No escape down south for the Old Firm

The grass is always greener on the other side, the neighbours got a new car that you wanna drive, and when time is running out you wanna stay alive

The lyrics to the Travis song Side might well have been on the mind of troubled Rangers owner Craig Whyte last week, as he stated his intent to find a way to get the club into the English Premier League. It's almost become a tradition up here; every four or five years one or both members of The Gruesome Twosome voice their agitation on missing out on the big bucks available over the other side of Hadrian's Wall, and malign their status as big fish stuck in a pond which is shrinking so quickly that it might now, technically, be a puddle.

Following this comes various rentaquote former players and two-bit pundits turning up in the papers or on Sky Sports News to give their yay or nay opinions...and then after a few weeks the idea transpires to be as much a non-starter as a Hermann Goering appeal against the Nuremburg Trial verdict.

Yet Rangers and Celtic keep coming back pleading to the English top flight, like a geeky bespectacled IT worker on his hands and knees, trying to beg Scarlett Johansson to give him a pity date. You can hardly blame them; they have been left behind to the point that even finishing last in the EPL is worth as much TV and prize money as winning the SPL. But here is why there is no chance of this happening, not for a generation...

THERE'S NOT ENOUGH QUALITY
How times have changed. Rangers in particular took massive advantage of the post-Heysel situation, attracting numerous English internationals north with the lure of European football. Remember the names - Chris Woods, Terry Butcher, Gary Stevens, Graham Roberts, Trevor Francis, Ray Wilkins, Mark Walters, Trevor Steven, Nigel Spackman, Mark Hateley. Oh, and Terry Hurlock, surely the dirtiest player I've ever seen, not so much a Pitbull as a rabid Alsatian.

It's roughly the equivalent of David James, Jamie Carragher, Gareth Barry and Peter Crouch playing north of the border. Hard to imagine now, eh? Yet in 1992-93, the Gers got to within a whisker of a Champions League final, beating English champions Leeds United home and away on the way. Even as late as the end of the last century, with Celtic buoyed by the arrival of Henrik Larsson, there was a case for claiming that both sides were capable of competing at the top of the Premiership.

How time changes.

Below is, in my opinion, the best 11 players from an all-Old Firm team.



How many of these guys, would you say, are good enough to play in the English Premier League? Even with some generosity, I'd say you would only need the fingers of one hand to count them.

Things have deteriorated to the point that, during the summer, Crystal Palace midfielder Neil Danns turned down a move to Ibrox, with the prospects of Champions League football and winning trophies, to sign for another Championship side, Leicester City. Frankly, Rangers and Celtic are now Championship-standard sides, and quite possibly would struggle initially to get out of that dog-eat-dog league. They are a long way from where they would need to be to become an established top division side, and that gap just increases with every passing year.

THE FANS ARE A TURN OFF
Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I suspect if one was to ask an English football fan what one word first came to mind when thinking of Old Firm supporters, the answer would be "Manchester."

True, Celtic fans have built up a good reputation with their adventures in Europe, but I can't help feeling that this goodwill has been cancelled out by their rivals and their constant run-ins with UEFA. To be honest, the green-and-white half of Glasgow are hardly the occupiers of the moral high ground, and I'd be interested to see how well songs about the IRA might go down in places such as Birmingham, London and Brighton, or any other places which were bombed during those awful times.

The bottom line is that there is just too much baggage, and too much potential for trouble.

WHY WOULD THE PREMIER LEAGUE WANT THEM?
How exactly would any club down south actually gain from having Rangers and Celtic in their league system? Really?

I can't think of any particular reason at all.

The clubs who start every season with at least a bit of concern about being relegated from the top flight - your Boltons and Fulhams - will find their status even more threatened. Thoughts of self-preservation would surely win out here.

Meanwhile, whilst the Manchester clubs and Chelsea are probably out of reach, I would think the rest would fear that, with their fanbases and potential income from their crowds, that sooner or later Rangers and Celtic might be able to establish themselves and even challenge for European places...thus taking away income from these other clubs.

Do the Old Firm actually bring anything positive to the table? They might have bigger grounds and bigger attendances than the Norwichs of this world, but I'm not sure that it's possible for the English Premier League to make more money than it already does from TV deals and the like; I don't think that having the Glasgow clubs on board makes the income pie any bigger, but just means there are two more teams fighting for slices of that pie.

NO CHANCE
It probably is in the interests of Rangers and Celtic to leave Scottish football if they want to increase their incomes. There might even be a case that Scottish football could benefit from their departure (but that's an argument for another day). But when the English Premier League clubs turn around and say "What's in it for us?", the answer at the moment is just "errrr...." And that's not going to win any argument.

L.