I WOULD suggest George Peat knew what he was doing in his BBC interview but perhaps that is giving him too much credit.
His revelation that during the 2007/08 season, when Rangers made it to the UEFA Cup Final, a “prominent chairman of a club” asked the-then SFA president not to hep Rangers in any way towards the end of that campaign when a fixture backlog was a very real problem, has got everyone talking and guessing.
If this was his intention then mission accomplished. However, it seems to me that all he’s done is muddy already filthy waters by revealing a specific off the record phone call – it surely can’t have been the only ‘dodgy’ request he got – but choose not to say who it was which left us to indulge in some finger pointing.
This was, according to Peat, the most disappointing thing to happen to him during his four years at the top of Scottish football.
In that time the national team failed to qualify for two major tournaments, the referees went on strike, one Old Firm game was discussed in parliament and the police saying the game should be banned because it provoke too much violence.
Peat’s first task was to set up a review of Scottish football headed by Henry McLeish. A complete waste of money and time.
Gretna went to the wall while in the Premier League. Livingston and Dundee were placed into administration and Peat himself sat in on a Neil Lennon disciplinary meeting when he should not have, which if you recall created quite a stooshie at the time.
But a chairman of a club asking that the rule not to be changed for one of their rivals was the low point!
For what it’s worth, I would like to see the SPFL and SFA do anything they can to help our clubs compete in Europe and it would be fair to say that almost all of the teams have had a request for a league game to be moved.
And that isn’t always the league’s fault. Sometimes you can’t change fixtures. That’s life.
Rangers played 68 games in the 2007/08 season because they did really well at home and abroad.
This included two cup replays, a game against Gretna being rearranged which they asked for, fixtures were scrapped because of Phil O’Donnell’s death (take it from me that many inside Ibrox agreed with this decisions at the time) and a cup match in January against East Stirling was postponed due to a waterlogged pitch at Ibrox.
What must be said is that Rangers were magnificent that season. They ran out of puff and lost the league to Celtic which had the league extended the season by eleven days which Rangers wanted, it was extended by four, and Walter Smith’s side may or may not have triumphed.
Rangers lost the UEFA Cup Final to Zenit St Petersburg because the Russians were a far better side and, yes, they did have a simpler run-up which at the time I did have sympathy for but it was hard to see how much more tweaking of the fixture calendar could have been done.
Celtic wouldn’t want to help Rangers because the two were going for the league.
If the situation was the other way around, do you honestly believe Steven Gerrard would be happy to risk his team winning a title so their greatest rivals arguably have a better chance of European success.
We do love a bit of rewriting history in this country when it comes to football. We are not so good at looking forwards when there is so much to get upset about in the past.
I felt sorry for Rangers at the time, I still do, but please spare me all this nonsense that everyone was against them in 2008 just like in 2003 when Celtic felt they were hard done by because that’s easier to say than admit they lost the UEFA Cup final to Porto because the Portuguese were the better team.
I have no idea why Peat thought now was the time to drop this little bombshell – which I am sure happened – but it doesn’t add anything apart from another conspiracy theory and we have enough of them already.
He should on record about which chairman made that call plus, as he’s spoken about this, let us know about any other shenanigans.
My breath is not being held.
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