A Tainted Title?

Rangers are in crisis. Liquidation looks inevitable. Redundancies are being made, with 2 players released today and more to follow no doubt. Celtic could have the League Championship title wrapped up as early as the 25th of March at Ibrox.

With all this going on, the party line for the media and hun support seems to be:

"The title is tainted! It was only won because of Rangers going into administration!"

Now, it doesn't take a genius to see why this is clearly not the case. The Bhoys have won this title fair and square. Unfortunately, the Rangers support seem determined to cling onto whatever they can to attempt to devalue our title win. So I thought I'd put together this little blog post just to clearly explain precisely how our title will NOT be devalued.

5th November 2011: Celtic are 15 points behind Rangers, all be it with 2 games in hand. After a poor run of games which has seen draws with Hibs and Kilmarnock and defeats to Hearts and Rangers, it seems almost inevitable that Rangers will stretch their lead further and go on to claim 4 in a row.

29th December 2011: Celtic beat Rangers 1-0 at Celtic park, seeing us go 2 points clear at the top of the SPL having won our previous 9 games in a row.

21st January 2012: Rangers draw 1-1 at home to Aberdeen, thus seeing them slip 4 points behind Celtic in the title race.

14th February 2012: Rangers enter administration and are deducted 10 points. Celtic now lead the title race by 14 points.

Now, last weekend (Saturday 4th March 2012), Celtic drew 1-1 with Aberdeen. This result signalled an end of a 17 game SPL winning run and a 20 game domestic winning run. We are still unbeaten domestically since the 2-0 defeat at Hearts back in October.

Given these facts, how can anyone possibly say that Celtic do not deserve this title win? Yes, it would be closer if Rangers had not gone into administration. But even then, we would still be 11 points clear of Rangers. You could argue that administration had an effect on Rangers morale, despite them playing poorly ever since November. Let's assume that this is a valid argument. This still has no bearing on Celtic's results, so even if Rangers were able to win all their games since entering administration, Celtic would still be 2 points clear and in with a good chance of winning the league.

It looks likely that Celtic will wrap up the league at Ibrox on March 25th, or at the very least win that game. Would we have won there if Rangers hadn't gone into administration and lost players? Maybe not. But there's a good chance that we would have, given how Rangers have been playing for the past few months. 

Rangers going into administration has had no bearing on the fate of the SPL title. All it has meant is Celtic wrapping it up 4 games earlier. We are undefeated domestically since October. Since November we have won 20, drawn 1, lost 0. That is title winning form, and Rangers administration has had no bearing on that. In fact, we could DONATE 10 points to Rangers and STILL be ahead in the title race. If we were less than 10 points clear, you could argue that we won't have won it on merit. But we are.

Oh, and yes, this season may well be remembered as the season where Rangers went into administration, rather than the season where Celtic won the title. But last season could well be remembered as the season when Neil Lennon was sent bombs and bullets just because of his religion. Could this have had a bearing on the destination of the title? Who knows. I've never had to do my job under police protection, knowing that my life is at risk. But I can't imagine that it makes the job any easier. But nevertheless, Rangers will cling to that title win for all it's worth, and rubbish claims that they won it because their fans attempted to kill our manager. They'll cherish that title win for ever. It'll be their last.