Hibs And Motherwell’s Travails Are Awful For Scotland, And Bad For Celtic.

What a disaster for Motherwell last night, to lose at home, in Europe, to a League of Ireland team. The epic humiliation to our national game whenever we have a result like this reverberates outside of the team who were affected by it. It hits us all.

It comes on the heels of the ever-evolving disaster at Hibs, a club now stuck fast in the Danger Zone and heading for crisis at warp speed. Their League Cup performances would have been bad, and worrying, enough for the fans … the calamitous administration which led to the fielding of an ineligible player is proof of how dysfunctional they are.

This is not good for Scottish football, that two of its top flight clubs are in this state so early in the season. The Hibs news is especially worrisome. Because to put it bluntly, Celtic needs competition. We need some semi-competent level of football going on around us, or we’re going to go backwards as a club no matter what the manager might achieve.

Hearts are talking big about winning the league. Good for them. Aberdeen talked that way not that long ago before a series of terrible decisions did for them. I still don’t know what they expect from Jim Goodwin, but it won’t be a Premiership title. Hearts, at least, matched the rhetoric with a third place finish and a Scottish Cup final place.

I take zero satisfaction from Motherwell’s result last night; I know there are people out there who simply wish every other Scottish club but their own ill when they play in Europe but I am not one of them. Whilst my goodwill does not extend to a certain club across the city, it does extend everywhere else. I want these clubs to succeed.

I want these clubs to have access to additional revenues. I want to see them be able to sign, and keep, a better class of footballer. I want them to be able to invest in youth development. Instead they seem locked into a permanent spiral of decline.

And eventually, no matter our own successes, this will drag us down. We need these teams to be stronger. We need them to be better. We are a long way from that.