Reliance on computers to control fixtures card serves clubs poorly

Published on Friday 20 March 2009 21:11

BEFORE yesterday's draw for the Champions League quarter-finals, the unfathomable "brains" at Uefa provided evidence that the old apocalyptic prediction that computers would eventually be doing man's thinking for him may already have come to pass.

This concerns the appeal by Liverpool not to have to play the second leg of their last-eight tie on the night of Wednesday, 15 April, the 20th anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster and a poignant date for the Anfield club and its supporters.

Michel Platini, the Uefa president, could not offer Liverpool a guarantee that their wish would be granted. He did assure them, however, that their request would be "fed into Uefa's computer" and that it would be "extremely unlikely" that they would be obliged to perform on the emotionally-charged date.

With only four home-and-away ties to schedule, is a computer really necessary to sort out an order of play? Is it beyond the administrators' faculty for reasoning simply to decree that Liverpool will play their second leg on the night of Tuesday, the 14th?

This latest example of bewildering bureaucracy is, in fact, reminiscent of the muddle into which the Scottish Premier League plunged themselves nine years ago, when the original ten clubs who defected from the Scottish Football League were legally bound to increase their number to 12 and implemented the dreaded "split" after 33 matches.

After a maximum of 30 seconds with a pen and paper, it became clear to this observer that, unless the top six in the league could be predicted with certainty, the five fixtures after the split would guarantee an imbalance of one kind or another. Either some clubs would play more matches at home than away (or vice versa) or certain teams would have to face certain opponents three times away and only once at home, or vice versa.

On querying this potentially inflammable anomaly with the then SPL chief executive, Roger Mitchell, I was assured that it would not happen. "We have two teams working with computers to ensure there will be no imbalance," said Mitchell. Of course, it has transpired, because it was as inevitable as the changing of the seasons.

The masterminds at the SPL, however, have simply been lucky over the years that the disparity has not had a telling impact on the outcome of the championship. The season before last, for example, Rangers had to make three visits to Hibernian, dropping two points in the last of them. This was an irrelevance, as Celtic already had the title won, 13 points ahead with four matches remaining.

The worst, however, could yet happen, perhaps even this season, with the Old Firm so close together at the top. In that event, we could be discussing a computer-generated "fault" capable of causing an eruption.

League failure will have notable financial consequences

FAILURE by either Celtic or Rangers to capture the Premier League championship because of a perceived injustice such as an extra away fixture would be especially damaging this year and into the foreseeable future. Because of changes to the qualifying process in the Champions League, reaching the group phase of Europe's premier tournament will be immeasurably more difficult.

For the runners-up in the SPL, a third qualifying round will have to be faced, in which they could meet the third team in the Russian League (Dinamo Moscow) or the runners-up in Portugal, Holland, Ukraine, Greece, Turkey, the Czech Republic, Belgium or Romania. If that hurdle is cleared, their next group of potential opponents will include the fourth teams from England, Spain and Italy and the third-placed in Germany and France in the play-offs for five Champions League places.

In the short term – that is, for a year or even two at the outside – missing out on the most lucrative competition would not be intolerably hurtful to Celtic. For Rangers, though, another year or two away from the banqueting table could be irreparably damaging.

The difference in the respective economic strength and weakness of the two clubs could be seen in their recent half-yearly financial returns. Apart from a pronounced advantage in turnover for Celtic, the Parkhead club's debt of less than 1million is, in business terms, effectively no debt at all. Rangers' 25m worth of liabilities, on the other hand, will cost them around 2m annually simply to service the interest.

Already an appreciable distance behind their great rivals, then, Rangers could be left with an irretrievable deficit should Celtic go on to extend their present run of three successive titles to four or five. Perverse as it seems, though, hope could spring from the declining standards and rewards of the Scottish game itself.

As demonstrated during the January transfer window, Celtic have been unable to exploit their greater financial power as tellingly as they would like. As the manager, Gordon Strachan, and the chief executive, Peter Lawwell, have stressed often enough, it is becoming ever more difficult to attract players of the quality required to dominate at home and compete creditably in Europe. Where the majority of supporters are concerned, Lawwell's and Strachan's comments tend to fall on deaf ears, regarded as mere excuses for parsimony. More often than not, the "failure" to secure the services of players of genuine international class is rooted not so much in an unwillingness to spend as the reluctance of the latter to have anything to do with the Scottish game.

Whatever reputation they may have enjoyed in the past, foreign players at the Old Firm are there for a reason, and it owes nothing to a deep desire to wear the green and white or the royal blue shirts. It is primarily because, on being advertised by their agents in richer and more fulfilling leagues, there have been no takers.