DOWN
HERE, in
God's Orange County of Ayrshire, where (allegedly) they still give you a picture
of King Billy, on his white horse at the Boyne, to hang above the
fireplace in your new cooncil hoose, life is good this morning.
In East Ayrshire, you allegedly got one of these with the keys to your council house
The
sun is shining, the bretheren, brown brogues polished to a mirror
finish, are stepping-out briskly to worship at their local
watering-hole. And if what the leiges term: “The Natural Order”
has not quite been re-established, the "tattie-munchers" were humbled
yesterday. They might still lead the SPFL table, but, only on goal
difference and the upstanding hordes of Ra Peepul are smiling again.
The dark days are behind them, and number 55 can be imagined, just
over the horizon.
But,
if I was them, or a member of the Celtic Family, I would be very
worried as 2018 prepares to cede the stage to 2019. Because, for all
their financial muscle and advantage, for all those questionable
refereeing divisions, which we are told: “level out over time,”
the Bigot Brothers are not running away from the field; season
2018-19 is not yet the usual one or two-horse race.
Kilmarnock,
now in the hands of a proper football club manager/coach are but one
point off the pace, Aberdeen, for all their inconsistencies, are
tucked-in a further two points behind Killie, with the even
more-wildly inconsistent Hearts not that far behind.
I
have of late become a fan of the American web site fivethirty-eight.
Now 538 takes a close statistical look at various sports and
political events around the globe. One of their best features is
their Global Soccer Club Rankings, a statistics-based system which ranks
over 600 clubs in leagues from the SPFL to the Australian, from the
Chinese to the Brazilian. It makes sobering reading for the Scottish
game.
The
data they use goes right back to the birth of league football in the
1880s, it is updated after every game, using their SPI (Soccer Power
Index). Right now, for instance, they rank Liverpool as the number
one club in the world, with an SPI of 92.9.
The
Top Ten in the Global Club Rankings are:
- Liverpool – 92.9
- Bayern Munich – 92.3
- Manchester City – 91.8
- Barcelona – 91.6
- PSG – 89.9
- Juventus – 89.5
- Ajax – 88.0
- Real Madrid – 87.6
- Chelsea – 85.6
- Atletico Madrid – 85.3
Where
you ask are our leading Scottish clubs? Ah! Not such happy reading.
The rankings of the 12 SPFL Premiership clubs, of the 628 world clubs
ranked are:
82. Celtic –
65.0
185.
Rangers - 52.2
292.
Aberdeen –
42.8
358.
Kilmarnock –
38.8
401.
Hibernian –
36.0
445.
Livingston –
32.6
455.
St Johnstone –
31.3
497.
Hearts –
26.8
559.
Motherwell –
21.6
600.
St Mirren –
14.8
609.
Dundee –
12.1
614.
Hamilton
Academical – 10.7.
These
are 538's figures, if we look at the UEFA Club Rankings, which take
into account European form, the story is not quite as-dismal. The
UEFA Club Rankings and Co-Efficients take into account each club's
performances in Europe over the past five seasons. At the moment
their top ten reads:
- Real Madrid – 144.0
- Bayern Munich – 127.0
- Barcelona - 127.0
- Atletico Madrid – 125.0
- Juventus – 120.0
- PSG – 101.0
- Manchester City – 99.0
- Seville – 99.0
- FC Porto – 90.0
- Arsenal – 86.0
The
UEFA rankings list no fewer than 450 clubs from the leagues in all 54
UEFA member associations, and the Scottish clubs' rankings are:
44. Celtic –
31.0
185.
Aberdeen – 5.5
205.
Rangers – 5.25
221.
Hibernian – 4.425
222.
St Johnstone – 4.425
223.
Hearts – 4.425
224.
Inverness CT – 4.425
225.
Motherwell – 4.425
These
are the only Scottish clubs mentioned in the rankings, since they are
the only ones to have tasted European competition in the past five
seasons.
What
can we learn from these figures? Not a lot to be honest, other than –
regardless of whether you try to assess Scottish football in global
or merely in European terms – we are shite. This may not be news to
the average punter in the stands, but, this information has yet to
breach the force field which exists around the sixth-floor corridor
of power inside Hampden, where they still have not realised how poor
we are, far less sought some new way of changing things to bring
about improvement.
Once
upon a time, when I was a young man – we actually fancied our
chances against the top European clubs. We could go toe-to-toe with
them and win. Today, while we are not yet at the stage of being a
guaranteed win against such clubs, where once, Scotland expected
against them, now: furrit tho' we cannae see, we guess and fear.
Back
then, our determination to win could offset our failings in the
technical department. The fact the average Scottish defender could
not trap a falling bag of cement was not such a handicap. He could
offset this by putting the fear of God into these mamby-pamby
sand-dancing furriners.
Today,
the continental player is every bit as tough as the home-bred Scots
while, since the Souness Revolution, we have tended to import
third-rate foreign players, rather than trusting our fate to
second-rate Scots.
I
live in hope, that, perhaps beginning in 2019, we will change tack,
start once again favouring ball skills and technical prowess over the
ability to run all day, trusting in home-grown youngsters, and,
maybe, just maybe – in world football terms, the lion rampant will
roar again.
And,
if we can clean up our spectating act, from some of the rubbish we
saw and heard yesterday at our two big city derby games – so-much
the better.
Hae
a Guid Ne'erday, when it comes. See you across in 2019.
