It has been a fortnight of mixed fortunes for Scottish football. We went from the high of Celtic being handed a lifeline into the Europa League (which make no mistake is a high for any Scottish football fan), to the terrible low as we were robbed the three points which would have gone some way to taking us to our first Euros in well over a decade. We moved on however, and gained a reasonable three points against Lithuania at Hampden before resuming SPL action this weekend.

On the 25^th of August, it seemed like it might be the end to Scottish fans of the game; all three teams had lost their Europa League qualification ties leaving no Scottish teams in European competition for the first time in over 30 years. However, Celtic’s opponents, FC Sion, had played several illegitimate players and were therefore excluded from the tournament, leaving Celtic to take their place in Group I. Despite this second chance, they have been placed in a very challenging group with Atlético Madrid, Udinese and Rennes, which they will do very well to qualify from. On Thursday, they will travel to Spain for their first match, against Atlético.  Even with the Madrid team losing key players such as Sergio Aguero, Diego Forlan and David De Gea they are a formidable opponent and if Celtic can take anything from the game it will be a great achievement.

As I say though, this happiness was short-lived as the Scottish National Team met the Czech Republic at Hampden. It was a hugely entertaining game of football in which Scotland took the lead twice through goals from Kenny Miller and Darren Fletcher. However, as has seemed to happen at some stage in every qualification cycle, something went wrong. This was possibly the worst though, worse than the terrible refereeing against Italy in qualifying for Euro 08, worse even than Chris Iwelumo’s horrific miss against Norway, his shot the only thing from Scotland to reach South Africa in that cycle. And yet again, the luck of the Scots prevailed. Going into injury time Scotland were leading 2-1, at which point Czech forward Jan Rezek made a dive worthy of an Olympic gold. Obviously the penalty was given and converted leaving two points behind the Czechs and needing an away win against the European and World Champions along with other results to have a chance of qualifying.

Back in the SPL, things were back to usual as the Old Firm returned to their allocated seats in first and second place in the league. Rangers edged a 1-0 win over a 10-man Dundee Utd to move to the top of the table, while a brace from James Forrest helped Celtic gain a 4-0 victory over third-placed Motherwell. A goalless draw saw Hibs and Aberdeen fall to the bottom of the table with only 3 and 4 points respectively after six games.