The Old Firm Are Out Of Europe? Good.

So, a shambolic night of Scottish European football has tempted me from my blogging hibernation. Rangers were unable to turn around a 2-1 defeat in Slovenia and lost out 3-2 on aggregate to NK Maribor. Celtic were defeated 3-1 in Sion, a Swiss valley town with a population of 23,000 - less than the likes of Motherwell, Inverness and Kilmarnock. Hearts managed to salvage some pride against Tottenham reserves after a 5-0 home defeat.
Where does this leave us? Well, exactly where we were before. Outwith the Old Firm, there will not be shock. There will not even be mild surprise. Anyone who believes that the SPL is any better than the Czech, Portugese or Swiss league is deluded. If you think that the Old Firm are major players on the European stage, you are wrong. Far from being potential members of any mooted "Super League" the Twisted Sisters are operating at the level of Sparta Prague and Dinamo Kiev. Yes, both Old Firm sides have reached Uefa cup finals in the last 10 years. But so have Middlesbrough, Braga and Deportivo Alaves. This is not the competition of 20 years ago, when the likes of Bayern Munich, Inter Milan and Juventus won it. Today, the big teams consider it beneath them.
The exit of the Old Firm should only serve as a reality check. A reality check for two teams who constantly buy up the cream of the talent of the smaller teams around them, then complain that the league isn't competitive enough. To add insult to injury, it seems that they only do this so that the other teams cannot have them, like a child hoarding all the toys. Anyone heard from Derek Riordan recently? How about Stephen Thompson? Willo Flood? No? Oh yes, they're all either back where they started, potential squandered on a lonely bench or, in the case of Derek Riordan, drinking Buckfast under a bridge in Penge (probably).*
So yes, the coefficient will fall. Will it hurt Scottish football? No. Will it hurt the Old Firm? Well, on the surface one would say yes. But do we really believe that the likes of NK Maribor and FC Sion have more resources than the Old Firm? Quite the opposite I'd imagine. If they're sensible, Rangers and Celtic will stop paying over the odds for average (hello Scott Brown) or past it (James Beattie. James? Where are you? I should stop being harsh to him, he's probably the only man in the world who could be physically injured by words) footballers and instead develop their own talent. Indeed, Gregg Wylde was one of the few decent performers for Rangers tonight.
So, to summarise :

• Scottish football is shite, and deserves to be ranked as such
• The results tonight will have absolutely no effect on the other 10 SPL clubs
• The Old Firm have gone for too long paying too much for too little.

Thanks for reading

*Apparently Derek Riordan is playing in China for a team called Shaanxi Chan-Ba. Derek Riordan and totalitarianism, sounds like a winning formula to me. Do they even have nightclubs in China? Actually, a Chinese night club is probably some means of population control. Okay, this is getting a bit racist. Peace out