Outrage as SPFL reject £8M Rangers man from Team of the Season | OneFootball

What a surprise the SPFL threw at the football community! Their Team of the Season didn’t include a Rangers player who by all measures should be there, Vaclav Cerny. His creativity and pace on the wing are just what the doctor ordered when you need a bit of magic in attack. Cerny played the biggest part in their run and, it must be said, like a number of other players in the SPFL, he was nowhere near the elite institution of the Scottish Premiership. Yet, if you listen to fans and pundits, he was easily one of the best players in the league this last season and the first in many years in that slot to play at that level for the club. And these were just a few of the outlandish statements on social media vitriol that accompanied his exclusion.

Let’s stop and consider this for a moment. Cerny wasn’t just your run-of-the-mill player seen at Ibrox; he was a kind of magic lantern lighting Rangers’ attack. The guy could glide through defenses as effortlessly as you or I might slice through the proverbial block of butter. And Cerny’s run of form was no small part of Rangers’ 2024-2025 season. So, it kind of does suck a wee bit that he’s been left out of a squad supposed to represent the best players over the past season.

And then we have Barry Ferguson’s perspective on this matter, which is certainly worth paying heed to. The former Rangers captain managed to put into words the kind of feeling a lot of Cerny’s backers have felt. Ferguson wasn’t happy, and he expressed a lot of surprise and frustration, over what is essentially a nothing line-up without Cerny in it. His absence, in Ferguson’s view, was almost inexplicable, given the man’s contribution to the Rangers this past season. Ferguson, after all, is no stranger to Ibrox silverware, and if he’s standing there, stunned, at this particular selection decision, it only adds to the weight of the debate.

But here’s the twist: Is this just yet another example of old-school prejudices creeping into these kinds of awards? Maybe the people picking the team wanted to “spread the love” around and decided to go with a kind of “greatest hits” of names, even if they had to dig into the kind of misremembered nostalgia that makes these players seem a lot better and bigger than they really were this past season? Wouldn’t be the first time football awards kicked up a stink in using their combination of football and politics, right? Rangers fans have seen Cerny do his stuff against Celtic and other big rivals, and that’s not a situation that they’re likely to forget anytime soon. So he’s very much a player of this era, in a Rangers shirt, and a cult hero to boot.

In the end, football revolves around fervor and dispute—deciding who merits acclaim based on the jaw-dropping feats we witness each week. Whether you side with the SPFL’s choices or not, there’s no denying that excluding Cerny from their line-up has sparked a spirited discussion. Isn’t that what makes following Scottish football so captivating? The battle for glory isn’t confined to the pitch; it rages on in the passionate arguments and debates among fans and in the comments of former players, each one a legend in their own right.