A friend and I were reminiscing about the good old days the other evening and discussing how old we were when we first got into football. For me, it was the 1990/91 season, as Scotland embarked on their successful Euro 92 qualifying campaign and Aberdeen failed to get the point they needed at Ibrox on the final day to win the title (to this day, an Aberdeen-supporting mate practically spits on the ground at the mention of Michael Watt).
That was more than 33 years ago and in that time no-one else has come as close to breaking the duopoly. And it's as hard ever to see when someone will. CELTIC and RANGERS will come first and second again this season, and the question is in which order.
The answer, of course, is that Celtic will be ahead. They were far from infallible last season but were still far stronger both in quality on the pitch and in mentality than their rivals. They've managed to replace retiring keeper Joe Hart with a useful stopgap in Kasper Schmeichel and otherwise have kept the band together. They should be domestic champions again, and they will be woefully out of their depth in the Champions League groups again. Winning twelve of the last thirteen titles sounds good; winning only two Champions League group games in a decade rather less so. But that nice balance between domestic dominance and not bothering about bettering oneself is what keeps Celtic in fat profit and their shareholders in decent dividends, and that's all that matters.
Around the turn of the year Rangers fans delighted in how, under Philippe Clement, the team looked so much better coached than under Michael Beale or even Gio Van Bronckhorst and Steven Gerrard. There's not nearly as much optimism now after they won only four of their last ten league games and the Scottish Cup final to boot. There doesn't seem to be a huge amount of money to spend (maybe you shouldn't have blown £15m on three strikers last summer, lads?) and with Borna Barisic, Connor Goldson and John Lundstram all leaving and James Tavernier 33 in a few months this feels like a team in transition. Having Danilo back up front will help, but it's hard to see how they will replace Abdallah Sima who returned to Brighton.
The next three teams in the table should be, in no particular order, ABERDEEN, HEARTS and HIBERNIAN simply because their financial strength is miles ahead of the rest (and light years adrift of the big two, mind). But of course Aberdeen and Hibs have been an absolute shambles for most of the last few years - in Aberdeen's case despite some big money player sales which really should have been reinvested better in the squad. The prospect of life after Bojan Miovski for the Dons is a sobering one, with a lot of money having already been spent on Ester Sokler, Pape Habib Gueye and now Peter Ambrose to step into the North Macedonian's shoes when he finally gets his big money move in the next few weeks. A lot is riding on the pedigree of new manager Jimmy Thelin, who comes with a strong reputation from Sweden and some high expectations too of high tempo, high pressing football. Those expectations will be hard to satisfy early doors, you feel. I like the signing of keeper Dimitar Mitov. I like less the £300,000 spunked on a 33 year old Norwegian midfielder who used to play for Thelin a few years back.
Hibs' latest cunning plan is to give David Gray the reins, in the hope that because he's a decent bloke who knows the club (and who is probably cheap too) he'll somehow be better than what came before. It worked with Steven Naismith at Hearts, but less so with Barry Robson at Aberdeen. So far they've sensibly focused on strengthening the defence with a new keeper in Josef Bursik and central defenders Warren O'Hora and Marvin Ekpiteta. If they stick with the midfield and attack they've got, that means a lot of pressure on Dylan Vente to score goals now he's finally being played as an out-and-out striker, and on Martin Boyle to show that last year was a blip rather than a sign he's beginning to slow down.
In contrast, Hearts have been a model club for the last little while, recruiting sensibly and getting the results on the pitch. Losing Alex Cochrane (albeit for a big fee) was a blow and means James Penrice has to hit the ground running at left wing-back but otherwise they look good both in terms of starting XI quality and depth. It'll help if Lawrence Shankland scores another 25 goals, and it'll help even more if someone like new signing Musa Drammeh can also be a goal threat. They should be able to better weather early season fixture congestion from their European games and are clear favourites to be best of the rest...though significantly closing that seventeen point gap to the big two still seems unlikely.
And then you have the other seven, who could potentially finish as high as third if the trio mentioned earlier underachieve again, or who could end up in a relegation scrap, or somewhere in between. Promoted DUNDEE UNITED have given Jim Goodwin enough resources to build a team that shouldn't go back down; they've held on to loan keeper Jack Walton, managed to attract wing-back Ryan Strain from St. Mirren and gone to the Balkans and Eastern Europe for signings too.
I'm a little nervous about KILMARNOCK and ST. MIRREN simply because playing in Europe in July and August seems to often coincide with a slow start domestically. Killie shouldn't be any weaker than last year as they've signed Robby McCrorie to play in goal and kept Stuart Findlay and Corrie Ndaba but it's not a huge squad and they need Dan Armstrong and Matty Kennedy to be as good as last year if they are to remain a top six side. St. Mirren lost some good players - Zech Hemming, Kwon, Keanu Baccus, Ryan Strain - but are always creative in the transfer market. They've done well to get Shaun Rooney, while Roland Idowu has started really well in midfield. You'd expect them to still be hard to beat.
DUNDEE were the other top six finishers but the downside of having so many good loan players is that you have to replace all of them (except keeper Jon McCracken) the next season. In general their strategy of spending on the squad instead of the pitch has worked well for them and they were able to find the funds to bring Simon Murray back to Tayside to lead the attack. Once Joe Shaughnessy is fit again they should be okay at the back, even though it'll be hard for Ziyad Larkeche to replace the departed Owen Beck. Will there be more loans incoming?
MOTHERWELL have been busier than anyone, with twelve new signings so far. They've spent some of the Theo Bair windfall on Australian striker Apostolos Stametelopoulos, but he or ex-Dundee loanee Zach Robinson will have to score a lot of goals to make up for losing the Canadian. Liam Kelly left too, so West Ham's Krisztian Hegyi joins on loan to play in goal, while Kofi Balmer and Liam Gordon boost the defence. Plenty of eyes will be on the development of talented teenager Lennon Miller in midfield.
ROSS COUNTY would have had a much less stressful season had they not dallied with Derek Adams for a couple of nightmare months. Don Cowie seems a far more sensible and stable appointment and gets his chance to put his stamp on the team. He has an entire backbone to replace with Jack Baldwin, Yan Dhanda and Simon Murray having left, with Akil Wright, Noah Chilvers and Ronan Hale (who has looked impressive so far) their respective replacements. After two consecutive relegation playoff appearances they will be hoping to move up in the world.
ST. JOHNSTONE only finished above County on goal difference in the end and the jury remains out on whether Craig Levein is anything more than a dinosaur whose tactics make any fan's eyes bleed. Captain Liam Gordon, star goalkeeper Dimitar Mitov and Daniel Phillips, their best midfielder, have all gone. Loan centre-backs Kyle Cameron and Lewis Neilson should be good signings but it's a big step up for new goalie Josh Rae and new striker Uche Ikpeazu will miss the start of the season with injury. This looks like another slog of a campaign.
So here's my predicted table:
1. CELTIC
2. RANGERS
3. HEARTS
4. ABERDEEN
5. HIBERNIAN
6. ST. MIRREN
7. MOTHERWELL
8. KILMARNOCK
9. DUNDEE UNITED
10. DUNDEE
11. ROSS COUNTY
12. ST. JOHNSTONE
tl;dr - Celtic ahead of Rangers, if Hearts/Hibs/Aberdeen aren't in the top five it's a disgrace, pick the other seven in whatever order you want except for maybe St Johnstone.
Lawrie Spence has whinged about Scottish football on Narey's Toepoker since September 2007. He has a life outside this blog. Honestly.
