Don’t expect another three-horse title race in Scotland this season… there’s NO chance Rangers and Celtic will be as poor again!
Nearly 11 weeks after Scottish football peered through the looking glass, the outlook for the new season feels familiar.
Tony Bloom’s track record with Union Saint-Gilloise and Brighton suggests that brighter days may well lie ahead for Hearts after a grim couple of months.
It seems highly unlikely, however, that a revival will extend to the Tynecastle side once again coming within three minutes of becoming champions.
The three-horse race which played out last season was fun while it lasted. This title seems destined to be the traditional two-way contest.
There was a twin dynamic at play as Derek McInnes’ men threatened to become the first side from outwith Glasgow to lift the championship in 41 years.
Firstly, Hearts were outstanding — a fact that’s unchanged despite them ultimately falling just short at the last.
Celtic stood firm to claim the league crown last season but it was anything but straightforward
Secondly, both Celtic and Rangers were poor. The Parkhead men had three different managers across four spells, sustained eight defeats and only accrued 82 points. Still they crossed the line first.
The Ibrox outfit began the season with Russell Martin in charge and concluded it with Danny Rohl at the helm. A third-place finish was not what the club’s new American owners had in mind.
A repeat of this scenario seems about as likely as snow falling in the Sahara.
Hearts have lost their manager in McInnes, their star midfielder in Cammy Devlin and their top striker and captain in Lawrence Shankland. All now earn their paycheques from Rangers.
Jamestown Analytics have served up a raft of replacements for McInnes’ replacement, Wouter Vrancken.
On the evidence of the six-goal aggregate hiding the new-look side suffered at the hands of Sturm Graz in the Champions League qualifiers, Hearts face a season of toil and transition.
They will do well to be hanging on to the coattails of the big two by the time the Belgian’s messages are being received and understood.
Derek McInnes and Lawrence Shankland will be hell bent on going one better this time around
Rangers, by contrast, appear ready to hit the ground running. The infusion of new faces extends to Ivor Pandur, Ross McCrorie, Ben Godfrey, Dan Neil, Vanja Dragojevic and Olwethu Makhanya. Others will follow.
The departures of James Tavernier and Jack Butland have seen experience go out the door, but they were also figures with mental scarring from too many disappointments.
McInnes’ track record in management with St Johnstone, Bristol City, Aberdeen, Kilmarnock and Hearts is one of getting the whole of a side to be greater than the sum of its parts.
The sixth manager to start in the Ibrox dug-out in as many years, he feels as close to a hand-in-glove fit for the post as you could get.
He’ll need no one to tell him that many Rangers sides down the years have lost their way in title races when it comes to the crunch. His task will be to instil the mental fortitude which was characteristic of the team he played for under Walter Smith in the 1990s.
Seemingly done for when they lost at Tannadice in April, Celtic’s muscle memory of what it takes to prevail was ultimately what saw them clinch a 14th title in 15 years in such dramatic fashion. But the sheer willpower of Martin O’Neill’s side in those defining matches did not mask the inadequacies in the squad across the course of the campaign.
The subsequent sale of Daizen Maeda to Ipswich sees the veteran Northern Irishman deprived of the player who did more than any other to drag the team over the line.
A glaring lack of firepower has been addressed by the signings of Camilo Duran and Kasper Hogh. The return after long-term injury of Cameron Carter-Vickers affords O’Neill the chance to work with arguably the best central defender in the division for the first time. A full pre-season for Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain might just prove telling.
Wouter Vrancken will need a fast start to shake off emerging doubts about his side’s chances
Yet, Celtic still look light on guile and creativity. They lack cover in key positions. Unless this is addressed in short order, they’ll be vulnerable. And, this time, Rangers appear better placed to capitalise.
If we aren’t to witness another three-horse race, which side — if not Hearts — might at least make the Glasgow giants fret for a while?
Motherwell were magnificent under Jens Berthel Askou last season to the point where they were in the title conversation until March.
The Dane has since moved to Toulouse while star midfielders Elliot Watt and Elijah Just are now with Samsunspor and Swansea, respectively.
New manager Alfred Johansson has cast the net wide to secure replacements including Martin Moorman, Willy Vogt and, intriguingly, the talented but unpredictable Alex Lowry, on loan from Wycombe.
On the evidence of the first leg display against Faroese side HB, last term’s great entertainers can at least trouble the top six again.
While Hibernian also secured European football last season, a fifth placed-finish was underwhelming, particularly in light of what Hearts were threatening to achieve. With the experience of Jason Kerr now in the building, David Gray will need to deliver more.
The same applies to Aberdeen. The Dons have finished outwith the top-six in three of the last five seasons.
In his first transfer window, Stephen Robinson has sought to tackle this with a substantial reboot of the squad.
Stephen Robinson will have high hopes for Aberdeen after overseeing a major summer rebuild
Among 11 new arrivals are former Kilmarnock duo Lewis Mayo and Brad Lyons, Livingston midfielder Lewis Smith and Tony Yogane, the Brentford man who was at Dundee last year. The fervent hope among the Red Army is that it will be better. It will certainly be different.
Inconsistency also dogged Dundee United last term and deprived them of a tilt at Europe. Jim Goodwin has acquired Dylan Tait from Falkirk, Michael Forbes from West Ham and a trio of A-League players to improve matters.
Having lost Calvin Miller to Hearts and Barney Stewart to West Brom, John McGlynn will do well to guide Falkirk to another top-six finish. Much rests on the shoulders of new signing Deniss Melniks.
Dundee defied expectations to finish eighth in their first year under Steven Pressley. Now with the trust of the Dee faithful, the manager has brought in five players, including Idris Odutayo and Ryan Finnigan, to offset the lucrative sales of Billy Koumetio and Luke Graham and Cam Congreve’s return to Swansea.
Having turned to Neil McCann in January, Kilmarnock ultimately survived. If they are to prosper, they will have to do so with the services of Findlay Curtis, who’s now returned to Rangers. Bailey Rice, who’s followed suit in a loan move, has the capacity to be a similar success.
Despite requiring a win over Partick Thistle in the play-offs to stay afloat, St Mirren have stood by Craig McLeish. A talented youth coach, it will be incumbent on him to deliver the results which largely eluded him if he’s to retain the support of the fanbase as he seeks to promote more home-grown talents.
Simo Valakari is hugely popular in Perth but his side have already suffered a League Cup exit
Even though his St Johnstone side were eliminated from the League Cup at the group stage, Simo Valakari remains the most popular man in Perth on the back of an emphatic Championship triumph last season.
But the Finn could really do with finding a replacement for 19-goal Josh McPake, now with Hearts, before the campaign gets underway when Killie visit on Sunday. As things stand, they could struggle.
And so, at Tannadice tomorrow, it all begins again. Some 228 games across 10 months.
We hope to witness some quality to sustain us through the winter. We are guaranteed to encounter controversy along the way. There shall also be tears, triumphs and tribulations. Strap yourself in and enjoy the ride.
