As is the norm, the SPFL season kicked off before England’s, and already there have been shockwaves. There are few places where fortunes can see-saw so dramatically in the space of a few weeks as they can in Scotland, not even casino online LV BET can offer this drama. We could be in for a real rollercoaster campaign north of the border.
When you’re talking about Scottish football you’re invariably talking about two clubs; Celtic and Rangers. In a tight campaign, both of them are going great guns and beating most other teams week in week out. But it’s been a decade or more since there was a campaign like that one. For most of the last ten years, the story has been all about Celtic’s dominance.
And then, last season, fortune flipped and the story was about Rangers.
There hasn’t been a close title race in the top flight of Scotland for a long while, and looking at the press reports during the close season there was near unanimity about how it would all shake out.
Everyone believed Rangers would win the title. The first reason for that was their winning margin last season; more than 20 points. On top of that, Celtic had endured a torrid and often chaotic summer. Many, including a lot of Celtic sites, labelled it a complete shambles.
Nobody was changing their prediction after the opening weekend; indeed, opinions hardened around the idea that it would be blowout. Rangers won comfortably and Celtic, still trying to bed in new players under a new manager, Ange Postecoglou, lost 2-1 at Hearts.
But nowhere else in football can things turn so dramatically in the course of just a few weeks.
Rangers lost at Tannadice on the second match-day and Celtic responded the following day by soundly thrashing Dundee 6-0.
The result was only part of the story; a scintillating performance, capped by a hat-trick from their new striker, the Japanese Kyogo Furuhashi (pictured), instantly changed the view that Celtic were a side on the slide.
Wins over Jablonec in the Europa League and a midweek revenge victory over Hearts in the Premier Sports League Cup have added to the impression that the Parkhead club may be the side to watch.
The contrast across the city couldn’t be greater; aside from losing to Dundee Utd, they then conspired to lose to Malmo in the Champions League home and away.
The second of those games has raised the most questions; Malmo were a goal down at half time with ten men and still managed to win the match and go through to the next round.
No-one, now, is talking about a title blow-out. Suddenly Celtic look better than people imagined, and the Ibrox club has weaknesses few had considered. Celtic’s style of football is vastly different from what it was last season, and they look capable of pushing their rivals all the way. For the first time in a while, a real title race looks like a possibility.
For the first time in a while, there are obvious threats from elsewhere too.
Although nobody expects the top two spots to be occupied by other than the Glasgow clubs there are sides in the league capable of putting together promising runs and doing real damage to the big two when they meet. Dundee Utd and Hearts – teams few thought about in the context of that – have already taken beaten them … Hibs, Aberdeen and St Johnstone are certainly more than capable of posing a threat on their day.
St Johnstone shocked Scottish football by winning the cup double last season, an astonishing accomplishment which bizarrely wasn’t enough to see Callum Davidson, their manager, honoured with one of the annual awards.
They have had a shaky start, drawing their first two league games, but they represent a real danger on their day and should be comfortably in a European spot when it all ends.
At the top of the table, with two wins out of two so far, you’ll find both Hibs and Aberdeen (and Hearts also) on six points. The Edinburgh club is on a steady road of improvement under their high-rated boss Jack Ross, who’s already a manager of the year winner north of the border for his exploits at St Mirren. He believes in attractive attacking football.
At Aberdeen, their new manager Stephen Glass has rung the changes and brought in a number of new players, the most notable being former Celtic captain Scott Brown. With his leadership on the pitch and Glass’s intelligence in the dugout, they will be a different prospect to the side which meandered through last season in such a disastrous fashion that they finished fourth with only 15 wins in 38 games. They are already well on the way to bettering that.
Much will depend on their new signings settle in, and at Hibs it’s all going to come down to whether or not they keep their best footballers, like young player of the year winner Josh Doig at left back and their international striker Kevin Nisbett, both being tracked by Celtic and a host of clubs in England.
At the bottom end of the table, Livingston have started badly with two losses out of two, but they were in the top six last season and are certain to improve. Ross County have started as they finished last season, as a bottom six team who will have to fight for every point. Dundee, thrashed at Parkhead, have one point out of six so far and look like relegation battlers all the way.
But the focus, as always, will be at the top of the table … where things can change in the blink of an eye. The game to watch comes towards the end of the month, when Ange Postecoglou takes his new charges to Ibrox for the first blood and thunder encounter of the season … the winners of that game won’t be guaranteed to secure the prize but they can deliver a massive psychological blow which, even this early, can be a critical factor in deciding the destination of the title.
Everything is to play for in Scotland this season. It’s going to be interesting to say the least.