Stuart Bathgate: League format always rewards worthy winners

He could have bemoaned the loss of ten points when Craig Whyte took Rangers into administration, and he might have claimed, with some justification, that his team would have picked up more points in the ensuing weeks but for the demoralisation that caused.

Instead, the Rangers manager simply said that Celtic would be worthy champions, and that, 99 times out of 100, the team which won the league deserved to do so.

It was a magnanimous response, but also a genuine one born of decades of experience. Every club is victim to the odd upset from time to time, but whereas such events can be costly in the cup, they rarely if ever prove decisive in the league, which awards consistency above all.

Last season, for example, Celtic probably had a better squad than Rangers, when assessed man by man. And at their best, Neil Lennon’s team reached a higher level of performance than Rangers at their optimum were able to attain. But Celtic were more flawed, too, and that was what cost them in the run-in.

Similarly, four years ago Rangers seemed set to become champions, until their run to the Uefa Cup final exacerbated a fixtures backlog which caught up with them. Supporters on both sides will still argue about how those fixtures were rearranged, but the fact remains: Celtic took more points, and so became champions.

At first glance, a more compelling argument that the league has not always been won by the most deserving team comes in the case of two failures by Hearts to take the title: in 1965 and 1986. In the first instance, the Edinburgh club lost out on goal average to Kilmarnock, who beat them at Tynecastle on the final day. Twenty-one years later, they lost at Dundee, and so Celtic took the title – on goal difference, the rules having been changed in the interim.

If goal difference had been used in 1965, Hearts would have been champions, so to modern eyes it may seem unfair that they were deprived of the title only because it was decided on an arcane mathematical model which no-one uses any longer. But goal average was the rule then, and both Hearts and Kilmarnock knew that when they met in that last match of the season. If goal difference had been decisive, who knows how that head-to-head – or indeed every other match that season – would have turned out.

In other words, it is perilous to start applying the rules of the present day to seasons past, even when indulged in as a hypothetical exercise. When such speculation leads to suggestion that the league record books be rewritten, you might even say that it endangers the integrity of the competition.

So let us have no caveats about Celtic’s title just because Rangers would have picked up more points but for administration. And, while we’re at it, let’s refrain from looking back to the early years of this century and suggesting that some of the titles won by Rangers then should not really count because some of their players were the recipients of Employee Benefit Trusts.

“Financial doping” is the phrase which has been used in some quarters to describe what happened then, the implication being that Rangers had the kind of monetary advantage in football which track-and-field athletes get by taking banned substances. In other words, an unfair advantage; and, in the cases of such athletes, an illegal one.

We could argue all night about what is fair and unfair in football. Many people who support clubs outwith the Old Firm, for example, think it a bit rich when Celtic fans complain about Rangers having an unfair advantage, monetary or otherwise. To the rest of us, both Glasgow clubs are in a privileged position, so far ahead of their would-be competitors that it matters not whether one has a few million more than the other.

But, while the point about fairness is a moot one, the imputation of illegality just does not hold up. The rules of the game are clear on that.

Until Uefa’s Financial Fair Play rules take effect, any club with the money is able to spend as much as it wants, and even risk its very existence on its bid to buy success. Provided it stays out of administration until the championship is over and the title is won, there is no points penalty. That’s the rule now, and when Rangers triumphed in 2000, 2003 and 2005 as well as the last three years. There may be one year in 100 when a team are not worthy champions, but none of those years fits the bill.