Who said life was fair?

Published 28th Oct 2019

Six goals were shared by Celtic and Rangers on Sunday at Pittodrie and Ibrox respectively.

Six words summed up their day.

Rangers won ugly. Celtic won pretty.

It's not a beauty pageant. The only place where appearance is important is the league table.

And the league table is beginning to take on an ominous look.

Aberdeen were once thought of as the third force in Scottish football. Not any more. They trail the Old Firm by ten points after ten games and even Sir Alex Ferguson might find it hard to talk up his old club when he visits the Granite city to open Aberdeen's new training facility later this week.

The great man will make a speech but not give any interviews, so I am told.

This may be understandable since his views on the club's current lack of progress might be too combustible for consumption.

Sir Alex dominated Celtic and Rangers during his time as manager at Pittodrie and created a siege mentality that stood the club well. But that flame has long since been extinguished, and the worry is a lack of fire has become apparent at other so called major clubs.

The capital city of Edinburgh is now a centre of mediocrity.

Hibs and Hearts stand a mammoth seventeen points adrift of Celtic and Rangers, also rans more intent on avoiding relegation than harbouring any more loftier ambitions.

We have a proper title race involving Neil Lennon and Steven Gerrard and it might even turn into a goalscoring competition.

Celtic took four goals off Aberdeen in a scintillating first half at the weekend. They could, and should, have scored the same number after the interval.

Rangers have already taken five off Derek McInnes' side this season.

A thriving league championship is better for having surprise results along the way but the downside to this title race is the growing absence of the unpredictable.

Celtic's manager used a flurry of superlatives to describe his team's performance at Pittodrie.

"Outstanding. Magnificent. Brilliant. Red hot," he said without fear of contradiction at the end of a run of games were Celtic had scored ten league goals in two games either side of beating Lazio in the Europa League.

Gerrard described Rangers' narrow defeat of Motherwell in more prosaic terms.

"Not at our best, but we found a way to win," he said.

Both of them destroyed the apparent myth that recovery time is an issue when league matches follow European commitments.

Both of them look as if they are starting to lay waste to whoever comes in front of them.

This midweek could be a perfect case in point.

St. Mirren go to Celtic Park with the look of sacrificial lambs about them.

Rangers travel to Dingwall with a Highland clearance in mind.

It would be a seismic shock if either league title rival were to slip up. The object of the exercise would now appear to be who can score the highest number of goals because that could yet become a factor when the final sums are done at the end of the season.

Aberdeen's manager stated in his post-match interview that his team had "No personality" when Celtic started to take them apart. That's another, more delicate way of saying their bottle crashed in the line of fire.

It is an affliction that will affect more than Aberdeen before the season is over.

Sometimes when sides with an annual budget which is a vulgar fraction of what Celtic and Rangers possess play one or other of them there can be an upset, witness Livingston against Lennon's side.

But the gap between the haves and the have nots is beginning to look formidable.

Gerrard said Motherwell were the best side outside of Celtic to play at Ibrox this season. It's a nice compliment for the scrapbook, but it means nothing when you take no points from your day out.

Motherwell will now scrap with the rest for whatever they can get. Celtic and Rangers can now get on with their two horse race.

The league title is their business and nobody else's affair.

What's new, you might say.

The not so acceptable novelty is that the once major clubs like Aberdeen, Hearts and Hibs have started to disappear from view.

I attended the Hampden Hall of Fame dinner at the National Stadium on Sunday night. The inductees included Joe Harper, whose days at Aberdeen regularly featured putting Celtic and Rangers in their place.

Paul Sturrock, another inductee, was a member of the Dundee United side which pipped Celtic win the league title in the eighties.

Distant days. Distant memories.

The ground rules would now appear obvious. The rest don't count and it is how many goals Celtic and Rangers rack up against the cannon fodder that matters.

It's a shame, but who said life was fair.