The march to ten : Rating the titles.
As Celtic look set to storm on to six in a row, we look back at the previous five league winning campaigns and rate them out of five, aptly enough. Whilst we’re happy with any title win, the enjoyment factor is hugely important and a thread on Twitter where a few decent minded Tims were commenting on the previous seasons good and bad points inspired this tepid wee article, so read on.
1 in a row – 2011-2012. ****/*****
It was going to take a lot to eclipse the drama of 2010-2011, but Neil Lennon’s second season was up there in the patter stakes with the aforementioned campaigns SNP summits, nailbombs and ref strike fracas. After getting off to a disastrous start, we clawed back a fifteen point gap to go top beating Rangers before new year and never looked back. A decent showing in the Europa League promised hope for the future as well as standout performances from players who never hit their top form in Lennon’s first season as manager, such as Fraser Forster, Joe Ledley and Charlie Mulgrew. There was a real bond between players and the fans and the momentum between November-February was incredible. In the end, despite a treble seeming to be a tap in, we would have to make do with just the title, as Hearts and Kilmarnock KO’d us in the cups. It’s strange that this can be considered a really good season when you remember we also fucked it at Ibrox when Lennon played the most obviously wrong eleven to take on an administration-hit Rangers to clinch us the title and lost 3-2, but the scenes at Kilmarnock a couple of weeks later when we did finalise it were tremendous.
Patter high point : Toss up between Cha Du Ri pishing himself scoring an OG in Rennes or Lennon’s ‘I think it’s personal myself’ rant on Twitter after the semi final.
2 in a row – 2012/2013 - ***/*****
Following on from the decent outing in the Europa League campaign of 11/12, Celtic reached the Champions League group stages for the first time since 2008 and it would be the saving grace for what was a very odd transition season for the club. Okay so we’re not going to be banging on about Rangers on here, but their demotion to the third division definitely affected the club in 12/13. There were no other teams to keep us on our toes, there was no pressure and despite slipping up countless times, no one else could take advantage and get us to screw the nut. The title was won easily with a few games to spare, even though we won it with the lowest numbers of points ever in SPL history at the time, which summarised the surreal nature of the campaign. That said, the Champions League run was a highlight, although we rode our luck at times and were no match for Juventus in the knockout stages. We also lifted the Scottish Cup again when we beat Hibs 3-0 at a sun soaked Hampden on a Sunday afternoon, oddly enough.
Patter high point : Neil Lennon calling Jim Goodwin a fanny on live TV.
3 in a row – 2013/2014 - *
The John Reid of title wins! Boring, uninspiring and no replay value – and yet we only lost once all season in the league! To be fair to Lennon and the team, they battered through the league dross and made light work of the teams that gave us so much trouble the previous season and for that they deserved credit, but the standard of opposition was at an all time low. Of course, you can only beat what is in front of you, and they did, but it was often a sluggish ordeal, especially at home, as we saved our best performances for Edinburgh when we bodied Hearts and Hibs with ease. The Champions League campaign was a write off and as predicted after the lunacy of the wild scenes when we beat Karagandy at home, we didn’t strengthen the team and as a result were exposed big time, not even making the Europa League knockout stages. In the cups, we were knocked out at home by Morton and Aberdeen. In the end, you could tell that even Lennon himself was bored/fed up of how things were and the club needed a change. He would go out as a winner, wrapping up the league at Firhill as early as March 2014.
Patter high point : Our main man Neil Lennon, who else, this time involved in a Twitter argument with Dumbarton’s favourite son @Brucehillbhoy over a wind up about Charlie Mulgrew.
4 in a row – 2014/2015 - ***/*****
We now move on to ‘The year of the Deila’, to quote a well known Celtic fan on the internet who may or may not be related to Gerry & Kate McCann. The Ronny Deila experiment got off to a very weird start, when, not including the Legia/Maribor debacles, half the fans got caught up in his roar gimmick and declared their love for him in droves despite not being THAT different from the way Neil Lennon set his teams out to play, and the other half ripped into him at any given opportunity, resulting in the 2014 Internet VL War that would rage on until April 2016, when the majority of supporters accepted it was time for him to go after that semi final against Rangers. 14/15 had it’s moments though, with the win at Pittodrie in November being the highlight for many. There was a real run of momentum as well, especially when Gary Mackay-Steven and Stuart Armstrong signed, and the team performed well against Inter Milan after a dismal struggle in the Europa League group stages. We missed out on the treble when our good pal Alan Muir was deemed as the man solely responsible for us losing 3-2 in the Scottish Cup semi final to Inverness at Hampden, but we won the league cup before that and there was a great night out afterwards which was enjoyable and I hadn’t enjoyed a ‘Celtic night out’ since the 2008-2009 season so for that alone this season gets 3/5.
Patter high point : The Twitter meltdown after that Inverness semi final. One guy tried so hard to find the ref’s address his account was shut down the next day!
5 in a row – 2015/2016 - **/*****
Groan, I suppose we have to. Deila’s second and final season was riddled with problems from the start of the campaign right to the business end of it, with some seriously poor results being enough to make the ‘higher ups’ act and say enough was enough. We had lost that momentum from last season and didn’t learn from our mistakes in Europe, with Malmo dumping us out of the CL not even breaking a sweat in Sweden, and then we finished bottom of the Europa League group stage without a win. We had been pushed in the league as much as Aberdeen’s fragile state allowed them to compete, until they bottled it as always like pathetic bastards and we took full advantage of their loser mentality, striding towards a fifth straight title. In the cups, we were exposed yet again and Deila’s Hampden nightmares would continue – losing both the League Cup and Scottish Cup semi finals, in tepid and meek fashion, to Ross County and Rangers. The derby result would ultimately cost Ronny his job, but some players downed tools that day as well, and they’re allowed to still pick up a wage at the club, which is fucked up , but it’s the fickle and unfair nature of fitba and we’ve seen plenty of managers carry the can for cliques who try and undermine a regmine thinking they are bigger than a club itself. Since he left, I’ve realised Ronny Deila probably wasn’t the man for the job, but he still delivered two titles and tried to create a bond with fans, which I personally couldn’t get into, but can appreciate why others bought into it, especially after the snorefest of 2013-2014 in which the camaraderie between everyone at the club was non-existent!
Patter high point : Kris Commons V Ronny Deila and John Collins in Molde 2015.
