OBSERVERS of Scottish football seem to have been moved by an ever-deepening sense of despair to conclude that the current season is responsible for the most abysmal standards in living memory. The cyclical nature of the game, however, suggests that this is unlikely, while personal recall and a check of the records appear to confirm that the tortuous present is nothing other than 1997-98 revisited.
Then, as now, two consistently unimpressive Old Firm teams staggered towards the finishing line of the league championship, Celtic finally reaching it two points ahead on the last day, with Hearts only a further five points adrift in third. As if to
underline the general impoverishment, Kilmarnock were fourth and St Johnstone fifth, with Hibernian relegated.
It was a measure of the unreliability of the top two that Celtic should draw 0-0 with Hibs in Glasgow in their third-last match and that Rangers – by then the new favourites for the title – should follow a week later by losing the penultimate match of the campaign at home to Kilmarnock.
This was the final season of the old, ten-team Premier Division and, like the present one, it started badly and fell away. Rangers failed even to qualify for the Champions League, suckered 3-0 by IFK Gothenburg in Sweden before drawing 1-1 in the home leg of their preliminary round tie. In the Cup-Winners' Cup, Kilmarnock were eliminated in the first round by the French second division side, Nice, on a 4-2 aggregate.
Dundee United capitulated at the same stage of the Uefa Cup, beaten by Trabzonspor of Turkey. Celtic may have been unfortunate in drawing Liverpool, but they, too, failed to negotiate the first hurdle of the tournament.
What distinguishes 97-98 from now is that the failings seemed to be more shocking, due largely to David Murray's pre-season proclamation of the glories that awaited Rangers. The Ibrox chairman rather presumptuously asserted that Walter Smith had done his shopping early, he had spent £18 million (the actual figure was £12m), he had all the players he wanted and Rangers now had a squad not just ready to make a credible challenge in the Champions League, but one capable of winning it by 2000.
Smith had certainly been busy that year, adding Lorenzo Amoruso, Rino Gattuso, Marco Negri, Antti Niemi, Sergio Porrini, Jonatan Johansson, Seb Rozental, Stale Stensaas, Jonas Thern and Tony Vidmar to a squad that already included Paul Gascoigne, Brian Laudrup, Andy Goram and Ally McCoist.
By the end of October, the Champions League humiliation had been followed by the failure to get past even the last eight of the League Cup (beaten by Dundee United, the pot ending up at Parkhead), Rangers were trailing Celtic in the league, and Smith's sacking (although not described as such at the time) had been announced at the club's annual meeting. On 16 May, the previously dominant Ibrox side's barren season was confirmed by Hearts' victory in the Scottish Cup final. Not even a domestic trophy had been won, far less Europe's premier tournament.
Even if there are spooky parallels to be found in the past, however, it does not make the pain of the present any more bearable.
The full article contains 555 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
