Celtic fans' Rangers fixture conspiracy fears are all well and good except for one thing

Daily Record

21-06-2025

It's just what we expected. The super computer the SPFL uses to sort out the fixtures has got it in for YOUR team.
This American based AI machine clearly hates Celtic. Or Rangers. Or Aberdeen. Or maybe Falkirk.
Maybe it's so biased it hates them all. Nothing is impossible in Scottish football.
We've even got Hamilton Accies playing at Clyde's former Broadwood home – and Clyde setting up shop in New Douglas Park or whatever it's called these days.
Releasing the fixtures into the wild tends to prompt the usual tin foil hat responses. Fans look for conspiracies, search for clues to prove league chiefs are determined to stick a spoke in their wheels.
Here's a newsflash folks – everyone needs to play everyone else, the when shouldn't really matter.
It does though, of course. And within minutes of the schedule coming out the grumbles started.
Celtic punters are up in arms at the indignity of having Flag Day on the Sunday at half four, a full day after their old chums Rangers get up and running.
It's all to give Russell Martin a leg up, of course, except Celts have only actually kicked off a title defence on a Saturday once in the last five.
Meanwhile Gers supporters are already miffed they have a Saturday night job to start their season – and they have another one the following week, all in the middle of a European qualifying bid.
Aberdeen, meanwhile, need to wait a full two days after being hit with a Monday night trek to Tynecastle.
Fans love a gripe and the grumbles will only get worse when the penny drops that these fixtures are very much a rough draft.
Depending on how our teams do in Europe there could be more shuffling than on barn dancing night at the Tannochside Miners Club.
Let's be honest here, when it comes to priorities, the paying public are way down in the list.
And it's been that way for a good while. Our clubs need the television revenue so broadcasters call the shots.
We can't moan about not having enough games on the box and then whining when they get moved so they can be shown.
Take the dough, suffer the hassle. Football clubs want supporters to pony up and get on with it. Buy the season tickets, snap up the replica shirts and scoff the pies and pipe down and pay the loyalty tax.
It's exploitation of course it is, but that's the problem with unconditional love, people are powerless to resist.
Despite the sinister cynicism, the opening day does still have a thrill about it. The majority of clubs will suffer mainly misery over the following nine months but right up until kick-off there's a blind optimism oozing out of every pore.
This coming season will have plenty for folk to get their teeth into.
How will Falkirk fare on their top flight return? There's a new gaffer at Motherwell in Jens Berthel Askou who seems interesting, let's see how Stuart Kettlewell gets on at Killie and keep an eye on Steven Pressley at Dundee, where big Elvis is either going to a soaraway success or a runaway train.
Then there's Hearts, Hibs, Aberdeen and Dundee United. Very rarely do all over our non-Glasgow city clubs all get their acts together at the same time. There's a weird ying and yang with that lot that dictates one or more has to be honking if any of the others are decent.
Right now they all look promising, and for once the league title might actually look like some kind of natural order, unless that's a banned phrase.
As for Rangers, Martin could really do with getting off to a flier at Fir Park. Gers fans are scarred from some opening days, like Hamilton Accies in the Going for 55 nightmare under Mark Warburton, the points dropped at Aberdeen and Hearts and the loss at Kilmarnock.
The last thing the new boss needs is to be playing catch up right out of the traps.
As for Celtic, St Mirren almost spoiled Trophy Day and now get the chance to wreck Flag Day.
The SPFL AI might not have an agenda, but it does have a wicked sense of humour.