The Race For European Football This Season!
This season's European entrants as the table currently stands
With 15 matches left to play, and just ten games before the league splits in two, the title race is hotting up in Scotland. Celtic have been champions in 13 of the past 14 seasons, yet find themselves in third place on the 25th January for the first time since 1998!
On Burns’ Day 28 years ago, they had lost five matches and trailed Hearts by 3 points and Rangers by 6 points - albeit Celtic had a game in hand. However the Celts would go on to lose just one more game (Vs Rangers at Ibrox), while the Gers lost four; away to St. Johnstone, Motherwell and Aberdeen before losing the penultimate league match 1-0 at home to Kilmarnock. Celtic were then able to seal the title by 2 points, beating St. Johnstone at Celtic Park on the final day of the season - thwarting Rangers’ bid for ten-in-a-row.
Back to the current day, and of the teams currently occupying the top 6 - only Falkirk (8) have lost more games than Celtic (6). Hearts have only lost twice; away to both Aberdeen and Hibs, while Rangers too have only lost twice - in both fixtures against Hearts.
I really want to include Motherwell in the title race talk. They have lost half the number of games that Celtic have, nobody has conceded less than them and they are now on a run of nine (!) home matches without conceding. If they were sitting 2nd, even with an 11 point gap to 1st then I wouldn’t rule them out yet. But an 11 point gap, with three teams above them, feels too much for them to be included. They’ve only lost one of their past 15 league matches though, and if they only lose one of the next 15 then they will be an important player in the destiny of the title!
Whatever happens, it will hopefully make for one of the best title run-ins for years, if not decades. If the top three can continue to keep pace with each other and head into the split with only a few points between each other, then it will make for unmissable football.
As in previous seasons, I’ll be tracking how the current league table translates to European qualification spots at the end of this season. I’ll also include “example opponents”; who each team would face in qualifiers, based on current coefficient rankings and current league tables around Europe.
This analysis and graphics will remain exclusive to paid subscribers - thank you once again for supporting my work. If you’re new here, start with a long read explainer on how the UEFA coefficient works.
THIS SEASON
As will be discussed in the “next season” section - this season’s European entry points are as good as it gets for Scottish football - and for quite some time. The falling coefficient means that if Hearts were to win the title in the coming years - this is the year to do it!
There are two distinct paths for our European entrants, and it depends on where in the table the Scottish Cup Winner finishes:
1.) ASSUMING SCOTTISH CUP WINNER
FINISHES 1ST OR 2ND
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