Hugh Keevins: Yes minister!

Published 3rd Apr 2017

I know that in today's world everybody's a critic.

But I didn't think a government minister would get in on the act when it came to putting me in my place.

You know how it is. You're running ever so slightly late and quickly walk for the fifteen minutes it takes to get to your nearest railway station, only to discover when you get there that there are no trains until two o'clock in the afternoon.

This is not what you want to hear when it is half past ten in the morning and Superscoreboard starts at mid-day on the afternoon when Celtic can clinch the Premiership title.

But, ever the trouper, I tried to make light of my difficulty and tweeted the jocular message that the SNP Transport Minister, Humza Yousaf, had deliberately staged rail disruption in order to prevent me making it to the studio on time.

And what happened?

I turn my mobile phone on after the programme and the Minister has replied, "I would be the most popular Transport Minister in history if I kept Hugh Keevins off the radio."

There's gratitude for you.

But, to be fair, the man's probably got a point.

And the moral to the story is that I should have checked the timetable and then I would have discovered that essential engineering works were being carried out on Sunday morning.

If you fail to prepare then you can prepare to fail.

Not a phrase that will need to be framed and put up on the wall in the home team dressing room at Celtic Park.

Brendan Rogers has won the league title with eight games to spare and also declared that he can think of no other place he would rather be than in Glasgow with the club he manages.

Short of my new best friend, Humza, going to the First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, and suggesting there should be parliamentary legislation which prevents Celtic from winning the title again next season there is difficulty in seeing any other outcome from this distance.

Which means that a gauntlet has been thrown down, and it has landed at the feet of Pedro Caixinha and Dave King at Ibrox.

It is my personal contention that no other club outside of Celtic and Rangers will ever again win the league title in our major division. The financial structure of Scottish football, if nothing else, will ensure that is the case.

Celtic, by virtue of their performances on the park and their business acumen off it, have now reached six title wins in a row.

Logic would dictate that while the financial gap between Rangers and themselves remains as big as it is six will become seven and so on and so forth until the magical, and unprecedented, figure of ten in a row is reached.

The only way that argument could be contradicted is if Rangers invest in their team in a way that creates a more level playing field.

It is simply not enough to go to bed every night and dream that Arsenal, or somebody else, will lure Rogers away from Celtic Park so that the Rangers fans can stop having nightmares.

And it is not enough to cling to the hope that somebody will buy Kieran Tierney or Scott Sinclair or Stuart Armstrong or Moussa Dembele. Or all four at the same time.

Brendan Rogers is good for Scottish football. He raises the profile of our game and he makes Celtic attractive to watch.

He also has to be seen as the man who makes others want to raise their game. Aberdeen, Hearts and St. Johnstone can only go so far in that respect.

Only Rangers have the fan base and the potential to pose any kind of threat to their historic rivals.

But Celtic's continuing domination of the domestic scene, with its access to European riches in the Champions League, will ensure they go on making fortunes season upon season.

Now the extent of the challenge Rangers are able to mount to Celtic's supremacy has to be established.

The club still gets by on loans. Rangers are still paying up the price of Joe Garner's transfer from Preston North End. And their best player is still the thirty-seven year old Kenny Miller.

This is not the basis from which a challenge to Celtic's domestic domination will be built.

Pedro Caixinha must surely regret saying Rangers have the best squad of players in Scotland when he sees the quality of Celtic's win at Tynecastle on Sunday. Almost as much I regret the spur of the moment, ill-judged prediction that Rangers would win the league this season.

I plead guilty to mis-judgement and ask for many decades of previous howlers to be taken into account.

But my mistake won't cost me my job.

If Pedro knows as much about the game as his new employers hope he does then he will know that his statement made for effect on the day he was un-veiled as manager is arrant nonsense.

But we all make mistakes and the definition of success was once termed as going from one failure to the next with no loss of enthusiasm.

That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

There'll be more in-accurate forecasts to come, of that I have no doubt, but my pal Humza will need to become the most popular Transport Minister in history by getting the trains to run on time.

Because I'm staying where I am.