The Chase is… off? For now?
By Joseph Sinke
Last week it appeared that Rangers and Celtic were poised to start really pulling away in the Scottish Premiership. A pair of duds later and it doesn’t seem to be true.
Last week, prior to Rangers match against Hearts of Midlothian on Sunday, I wrote a piece stating that the chase was on. Rangers and Celtic were at the top of the table. The season had a strange start with both Rangers and Celtic struggling and Hearts of Midlothian got off to a remarkably good start.
Even with the strange start to the season, it appeared that the Old Firm rivals were set to pull away from the rest of the Premiership and following Rangers victory over Hearts, pushing the early-season-upstarts further away, it appeared to be happening.
With both Glasgow clubs playing a match mid-week it was a great opportunity for both of them to start putting real distance and going on a two-way chase.
Then both clubs let out a wet fart in their mid-week match. Rangers dropped 0-1 against Aberdeen at Ibrox and Celtic went on the road and drew against lowly Motherwell 1-1. On top of that, Kilmarnock went and defeated Livingston 2-0.
This resulted in not only having Rangers and Celtic not start to pull away, but Kilmarnock now sit atop the table in the Scottish Premiership in early December, a fairly shocking development.
It should be noted, Celtic have played 2 fewer games than Kilmarnock and Rangers have played 1 fewer and Kilmarnock only leads by a single point. It is still a fairly shocking development and the continued inability of both Old Firm clubs to find consistent good form could result in one of the more interesting Scottish Football seasons in years.