Celtic manager Neil Lennon beleives the Hoops should be crowned Scottish Premiership champions if the season is declared null and void.
An unnamed chairman of an SPFL club has hit out at the ‘self-interest’ of rival Scottish sides, in quotes reported by Not The Old Firm, after some rather controversial comments made by Celtic manager Neil Lennon and captain Scott Brown.
With the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic casting doubt on whether the 2019/20 season will ever be completed, Celtic’s hopes of securing a ninth successive Premiership title are hanging in the balance.
The Hoops were sitting pretty in first place prior to the league’s suspension, 13 points clear of Old Firm rivals Rangers, and a pair of key figures at Parkhead made their feelings very clear about what should happen if the campaign simply cannot continue.
“We have played over 30 games, that’s well over two thirds of the season so we should be declared champions,” Lennon told the BBC before long-serving skipper Brown adopted a very similar stance.
Though it seems such comments have not gone down too well elsewhere in Scotland.
“We’d be furious if that happened,” an SPFL chairman told NTOF when asked whether the current league leaders should be awarded the league in a worst-case scenario situation.
“The current plan comes down to there being no creative thinking at the SPFL, self-interest driving decisions and looking at rules that weren’t written for these circumstances and I think that it is unacceptable.
“We’re talking about a handful of clubs who see (freezing the standings as being the potential solution) but I think most aren’t really interested in that.”
Surely the best thing for everybody, health permitting of course, is for the 2019/20 season to be resumed over the summer when the Euro 2020 tournament was initially due to take place.
Furthermore, UEFA president Alexander Ceferin has admitted as recently as today, via the Mail, that any club hoping to be ‘declared champions’ if the 2019/20 season is cancelled will be disappointed.
Either the campaign reaches its conclusion, or it is written out of history with no one lifting the trophy.
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