. And if none of that was enough to get the SFL off its arse, there is currently no league sponsor and the proposed TV deal with Setanta isn't finalised, meaning there is no money coming in.
The message isn't that hard to understand: SOMETHING NEEDS TO BE DONE.
There is a chance - just a chance - that the SFL might wake up soon and realise this, before they are cut out of the picture altogether. But don't hold your breath.
What we have at the moment is a proposal that meets the short term needs of those Division One clubs, and provides a little more income for the SPL, with some vague thoughts about what might happen to rest. Naked self-interest, then, but that's to be expected. Left to their own devices, clubs will always look out for themselves. What is needed is someone to rethink Scottish football at every level, and come up with a long term strategy. Anyone? anyone?
Monday, August 14, 2006
Stuttering and stumbling
It's still a bit soon to judge early season form, with only 3 games played in the SPL so far, and that will be a relief to most of the teams in the division. Because the truth is that only Falkirk and St Mirren can be completely happy with the way things have gone so far.
Of course the league table means nothing in August, but Falkirk are delighted to be up top with Hearts. They fully expect to be in the relegation dogfight again this season, so having 7 points on the board already is not to be sniffed at. Their gameplan is a pretty obvious one, but as Hearts discovered this weekend, not easy to beat - get control of the midfield, make it hard for the opponent to play. Arguably, Hearts would have won this encounter if some of their big players had been available, but they weren't and it's no excuse. The lack of cover for Hartley is obvious -without him, their midfield lacks imagination and guile, and how they needed some of that to overcome the draining effect of their mid-week defeat against AEK Athens.
That was a terrible result for the Jambos. Not only does it make qualification for the Champions League group stage look unlikely, the manner of the defeat - they took the lead but were undone by two late goals - could undermine their confidence. A 0-0 home draw with Falkirk was not what the doctor ordered.
St Mirren got beat by Celtic, and lost their 100% record, but they won't be disillusioned by that. As the new boys they needed to show that they could compete in this division, and they are well on the way to doing that already. Celtic had played their own midweek tie, against a team who play in blue and whose fans are fond of singing derogatory songs about the pope, but this was not an Old Firm match, but a lucrative friendly against Chelsea.
Yup, Celtic's pre-season has become so preposterous that they are still playing pre-season games 2 weeks after the season has started. It might be some form of obscure protest against not being allowed to join the English Premiership: instead of earning their money through Sky, they'll turn up to play anyone who'll pay them enough appearance money. This kind of whorish behaviour might appeal to the money men keen to wring every last penny from Celtic's Oirish Heritage, but it's also cheap and demeaning.
To be fair, Aberdeen squeezed in a meaningless midweek fixture, too, but managed to look less silly than Celtic because it was a) billed as a testimonial, not a "Clash of Champions", and therefore there was no pressure to get a result, and b) they invited Everton up to Pittodrie, rather than trying to squeeze an 800-mile round trip into their training regime. Somehow they beat Motherwell, Aberdeen demonstrating the knack of picking up points while being outplayed every week.
Elsewhere, draws were all that was on offer, with Rangers failing to put Dunfermline away and paying for it, Hibs still wondering who's going to score the goals, and Kilmarnock and Utd cancelling each other out.
Dunfermline 1-1 Rangers
Celtic 2-0 St Mirren
Kilmarnock 0-0 Dundee Utd
Hearts 0-0 Falkirk
ICT 0-0 Hibernian
Motherwell 0-2 Aberdeen
Of course the league table means nothing in August, but Falkirk are delighted to be up top with Hearts. They fully expect to be in the relegation dogfight again this season, so having 7 points on the board already is not to be sniffed at. Their gameplan is a pretty obvious one, but as Hearts discovered this weekend, not easy to beat - get control of the midfield, make it hard for the opponent to play. Arguably, Hearts would have won this encounter if some of their big players had been available, but they weren't and it's no excuse. The lack of cover for Hartley is obvious -without him, their midfield lacks imagination and guile, and how they needed some of that to overcome the draining effect of their mid-week defeat against AEK Athens.
