Every year, by tradition, at least one of our clubs makes a prat of themselves in Europe.
This season was St. Johnstone's turn, as they became the first Scottish team to be knocked out in the First Qualifying Round of the Europa League since such a round was brought into existence. Losing on away goals to Alashkert - fourth in last season's eight team Armenian Premier League - was an embarrassment whichever way you look at it.
It has also led to the annual bout soul-searching and wailing about our lousy UEFA co-efficient, which forces Celtic to play three ties to make it to the Champions League, and makes two of our three Europa League entrants start their season at a time when professional footballers were all previously entitled to still be behaving like Jack Grealish.
Even before the second leg of the Perth Saints' tie, there was some touchiness on the subject; Celtic assistant manager John Collins made the "we're being held back by other Scottish clubs"-type comment that now seems to be spat out every July by someone in the club's management team. (It's amazing how Collins and Deila defended Scottish football's quality when Celtic weren't exactly running away with the league). St. Johnstone manager Tommy Wright's pre-game rant suggesting that Celtic were as much to blame as anyone else for the coefficient was, in hindsight, spectacularly ill-timed.
But was Wright right? Whose fault is this?
It's not actually that hard a question to answer, when you look at how the coefficient is calculated. (I'll do my best to keep this simple!). Each season's total is an average of the number of points won by each Scottish side who played in Europe; last season, Celtic scored 10.5, Aberdeen 3.5, St. Johnstone 1.5 and Motherwell 0.5. That's a total of 16, which when divided by 4, gives a total for 2014/15 of 4.0 points. The coefficient is the combination of the previous five seasons' totals.
Clubs do not gain points from winning over two legs, but from the results of the individual legs. This means that, so far this season, St. Johnstone have gained as many coefficient points from a loss and a win versus Alashkert as Aberdeen have from two draws against Albanians Shkendija. Those slagging St. Johnstone would do well to note that, if the Dons lose both legs to Rijeka of Croatia, both clubs will have made an equal (and almost negligible) coefficient contribution in 2015/16.
The target is for Scotland to be ranked fifteenth or higher in Europe; currently, we are twenty-third. Being fifteenth not only would allow Celtic to start their campaign a round later, but would give us a second team in the Champions League qualifiers. Being ranked twelfth would give the Scottish champions an automatic place in the group stages, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.
The coefficient of Romania, currently fifteenth, is 26.299, or an average of 5.26 points per season. In contrast, ours is 17.900, or an average of 3.58 per season.
As you can probably guess, Celtic have been recently contributing more to the coefficient than everyone else put together, which is where the 'held back' argument comes from.
But the other clubs would argue that it is rather easier for Celtic to amass points.
What would be considered a good European campaign? For a diddy team (that is, anyone but Celtic), I'd say that Aberdeen's run last season, where they beat Groningen of Holland before losing to Real Sociedad, was rather impressive. And yet they compiled just 3.5 points, and were still a tie away from making the group stages of the Europa League.
Celtic scored 10.5 points last season, after dropping from the Champions League into the Europa League and reaching the last 32 of the latter competition. In 2013/14, when they finished bottom of their Champions League group, they scored 10.5 points as well. That's because there is a four point bonus for qualifying for the Champions League group stages. In 2012/13, they scored 20 points; that's because they got a further set of bonus points for making the last 16 of the Champions League.
If all the 'diddy teams' we have in Europe emulated Aberdeen's 2014/15 campaign, Celtic would need to score 10.5 points, the same as the last two seasons, in order to hit that average of 5.26 points. Is it realistic for the likes of Aberdeen and Inverness to score 3.5 points each season? Unlikely, I'd say; Caley Thistle would need to beat Romanians Astra and then somebody else a hell of a lot better in the next round just to get close to that figure. This season, the Dons would need to play two further ties - and probably win both of them - to get there.
That would require Celtic to chip in to a greater extent, but if they get to the Champions League group stages, they will have picked up somewhere between 7 and 10 points already...with six more matches to play. That is, I reckon, a whole lot more realistic.
The last time that Scotland has met that magic target of 5.26 points? 2007/08, when Rangers made it to the UEFA Cup final. That was a long, long time ago.
So the crappy coefficient is everyone's fault. But only Celtic currently have the power to sufficiently improve it.
Clear as mud?
Lawrie Spence (LS) has ranted and spouted his ill-informed opinions on Narey's Toepoker since September 2007. He has a life outside this blog. Honestly.
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