SCOTTISH clubs can be placed more or less into three categories; Celtic, the other full-time clubs, and the rest.
The bottom group incorporates the part-timers happy to serve their communities with aspirations of maybe one day making it into the third or second tier. The full-time clubs, including Rangers in their current guise, are more business-oriented, with aspirations of cup finals, higher league positions, possibly qualifying for Europe while growing and expanding their off-field projects. Towering over them all is Celtic, the ultimate big fish in a small pond.
Once part of an all-powerful duopoly, Rangers' demise has left Celtic out on their own to harvest league title after title, to enjoy the riches of European competition, to buy (and sell) players for millions of pounds, and to enjoy domestic supremacy like never before. Rangers could yet return to become an equal but, even pending today's regime change, that would seem to be some way away. For now, the scene is the equivalent of Celtic shooting repeatedly into an empty net.
The Celtic brand remains strong, a fact underlined by the announcement of a new five-year kit deal with New Balance described as the "biggest in Scottish history". How best to exploit it remains as befuddling to chief executive Peter Lawwell as trying to unpeel an orange while wearing boxing gloves. There have been various attempts to launch a pan-European league with clubs in a similar predicament - Ajax, Sporting Lisbon, Anderlecht et al - without anything coming to fruition, and more recently chatter about the revival of some kind of cross-border, Anglo-Scottish Cup. Lawwell speaks about this being a wider Scottish problem rather than merely Celtic but given his club is so far ahead of the rest in terms of stature, finance and ambition, it is difficult to see how any move would benefit anyone other than Celtic.
The recent £5.14bn television deal in England was a further reminder of how far behind Scotland lags when it comes to raising finance, the £15m a year from Sky and BT a pittance in comparison. Lawwell, though, will continue to look for solutions.
"We feel we have real potential," he said. "The fact is that we play in a country of five million and you have seen how media values have gone in other regions, of course you get frustrated. We feel if we were part of that then there would be no limits.
"We have a responsibility as a club and a board of directors to look at opportunities that would maximise our potential. So we never give up. And we are not alone. In Europe at the moment there are a lot of second-tier leagues suffering from the same problems.
"I think there's recognition at UEFA that the big countries are moving away - particularly England - and the rest are being left behind. They are looking for solutions.
'The most likely at the moment would probably be one of two options: A change in European access and structure, more clubs with more European games and less domestic. That's a popular idea throughout Europe. Secondly, maybe some form of British cross-border competition because it's absolutely clear that we cannot operate anywhere at the highest level playing in a country of five million people. So it has to be cross-border - whether that's more European matches or a British competition.
"We are still seen as a big European club; highly-professional, well-run and highly-regarded. We are at the table for any potential change which is good for us and good for Scotland as you've got a voice there who can hopefully look after everybody."
A revival of the proposals to launch some kind of North Atlantic European league would seem a non-starter, however, in Lawwell's eyes."That I would not subscribe to personally. Times change, circumstances change. And that presents different challenges for different clubs and different nations. If we all gave up then it would be irresponsible. We all have to take steps to optimise opportunities for Scottish football as well as Celtic. Eastern European countries and Scandinavian countries, they are suffering the same problems - small nations with small media values being outstripped by the bigger countries."
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