That was a terrible result for the Jambos. Not only does it make qualification for the Champions League group stage look unlikely, the manner of the defeat - they took the lead but were undone by two late goals - could undermine their confidence. A 0-0 home draw with Falkirk was not what the doctor ordered.
St Mirren got beat by Celtic, and lost their 100% record, but they won't be disillusioned by that. As the new boys they needed to show that they could compete in this division, and they are well on the way to doing that already. Celtic had played their own midweek tie, against a team who play in blue and whose fans are fond of singing derogatory songs about the pope, but this was not an Old Firm match, but a lucrative friendly against Chelsea.
Yup, Celtic's pre-season has become so preposterous that they are still playing pre-season games 2 weeks after the season has started. It might be some form of obscure protest against not being allowed to join the English Premiership: instead of earning their money through Sky, they'll turn up to play anyone who'll pay them enough appearance money. This kind of whorish behaviour might appeal to the money men keen to wring every last penny from Celtic's Oirish Heritage, but it's also cheap and demeaning.
To be fair, Aberdeen squeezed in a meaningless midweek fixture, too, but managed to look less silly than Celtic because it was a) billed as a testimonial, not a "Clash of Champions", and therefore there was no pressure to get a result, and b) they invited Everton up to Pittodrie, rather than trying to squeeze an 800-mile round trip into their training regime. Somehow they beat Motherwell, Aberdeen demonstrating the knack of picking up points while being outplayed every week.
Elsewhere, draws were all that was on offer, with Rangers failing to put Dunfermline away and paying for it, Hibs still wondering who's going to score the goals, and Kilmarnock and Utd cancelling each other out.
Dunfermline 1-1 Rangers
Celtic 2-0 St Mirren
Kilmarnock 0-0 Dundee Utd
Hearts 0-0 Falkirk
ICT 0-0 Hibernian
Motherwell 0-2 Aberdeen
Sunday, August 06, 2006
The rise of the East
It may be the one truly global game, but football still needs local rivalries like Scotland needs chip shops. In an increasingly commercialised sport where the successful clubs and nations are being turned into franchises, such things are a source of comfort - they may not be healthy, but at least they're real.
Scotland has given the world one of its oldest and greatest football club divides - the eternal struggle between Celtic and Rangers. And yet in addition to these traditional enemies, clubs make new rivalries all the time that can prove just as intoxicating. Because they are based on recent events rather than historical ones, onlookers can watch the story unfold chapter by chapter, and wonder how big the conflict will get. If it keeps developing as it has done, Hearts v Celtic is going to resemble Hizbollah v the IDF.
(If you think that's tasteless, remember that the Celtic support adopted the Palestine cause last year, and turned up at Old Firm derbies with Palestinian flags. The Rangers fans responded by waving Israeli ones).
With Hearts v Celtic taking place on Sunday, Rangers had a chance to put some early pressure on both of them by winning their game on Saturday. As it was against Dundee Utd, at home, this should have been a formality, and yet they could only draw 2-2 after the Arabs, presumably baffled that they were still leading the game, decided to show Rangers how to finish off a move and put one in their own net.
Paul Le Guen seemed sanguine after the game, saying he was disappointed with the result but satisfied with the performance, and has been reminding everyone that Rangers are trying to put a new team together and it might take a few months before they gel, thus deflecting pressure away from the new players trying to adapt to life in the goldfish bowl. Damn, he is good.
And so to Tynecastle. The reasons for the hightened hostilities between these two clubs are not hard to fathom. Hearts are the newly-monied upstart, and as is their right have refused to show the established champions much in the way of respect. Add to this a bubbling undercurrent of fan animosity (the Edinburgh clubs don't go in for the sectarian nonsense of the Glaswegians, but Hearts have Protestant roots) and some spicy incidents between players on the pitch, and you have the recipe for war.
