Oliver Birch 
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Richard Keys has become the latest pundit to voice their opinion on whether teams who are currently top of their domestic division should be awarded the league title if the season finishes now.
Writing on his personal blog, Keys suggested the likes of Liverpool, Celtic and Barcelona shouldn’t be crowned as champions if the campaign ended as things currently stand in their domestic leagues.
Should Celtic be ‘given’ a title they haven’t won? Of course they shouldn’t and as manager of Rangers Steven Gerrard should be making that very point. Or is he more concerned about Liverpool? It makes you wonder doesn’t it?
No. Liverpool can not be handed a title they haven’t won. Nor can Celtic. Nor can Barcelona or Juventus. It’s tough – if like my team you’ve worked hard all season to put yourself in a position to achieve something – but it’s only fair on the majority.
I’m sorry Liverpool – if you take a title you haven’t won it will forever be tainted. It will always be the ‘title you didn’t win’. And the same goes for Celtic – Barca Juve.
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This topic really is an intriguing one, but I’ve got to disagree with Keys here, as all of Celtic’s hard work across this season would have gone to waste if the SFA listened to Keys and stopped the Hoops winning 2019/20 Premiership crown.
The likes of Liverpool and Celtic have been the best teams in the Premier League and the Premiership respectively this season, with the pair having huge gaps to second place in each league.
Therefore denying them the glory of winning the league as a result of that would be incredibly harsh.
I can understand the other side of the argument, where the gap between teams at the top and at the bottom is significantly smaller (such is the case in Italy and Spain), but ultimately the same logic applies.
At this stage of the season, teams are where they are because of how they’ve performed throughout the campaign.
While nobody could have foreseen such a scenario occurring across the world, and on paper there are still fixtures to be played, it looks increasingly unlikely that those games will be able to be completed.
Therefore a decision will have to be made with regards to what the fairest way to end the season is.
And in my view, teams deserve to be rewarded or indeed punished with relegation based on how they have played this season.
Celtic have been the best team in the Premiership this campaign and the league table represents that at the moment, so if the season cannot be completed they would deserve to be champions.
And the same goes for teams in relegation places.
Otherwise clubs who are in trouble would just get a ‘get out of jail free’ card essentially, and have an opportunity to go again next season, in place of a team in a lower league who arguably should’ve taken their spot in the division.
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