This SPFL title race has not been a showpiece for Scotland. It’s been a mess.

You have to love the Scottish sports media sometimes. One minute they are talking the game down, lamenting the state of Scottish football, brooding on the shame of it all, and the next they are hyping it up as if we are witnessing the most gripping title race in Europe. The same people who spend half the season telling us the league is poor now want to sell this campaign as a thrilling, edge of the seat spectacle.

It hasn’t been anything of the sort.

When people talk about a truly great title race they usually mean something very specific. Two or three excellent teams trading blow for blow. Sides playing well, winning regularly, and pushing each other to extraordinary levels. A race where you genuinely cannot see which club will prevail because all of them look capable of going the distance.

That is not what has happened in Scotland this season.

What has unfolded in the SPFL is not a race between thoroughbreds. It is closer to a donkey derby. Instead of great teams pushing each other to the limit we have watched clubs repeatedly stumble over their own feet. The drama has not been created by brilliance but by chaos.

Everything about this so-called title race has been artificial and wildly overhyped. It exists because the teams involved have shown an almost astonishing tendency towards self-destruction. The Ibrox club is on its second manager of the season and its third in eighteen months. Celtic is on its third manager of the campaign as well. Hearts have had their own struggles for consistency.

This has not been a season of high drama. It has been a season of low farce.

The eventual champions will not be crowned because they produced the most dazzling football. In fact, if you ask most observers which team has played the best football in Scotland this year, many would point to Motherwell. They are not going to win the league. The champions will instead be whichever of Celtic, Hearts or the Ibrox club manages to stagger over the finish line first.

That remains true even if the club that gets there is Celtic.

If Celtic do win the title there will be enormous satisfaction among the support. Under the circumstances many fans will consider it one of the most remarkable championship victories in recent years. Not because the team has been outstanding but because of how much damage the club has inflicted upon itself during the season.

A side that has lurched from crisis to crisis somehow emerging as champions would be a story in itself.

Yet it would also say something uncomfortable about Scottish football. Celtic is a club that has dominated the domestic game, winning fourteen of the last fifteen league titles and the last four in succession. If a team that has endured such a chaotic season can still end up lifting the trophy it raises awkward questions about the level of competition.

Try to step outside the Scottish bubble for a moment and look at this from the perspective of an outsider.

Imagine explaining that the club which might win the league has lost six games in eight during the run-in and has already sacked a newly appointed manager. Imagine explaining that this same club could still end up champions despite spending much of the campaign in what its own supporters describe as a crisis.

That is not the kind of story that enhances the reputation of a league.

Those who are currently proclaiming this as the most exciting title race in Europe will change their tune instantly if Celtic do clinch it. The narrative will flip overnight. Instead of celebrating the drama, the conversation will turn to how weak the league must be if a team that spent so much of the season stumbling around can still take the crown.

And the uncomfortable truth is that they will have a point.

Yes, the league table does not lie. If Celtic finishes top then Celtic will deserve the title. But it would still underline how strange this campaign has been.

Compare the situation in Scotland with some of the major European leagues.

In England, if Manchester City win their game in hand the gap to Arsenal is four points. That is a genuine title race between elite teams pushing each other relentlessly. In Spain the gap between Barcelona and Real Madrid is similarly narrow. In Italy the leading sides remain within touching distance of each other, while in Portugal Porto, Sporting and Benfica have spent the season trading positions near the summit.

Those are title races.

The idea that the rest of Europe is somehow glued to the drama unfolding in Scotland is simply absurd. Most of Scotland itself is not particularly invested in it beyond the supporters of the clubs involved. Why would the rest of the continent care?

What we have witnessed this season is not a great championship battle. It has been one of the most chaotic league campaigns in recent memory. Exhausting is probably the best word for it.

Exhaustion, however, is not the same thing as excitement.

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