Davie Weir's festive rant

Ungrateful Davie Weir has launched a festive rant at the SPL for not extending the 2007/08 season even further to accommodate Rangers.

Sounding remarkably similar to Walter Smith’s scatter-gun approach earlier in the week Weir claimed that the 2007/08 SPL season wasn’t extended despite the final round of fixtures being played on a Thursday night five days after the final set of games in the bottom half of the league.

The extension meant that Celtic, Aberdeen, Dundee United, Hibs and Motherwell had to wait 11 days between their final two fixtures to accommodate Rangers who had earlier in the season had a match with Gretna postponed to give them extra time to prepare for a Champions League match with Lyon.

“If logic played a part you would help a team in a European final,” Weir claimed, overlooking the Gretna postponement and the extension given at the end of the season.

“To play four games in eight days to try and win a title when you play 38 in a season doesn’t seem logical either. Looking back to 2008, you couldn’t write the script.

“It becomes a battle of wills rather than what is the right or best thing to do. We seem to think we have to watch what we do in case we upset this team or that team. That’s the criteria for making decisions and until we get over that we will go round in circles.

“There’s no getting away from the fact that the fixture list didn’t help us in 2008. Zenit St Petersburg had a couple of weeks off before they played us in the UEFA Cup Final.

“Their season revolved around it and their federation helped them. Even this year Bursaspor played many of their games on a Friday night before Champions League games.”

It’s commonplace in many countries to switch fixtures to help clubs ahead of important European matches but it’s done on the understanding that those games will be played as quickly as possible.

As well as being granted a postponement of the Gretna match Rangers could have played their outstanding match with St Mirren the week before Christmas with that match finally played on May 19 with St Mirren having nothing at stake.

“Bearing grudges isn’t the way forward,” Weir added ironically. “If you can help your clubs, especially at that level of competition, then it makes sense to do it.

“I’d like to think they would help this year, but based on what has gone before I can’t see it. It seems to be an issue.

“I can understand our manager’s point of view on an extension to the season.

“There was a precedent set in 2008 and if you can’t do it for us in a European final I don’t see why it would happen in any other circumstance.

“The precedent has been set and it would be a contradiction in policy if that changed.”

The precedent set in 2007/08 was that the SPL did accommodate Rangers by allowing games to be postponed in mid-season AND extending the season to the inconvenience of other clubs.

At present Rangers have three postponed matches to re-arrange with question marks over their festive trips to Motherwell and St Johnstone.

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