Rudi Skacel might have left Hearts, but the "spitting row" at Celtic last year still lingers in many people's memories and made him an easy bogey man. Neil Lennon, meanwhile, became a hate figure for the Jambos after allegedly inciting the fans at Tynecastle last season. Meanwhile, Hearts have held on to Paul Hartley, their outstanding player of last season, despite the fact that Celtic told them on several occasions that they wanted to buy him. This kind of backchat has been unheard of in Scotland recently, where the Old Firm have come to expect the other clubs just to do as they are told.
Hartley is still injured and is yet to start a game this season, but in the event Hearts didn't need him. The first half was all blood and thunder, with both Gordon Strachan and John McGlynn, the Hearts assistant, sent to the stands for shouting abuse at each other, but not much of a football match. Things improved as a spectacle in the 2nd half. The clubs exchanged goals, Celtic's a sweeping move finished sweetly by Petrov, before a dreadful mistake by Neil Lennon allowed Bednar to get his second and wrap up the points. How the home fans loved that - a winning goal created by their personal hate figure.
All in all, it's been a great week for Hearts. Through to the next stage of the Champions League, 3 new players (none played yesterday) and an important win over the new enemy. Vladimir Romanov seems harder to please, perversly criticising their midweek performance on Bosnia rather than celebrating a result that brings the lucrative CL Group Stages a step closer.
If their season continues like this, however, the Hearts supporters will forgive his little quirks. There is a new power rising in the East of Scotland, built on Eastern European money.
Hearts 2-1 Celtic
St Mirren 2-0 Motherwell
Falkirk 1-0 Dunfermline
Kilmarnock 2-1 Hibernian
Aberdeen 1-1 Inverness CT
Rangers 2-2 Dundee Utd
Scotland has given the world one of its oldest and greatest football club divides - the eternal struggle between Celtic and Rangers. And yet in addition to these traditional enemies, clubs make new rivalries all the time that can prove just as intoxicating. Because they are based on recent events rather than historical ones, onlookers can watch the story unfold chapter by chapter, and wonder how big the conflict will get. If it keeps developing as it has done, Hearts v Celtic is going to resemble Hizbollah v the IDF.
(If you think that's tasteless, remember that the Celtic support adopted the Palestine cause last year, and turned up at Old Firm derbies with Palestinian flags. The Rangers fans responded by waving Israeli ones).
With Hearts v Celtic taking place on Sunday, Rangers had a chance to put some early pressure on both of them by winning their game on Saturday. As it was against Dundee Utd, at home, this should have been a formality, and yet they could only draw 2-2 after the Arabs, presumably baffled that they were still leading the game, decided to show Rangers how to finish off a move and put one in their own net.
Paul Le Guen seemed sanguine after the game, saying he was disappointed with the result but satisfied with the performance, and has been reminding everyone that Rangers are trying to put a new team together and it might take a few months before they gel, thus deflecting pressure away from the new players trying to adapt to life in the goldfish bowl. Damn, he is good.
And so to Tynecastle. The reasons for the hightened hostilities between these two clubs are not hard to fathom. Hearts are the newly-monied upstart, and as is their right have refused to show the established champions much in the way of respect. Add to this a bubbling undercurrent of fan animosity (the Edinburgh clubs don't go in for the sectarian nonsense of the Glaswegians, but Hearts have Protestant roots) and some spicy incidents between players on the pitch, and you have the recipe for war.
Rudi Skacel might have left Hearts, but the "spitting row" at Celtic last year still lingers in many people's memories and made him an easy bogey man. Neil Lennon, meanwhile, became a hate figure for the Jambos after allegedly inciting the fans at Tynecastle last season. Meanwhile, Hearts have held on to Paul Hartley, their outstanding player of last season, despite the fact that Celtic told them on several occasions that they wanted to buy him. This kind of backchat has been unheard of in Scotland recently, where the Old Firm have come to expect the other clubs just to do as they are told.
