It’s just as well former Rangers chairman Alastair Johnston wears designer shirts and ties whenever he’s seen in public, it helps hide the brass neck he has. Seriously you could not mark that lot with a blowtorch.
First we get weeks of the null and void loyal foot soldiers peddling their sporting integrity nonsense in the mainstream press. This done without a hint of irony despite the letters EBT after their names.
Then when UEFA burst their bubble and let it be known calling league campaigns, without placings being decided would not be acceptable, we now get Alastair Johnson trying to undermine Celtic’s 9-in-a-row campaign by taking an alternative tack. It’s as see through as cellophane.
Speaking to The Times, Johnson feels the season ending and trophies being awarded on current placings would mean Celtic are not winning 9-in-a-row, instead it will be eight and a half. Yes really. Here’s what he had to say:
“I don’t want to be frivolous about it but a lot of Rangers fans have reached out to me and basically said: ‘Mr Johnston, if Celtic are designated as winners of the league, does it mean they have won eight-and-a-half in a row?’
“That’s not something you want, that asterisk.
“So, ideally, I can’t imagine that anyone really wants to have their efforts undermined or compromised or not appreciated.
“The ideal would be to get the season done but there is also the reality of the financial situation.
“Can you actually afford to run by June? You’ve got a lot of players who are out of contract at the end of June, what’s going to happen?
“The financial circumstances of the football clubs right now is also significant.
“Ideally from the clubs’ standpoint, we would like every effort made to finish the season. That’s going to be challenging.
“There’s still April, May June and potentially July before things get going again, but we’ve got to be realistic.
“We’ve got to work with reality and not inspiration, no question about that.”
Now it’s far from me to enter into what does and doesn’t equate to an asterisk being attached to title successes, Paul Larkin covered that in far more detail than I ever could. Here’s a wee reminder.
You see cheating your way to success is certainly grounds for an asterisk being placed beside your title. It’s actually grounds for them being stripped from the record but this is Scottish football so that was never likely to happen.
Just a heads up Mr Johnston, Celtic haven’t cheated, never have. Celtic have paid their way through tough times, taken our medicine, cut our cloth accordingly, paid every debt we’ve ever had and plugged on through. We are here today with our unbroken history and on the verge of nine consecutive titles, while your former club look back on a season of self-inflicted failure because we play by the rules. Even now when the season may well finish early we’re still following those rules.
The SPFL have a provision for a season being finished early. Their rule book states they decide when the season ends and how the titles are handed out. This is not Celtic making a smash and grab, this is something every club signed up to. It was a provision placed into the rulebook by the SPFL to protect clubs. Clubs like the one you support Alastair. Those who have overstretched and lived beyond their means. It stops TV contracts being null and void, it ensures prize money is handed out, it protects clubs from immediately going to the wall in the event of force majeure. If anything you should probably be thankful Scottish football authorities had the foresight to put such a clause in place, it may have just saved your club.
So as ‘the’ Rangers are protected then Celtic get a title. It’s really that simple. It’s not an asterisk league, there’s no provision in the rulebook to hand out half a league title. It’s all agreed and signed up to well in advance. Anything else, much like the EBT Null and Void loyal, is simply posturing to the rank and file support, playing to the gallery in the Ibrox stands in the hope such words deflect from the pig’s ear of a job the ‘Rangers’ board made of running a club and challenging for league titles.
When and not if this title is awarded to Celtic, it will be on the field of play or via the SPFL rulebook. No matter how much hot air and attempts to discredit Celtic’s achievement are given airtime or column inches will see that league title go down in history as anything other than a league won fair and square, 100% by the rules and entirely legitimately.
Alastair Johnson and his like can of course try spout prose to act as a comfort blanket to the bubbling Ibrox masses, but any failure to stop nine in a row is no-one’s responsibility other than those at ‘the’ Rangers who presided over another title collapse. The buck stops in that boardroom, nowhere else.
Dress it up as you like, try and discredit it if you wish, this will be the second 9-in-a-row success for Celtic in our long history. It’s as definite as the sun rising in the morning or paying your taxes.
Niall J
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