Why fans are allowed to have not missed the Old Firm derby

“Over the past few years some people have said they haven’t missed the Old Firm game. Frankly they’ve been lying through their teeth!”

Those were the words spoken by David Tanner at the half time whistle on Sky Sports’ coverage of Sunday’s Old Firm game.

And my heart sank.

Then later on that day I was driving in my car listening to a fans’ phone-in on Sportsound – something that’s been conveniently resurrected now that there’s an Old Firm tie to talk about – and heard a jubilant panel discussing how brilliant it was to see the tie back and how this must destroy any hopes of a 16 team league because we ‘need’ four of those fixtures per season.

And my heart sank further.

The bad old days of Scottish football have returned.

Now before you jump to any conclusions and think that this will be a negative, bitter article from a non-Old Firm fan about Rangers and Celtic, it’s not. Rangers have earned their return to the top flight, Sunday’s game certainly was a dramatic spectacle and the fans of both clubs are entitled to be happy about the return of the fixture in exactly the same way as I was happy at the return of the Dundee Derby.

My problem isn’t with the Old Firm or their fans.

It’s about the way they – and by extension the other clubs in Scotland – are portrayed by sections of the media.

Let’s take Tanner’s comment for a start.

Here’s a man who is the lead presenter for Scottish Football on Sky. A man whose job it is to promote Scottish Football as a whole, and not just Rangers and Celtic.

And he’s coming away with a line like that?

Where do I even begin? And that’s a serious question by the way because I’m honestly struggling.

Well I could take a more moralistic tone and suggest he goes around the various police stations and A&E departments in Glasgow and its surrounding areas and ask – based on its legacy – if they are happy it’s back, but I won’t.

Instead, I’ll just ask one simple question.

As a fan of a different club, why would I be lying?

The answer to this question – that I honestly don’t care about teams that aren’t my own – is one that so many Scottish football pundits fail to grasp.

But why would I care? I’m a customer of Dundee United, not Rangers or Celtic or even ‘Scottish Football’, so they are the team relevant to me. They are the team who I am emotionally tied to, just like an Aberdeen fan only cares about Aberdeen and an Annan Athletic fan cares about Annan.

The same thing is true of title races; if my team is not involved then I don’t care. It makes no difference to me if it’s a one or two horse race if my horse isn’t in it.

Why can’t people grasp that? Why do they think that we must care and that if we say we don’t, we’re lying?

Because the people who do say it are probably fans of Rangers or Celtic themselves – even though they are seemingly not allowed to admit it – and they just can’t understand our thinking.

And that’s Scottish Football’s biggest problem; that most of the people in charge of setting the agenda are influenced by their own personal feelings towards a club.

That’s not me claiming something sinister is going on, it’s just human nature.

But they need to stop letting their own emotions get in the way of doing what they are paid to do.

In some respects, I understand it; the team at the Daily Record for example are entitled to act as if the Old Firm is the centre of the universe because that’s what sells their papers. I get that; that’s fine.

But it’s unbecoming of a guy paid to present Scottish Football on Sky or for people hired by a public broadcaster like the BBC to essentially say “Thank God the Old Firm is back together; this is all that matters”.

What matters in Scottish football is the paying customer; the punter who goes through the gate at 3pm on a Saturday afternoon. They are the ones who are putting money in to the game and the ones who clubs need to survive.

But they aren’t being listened to.

So many people want change but if the guys on Sportsound are to be believed the desires of the fans who actually go to games should take a back seat to a group of hypothetical armchair fans whose only desire is to see Rangers and Celtic play against each other four times a season.

Like I say, it’s a return to the bad old days and a status quo where only two teams matter.

But I’ll leave you with two points to consider.

The first is that some people in Scottish Football will tell you we need the Old Firm together for a title race. In the last 13 years of top division football involving both Rangers and Celtic, seven of those seasons saw one of the teams win the league by 12 points or more. How is that a title race but this season – where Aberdeen are only 8 points behind with 5 games to play – is not?

The other point is this…

Right now the biggest story in world football is Leicester City and their march to the top of the English Premiership. In a footballing world that has lost almost all sense of freshness and unpredictability, this has garnered interest because it’s something different. If the English Premiership had a league where teams played each other four times, would they be in the position they are in now? Highly unlikely.

The main reason the paying customers of Scottish clubs – and I should point out that the combined average attendances of the other 20 clubs in the top two divisions actually exceeds that of the Old Firm, even though it doesn’t seem to count for anything when it comes to decision making – want something different is because they believe that playing more teams twice might add a bit of unpredictability to events and see a team outside of Glasgow’s giants pick up the title.

But if Sunday’s output is anything to go by, that isn’t important to those whose job it is to promote the game.

After all, the main thing is that Rangers and Celtic play each other as often as possible, and if we don’t agree with that, we’re lying through our teeth.

Written by Stuart Milne