Brass neck of SPFL exposed as they once again try to hijack Rangers’ Europa League bid | OneFootball

Scottish football is never short on drama, and the latest buzz surrounding the SPFL’s supposed attempt to hijack Rangers’ Europa League run by scheduling a split fixture against Celtic has only added to the intrigue. Why would the league do such a thing? Is this just another conspiracy theory cooked up by the imaginative minds of some Rangers supporters, or is there more to it than that? Old Firm matches always carry the heaviest of weightings, and in those rare instances when both teams seem to be genuinely contesting for silverware, the gravity of those matches only increases.

The SPFL makes decisions that often seem puzzling, if not downright absurd. Their beyond-parody penchant for loading the dice against Rangers when it comes to fixtures has been something of a running joke for a number of years now, but this feels like a whole different ballgame. Is there anyone out there who genuinely believes that setting an Old Firm fixture dry run at the start of the second half of the season was just an innocent “Whoops!” moment? Or at worst, just another “Bugger it, who cares?” scheduling fiasco? Or is this a deliberate decision by someone in power to make sure both Rangers and Celtic are up to maximum emotional investment right from the get-go?

Picture this scenario: Rangers are battling their way through the Europa League, striving to reach the latter stages of the tournament. They’re notching up kudos for the SPFL while they’re doing it, further upping the profile of Scottish football on the continental scene. Meanwhile, in the league, they’re having to confront Celtic. The league’s half-split has reckoned them alongside their arch-rivals, and they’ve got to face their relentless pressing game and the searing intensity of the fixture while a Europa League tie is either side of it. What’s more, they’ve got to do it in a manner that cedes no ground to Celtic in the Silly Saturday stakes.

Celtic fans are relishing the chance to wreck Rangers’ plans. During this critical juncture, if Celtic can deliver a crushing defeat at Ibrox, then the tremors from that will be felt in the Rangers’ camp, where trouble already seems to be brewing (McDonald, 2025). Yet, as always, football’s biggest appeal is its sheer unpredictability. No one really knows what’s going to happen in any given match. And every player on the pitch, no matter how much of a superstar or a nobody he might be, always has something to prove.

We find ourselves at a juncture where the intense world of football politics intersects with unbridled passion. The actual truth might not matter in the end, because the fans seem to love these kinds of narratives. But what actually counts is how the clubs involved deal with whatever adversity they face. That’s what will determine the true state of affairs. Will these football clubs do what they’ve always done—push through whatever obstacles lie in their way? Or will they fold like a cheap suit? No one knows for sure, yet something tells me that the fans are already rubbernecking for what promises to be the next momentous chapter in this saga.