Serial complainers about Celtic’s success need to look at SFA, SPFL and club leadership, not Celtic

There is this consistent belief that Celtic are destroying the game in Scotland through their relentless success.

That it devalues the game to have one team winning everything, all the time.

Are Celtic victims of their own success?

Or are they victims of the mediocrity which surrounds them?

I would suggest the latter.

Celtic should not be pilloried for their success, in fact, Celtic should be looked upon as the template for success.

Unfortunately, we happen to inhabit a league in a country which lacks leadership, through both the SFA and the SPFL.

Add to that, that we have never been welcome in Scotland as a result of our history and our links to Ireland, and you have a level of ignorance and hatred that causes some to avoid seeing the bigger picture.

Celtic is supported by what is viewed as a minority.

Yet, it is the club with the largest support in Scotland.

The Ibrox club will claim they have the biggest support in Scotland, but we know better.

Celtic’s worldwide appeal is what makes it’s support base so large.

The Ibrox club’s insular world view is what prevents them from having a support as big as Celtic’s.

One thing is for sure, the Ibrox club are the one club nobody should be trying to emulate when it comes to running a successful football operation.

I don’t need to go into that.

But it’s high time the rest of Scottish football started realising that their clubs can be so much bigger and better than they are.

Scottish football suffers from two things:

Short-termism and narrow-mindedness.

A consistent belief that it’s always been this way, so it’s never going to change.

On the contrary, Scottish football has the ability to be so much bigger than it actually is.

But it needs someone to grab it by the horns and shake it out of the doldrums and into the belief that it can be better, do better.

Ian Maxwell is not going to do that.

Neither is Neil Doncaster.

Doncaster has been in situ since 2009, when he became Chief Executive of the SPL.

Following on from that, he became the Chief Executive when all 42 professional clubs in the country merged to become the SPFL.

He has now been at the top of the League system in Scotland for 14 years.

That is far too long for anybody to be in such a position.

We all decried the fact that Peter Lawwell was in his role at Celtic for far too long, before he resigned.

Fresh ideas do not come from a person remaining in a role like that for too long.

This is clearly evidenced by the dependency on betting agencies as League sponsors, and the sham that is Sky’s coverage of our game.

The fact that one of our cup competitions doesn’t even have a sponsor in this day and age is criminal.

Yet nobody questions this.

Mediocrity just seems to be accepted in our game and in our governance.

Or lack thereof, when it comes to a certain club.

The Cinch and Glenn’s disputes are prime examples of that.

The excuse that our League just isn’t big enough doesn’t wash.

If we had leadership from someone who thought big and therefore, could deliver big, then we could really see the potential our game has.

We have two of the biggest supported clubs in Europe playing in Scotland.

That’s a starting point, and it has to count for something.

Although I am loathe to say the Ibrox club deserves credit for this, we cannot argue about the size of their support base.

The political leanings of that support base is a conversation for another day.

However, we have four other clubs, which only a generation ago, were capable of challenging the Glasgow duopoly.

Yes, it’s nearly 40 years ago now, but there was a time when these clubs were winning leagues and challenging Celtic and Rangers 1872.

They were winning European finals and reaching European semi-finals.

Aberdeen, Dundee United, Hibernian and Hearts should be doing so much better than they are.

As Ange Postecoglu said, they should be aspirational.

But they’re not.

They have decent support bases and decent facilities.

Yet, for years now, they have accepted mediocrity.

They have all suffered from poor leadership and short-termism.

The turnover of management at these clubs over the last 3 to 4 years has been absurd.

While they have floundered, a provincial club like St. Johnstone has become the most successful club in Scotland outside the Glasgow sides.

That is a damning indictment of the bigger clubs in the Scottish game.

Despite this, Callum Davidson became another casualty on the sacked manager heap that grows higher and higher in Scotland.

It seems like short-termism is almost a contagious disease in the Scottish game.

Nobody is willing to give a manager the time to build something at a club.

At this moment in time, any manager in the Scottish top flight is 4 or 5 defeats away from the sack.

How is the game in this country ever going to grow if the leadership at these clubs cannot see beyond that?

What is even being done to mitigate against this?

Manager’s hands are tied because of the financial restrictions they face due to poor sponsorship deals, poor attendances and poor leadership.

Once again, last Sunday, we saw thousands of seats empty at Rugby Park, all while Celtic fans were crying out for tickets.

Thousands of empty seats translates into hundreds of thousands in lost revenue.

Clubs are locking out Celtic and Ibrox fans for no good reason other than to prove a point.

It’s a vicious cycle, they say they want to offer their fans the seats, yet their fans will not attend to fill them.

The fans won’t attend because the product on the park cannot produce when Celtic and the Ibrox side come to town.

They pretty much accept that these games are a lost cause.

So instead, they lose hundreds of thousands in revenue, which if they didn’t cut their noses off to spite their face, could be invested in the playing squad.

Thus strengthening said playing squad, and providing the manager with the ability to put up a sterner challenge to both ourselves and the Ibrox side.

They play each of us four times a season.

That would translate into 4 full houses throughout the course of the season.

They could also be drawn against us in the cups and have us visit their grounds then as well.

This is money in the bank, yet clubs throughout the top division are refusing to accept it.

In essence, stifling their clubs growth and withholding revenue that a manager could use to strengthen his squad.

Then through this handicap, if the manager doesn’t succeed, he gets the sack.

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results.

Does this, therefore, mean the Scottish game is insane?

When you see what the Ibrox club gets away with and add that into the mix, you begin to wonder.

So when or how does it change?

Forward thinking, long term thinking.

Aspiration, ambition and a break away from what is currently the status quo in Scottish football.

If you aspire to finish in third place, well, then you’ll finish in third place.

If you aspire to do better, then maybe you’ll do better, maybe you won’t, who knows?

Unless you actually try.

And nobody is trying right now.

Not the SPFL, not the SFA, not the clubs.

Nobody, except Celtic and another certain club, which is determined to put itself into an early grave.

And because Celtic aspire to be the best they can be, they are destroying the Scottish game?

When Ange Postecoglu was asked how he expected to perform in the Champions League last year, he replied, “We’re in it to win it, mate.”

Because what’s the point if you’re not?

That may have sounded like misplaced bravado, but is football not about winning?

Is it not about entering competitions with the ambition to win them?

Celtic enter all three domestic competitions in Scotland with the ambition to win them.

Why can’t Aberdeen do that?

What’s stopping them from doing that?

Why can’t Hearts?

The extent of Robbie Neilson’s ambition was to finish third.

See where that got him?

It doesn’t work.

Belief and the aspiration to do better does.

The Scottish game can do so much better than it does.

It just needs the right leadership.

The sooner that changes, the better for the game as a whole.

The question is, who will break the cycle that currently envelops the game in Scotland?

I can’t answer that.

But what I can tell you is this, one man is showing everybody how it should be done already.

Ange Postecoglu.

He may just be the one to instigate the change our game needs.

Sooner or later it has to come out of the slumber it’s in.

Otherwise it’s destined to remain the same.

As football’s Groundhog day.