We wuz robbed!

When you wake up, as I did at the beginning of last week, with a savage hangover, a pounding headache and a nauseous stomach, then having to look at colour spreads of banjo-boy Barry Ferguson and his equally unsightly Rangers team-mates drooling and dribbling all over the SPL trophy is probably not what the doctor ordered.

HOW????? How did this happen? It is accepted that the format of a league championship is the best and most stringent way of sorting out the question of who is the strongest team in a division. How, then, can we square this with what has happened in Scotland this season? Has there ever been such a situation where the championship has clearly been won by the wrong team?

Rangers have just claimed the league by a margin of one goal. They did this by repeatedly and efficiently hammering the pub sides that make up 10/12ths of the SPL (they dropped just nine points out of a possible 102 in those games).

In their games against Celtic, meanwhile, they won one, drew one and lost two. The real story, however, lies in the details of how those games went.

The draw, 3-3 at Celtic Park in October, should have been a home win by at least three goals. Celtic battered them from start to finish, and Rangers got a point only because Rab Douglas threw their first goal into his own net and spilled an easy ball for the third. The Rangers win, 3-2 at Ibrox in December, should have been a draw. The other two games were won handily and convincingly by Celtic.

In the face of all that evidence, if Rangers are a better side than Celtic – actually, if Rangers are as good as Celtic – I’m Johnny Adair.

Here’s a little test. How many Rangers players would get into the Celtic team? Two – Stefan Klos and Barry Ferguson. Okay, maybe Ronald de Boer on a good day. That’s it, though. Lorenzo Amoruso ahead of Bobo Balde? Peter Lovenkrands ahead of Alan Thompson? Mikel Arteta ahead of Stilian Petrov? Don’t make me laugh.

You’ve probably arrived at the conclusion that I am a very embittered Celtic fan. Fair cop. I am. I’m bitter about this one because footballing justice simply has not been done. I was not bitter when Rangers brushed Celtic aside in the Hugh Dallas game in May 1999 to take the title, nor was I bitter when they leathered the almighty shit out of us the following season. Those campaigns were clearly ones where the stronger and better team prevailed. This year’s is not.

Let’s pass over Chris Sutton’s misguided but understandable post-match comments that Dunfermline lay down and sold the jerseys at Ibrox, and instead analyse the ways in which Rangers managed to amass their six goals. The first, scored by Michael Mols, was a scuffed ground shot that trickled over the line at a speed somewhat less than 100mph. The fourth, a header by Ronald de Boer, saw the Dunfermline keeper Derek Stillie extend out his right arm in the same way you or I would hail an oncoming taxi, in what has to be the most pathetic attempt at a save witnessed in some time.

The sixth was a penalty, awarded after Neil McCann had tried to take the ball around Stillie and promptly tripped over his own feet. (It was reportedly the 13th spot-kick Rangers have received this season. Celtic have had six in all competitions, of which three were missed, including Alan Thompson’s atrocity at Rugby Park yesterday.)

I didn’t see the fifth, scored by Steven Thompson, which is probably just as well, given that the match reports suggested that it made Mols’ effort look like a candidate for Goal of the Season.

For the sake of my own sanity, however, I am prepared to believe that Dunfermline can be excused on grounds of their own inherent incompetence, and that they were not party to any sinister backroom arrangements. Which merely goes to prove the sheer lunacy of settling a league like the SPL, where either of the big two is perfectly capable of winning by six or seven on any given weekend, on goal difference.

The fact is that winning the title by one goal is too fine a margin. It cannot be taken seriously, no more than Rangers’ hollow claims to be the best side in Scotland. They have won this particular battle, but they’ve been losing the war for some time now. And next season will prove it.

And while Foul Play is in his current bilious mood, he would like to personally thank the playing staffs of Milan and Juventus for serving up such a wonderful treat at Old Trafford on Wednesday night. Thanks, lads. You now owe me two and a half hours of my life.