Hartley is still injured and is yet to start a game this season, but in the event Hearts didn't need him. The first half was all blood and thunder, with both Gordon Strachan and John McGlynn, the Hearts assistant, sent to the stands for shouting abuse at each other, but not much of a football match. Things improved as a spectacle in the 2nd half. The clubs exchanged goals, Celtic's a sweeping move finished sweetly by Petrov, before a dreadful mistake by Neil Lennon allowed Bednar to get his second and wrap up the points. How the home fans loved that - a winning goal created by their personal hate figure.
All in all, it's been a great week for Hearts. Through to the next stage of the Champions League, 3 new players (none played yesterday) and an important win over the new enemy. Vladimir Romanov seems harder to please, perversly criticising their midweek performance on Bosnia rather than celebrating a result that brings the lucrative CL Group Stages a step closer.
If their season continues like this, however, the Hearts supporters will forgive his little quirks. There is a new power rising in the East of Scotland, built on Eastern European money.
Hearts 2-1 Celtic
St Mirren 2-0 Motherwell
Falkirk 1-0 Dunfermline
Kilmarnock 2-1 Hibernian
Aberdeen 1-1 Inverness CT
Rangers 2-2 Dundee Utd
Friday, August 04, 2006
SFL season preview
If the financial crunch has winded the SPL clubs over the past few years, that is nothing compared to its impact across the Scottish Football League. Frankly, there is no money in lower division football in Scotland, and the lack of a league sponsor (Bell's walked at the end of last season) makes a tough situation worse. At least Setanta has stepped in with a TV package after STV ended their coverage.
Livingston's first act after being relegated to Division 1 last season was to demand that the league be restructured, and a proposal was published soon after. There has been some variation on the idea of a SPL2 for years, but as yet nothing has come of it. Frankly, the critical state of the game is unlikely to be turned around by introducing a new play-off arrangement for promotion into the SPL. What Scottish football needs is for a long-term strategy - and investment - to turn bland aims such as "putting clubs at the heart of the community" into reality, and that surely is the responsibility of the Scottish Executive.
Scotland has a very poor public health record, football is a healthy activity, and schools don't have the sports facilities they should. One proposal often mooted is that all lower division clubs should instal artificial playing surfaces. It sounds horrible, but if it meant the grounds got used on a daily basis, giving schools and other youth teams somewhere to play, rental fees to the clubs, and got the local community involved again, maybe it's not such a bad idea. Football is a game played on grass, and should continue to be as far as possible (eh, Dunfermline?), but the Scottish climate is not ideally suited to maintaining perfect turf all year round.
Meanwhile, the SFL season kicks off on Saturday, and most pundits are expecting the Gretna fairytale to continue. By that, I think they mean that they'll be in the SPL this time next year, rather than UEFA Cup champions. Anyhow, full preview at the trusty ol' beeb: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/scot_div_1/default.stm
Livingston's first act after being relegated to Division 1 last season was to demand that the league be restructured, and a proposal was published soon after. There has been some variation on the idea of a SPL2 for years, but as yet nothing has come of it. Frankly, the critical state of the game is unlikely to be turned around by introducing a new play-off arrangement for promotion into the SPL. What Scottish football needs is for a long-term strategy - and investment - to turn bland aims such as "putting clubs at the heart of the community" into reality, and that surely is the responsibility of the Scottish Executive.
Scotland has a very poor public health record, football is a healthy activity, and schools don't have the sports facilities they should. One proposal often mooted is that all lower division clubs should instal artificial playing surfaces. It sounds horrible, but if it meant the grounds got used on a daily basis, giving schools and other youth teams somewhere to play, rental fees to the clubs, and got the local community involved again, maybe it's not such a bad idea. Football is a game played on grass, and should continue to be as far as possible (eh, Dunfermline?), but the Scottish climate is not ideally suited to maintaining perfect turf all year round.
Meanwhile, the SFL season kicks off on Saturday, and most pundits are expecting the Gretna fairytale to continue. By that, I think they mean that they'll be in the SPL this time next year, rather than UEFA Cup champions. Anyhow, full preview at the trusty ol' beeb: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/scot_div_1/default.stm
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