Isn't it funny in a not-very-amusing kind of way that according to most commentators we suddenly have a 'crisis' in Scottish football? The BBC, no less, is hosting set piece discussions on our national game in crisis and how we move it forward. Where did this alleged 'crisis' come from? Well, a number of pieces of evidence are usually cited.

1. The calibre of Scottish footballers is apparently now unacceptably low. But hang on a minute - we're just now beginning to see a new breed of very promising young players coming through at almost every club, so that can't be right.

2. There is huge financial instability in our clubs which is undermining the game. But hang on again -  clubs have been living with this for years. It is why the FTB nearly managed to take us over, and why even the likes of John Boyle at Motherwell couldn't prop up a favourite club with private cash. Most clubs are now, or had already, financially readjusted.

3. Our international standing has become unacceptably low. This is my personal favourite. In case the Goatscene regulars at the BBC hadn't noticed, Scotland have been internationally garbage for at least a decade. It wasn't just yesterday that Portugal stuffed us five nil.

4. And of course the single transferable excuse for anything which the 'powers that be' (ie Glasgow Rantic) wish to justify doing - the viability of our league is under threat. Really? From what? It's just as crap now as it was ten years ago. Maybe if they stopped buggering around with it we might see something that looked, felt and played like a real league.

Very little has changed since last year or the year before that or in fact at all during the last decade except for one small matter which is different this year - Rangers are absolute crap. Rangers are so crap that even a team managed by Bobby Williamson managed to beat them in the Cup semi. They lost the league after it had barely started, then everyone suddenly noticed they had accumulated debts of over £65 million and their playing squad was so threadbare that everyone in the Premier League - and I do mean everyone - fancied their chances of taking points from the Huns. The so-called crisis in Scottish football is actually a crisis in Glasgow Rangers. And by extension Scottish football is not in crisis unless one or both of the Old Firm are in crisis.

So why is there such a mess round the Old Firm way?

The Rantic inheritance for Scottish football is not a rich one. Their long term historic dominance of the game is founded on a particularly unpleasant sectarian divide right across Scotland. The consequence has been their ability to draw upon a fan base far bigger than any other club, but which is almost entirely based upon the Catholic/Protestant divide. The myopic view that 'as long as we beat the Huns/stuff the Tims nothing else matters' is one which has existed for a very long time  and which still persists widely among their fans.

It is exactly this attitude which has held the Scottish game back. You don't bother to develop an effective youth structure for the game in Scotland if your only ambition is to beat your sectarian other half. You just stitch the game up for the two of you, buy off other clubs' best players, bully everyone else into accepting your rule changes, occasionally wonder why you aren't any good in Europe and bask complacently in the drooling attention of the Scottish media. When, decades later, you find yourself unable to sustain a serious international challenge in the modern game and in the modern media age, you just blame your own league and all the other teams in it for somehow making you not good enough.

While every other club was working with whatever geographical fan base they could muster, the Old Firm were happily colluding with each other to sustain their unnatural sectarian advantage. This has left almost every other club impoverished and weakened in their capacity to mount an effective or sustained challenge to the Old Firm, thus lowering the standard of the game overall. Playing against inferior opposition has failed to raise the game of the big two, and an inability to get a fair share of the cake has destroyed the capacity of other potentially strong clubs (Hibs, Hearts, Aberdeen, Dundee United) to grow and enrich the quality of play, players and teams in the league.

So here we are at the wrong end of decades of distortion of the Scottish game by the Old Firm, and by the SFA acting as their not very well disguised agents. The gate revenue system has been changed, the league size has been changed, the relegation system has been changed, the TV deals have been rigged and of course there is barely a referee in the Scottish game who doesn't throw the Old Firm decisions in every game, whether intimidated by the Old Firm support or prompted by their own sympathies. All of the above works ceaselessly in favour of the Old Firm. This tidal wave of disadvantage makes the achievement of Turnbull, McLean and Ferguson all the more remarkable in their time as Scottish club managers outside the Old Firm.

But despite these ridiculously biased advantages we still have two 'giant' clubs incapable of achieving at the highest level. Now caught up like most of the rest of the game in massive over-inflation of salaries, transfer fees and general costs, the Old Firm are like everyone else feeling the hot breath of cost reduction on their collars.

But perversely, financial deflation of the Scottish game may be the best thing which has happened to it in the post-war years. The smaller clubs now have a far greater chance of closing the gap between themselves and the Old Firm because of enforced reliance throughout the game on young Scottish players. The Old Firm, who have for many years hardly been able to bring themselves to field Scottish players, are now feeling the pinch, more than most, of the daft costs of buying in largely mediocre or over the hill foreign players. By contrast the rest of the league was barely able to get seriously into that caper, and the requirement by the Banks to get closer to balancing the books (which of course is always applied more rigorously and more stringently to the non Old Firm clubs) has bitten everyone else a lot earlier than it did Celtic and Rangers.

At the time this seemed unfair, but with hindsight it has probably worked in favour of the clubs who have taken the harsh medicine quickly and readjusted. Those who failed to do so were into higher debt longer and later than everyone else, and that has meant much pain with more still to come - particularly for Rangers.

Good to see the 'Scottish' game is in safe hands with our top teams

Of course there has usually been some very thin veneer of attainment to which one or other of the Old Firm were able to point as evidence that they were making progress but 'being held back by the rest'. Most recently this has been the Celtic UEFA cup runs of last and this season, though these cup reasons have in reality meant precisely nothing.

At a recent family gathering I made the mistake of trying to have a sensible and logical discussion with two Old Firm supporters about the future of Scottish football. The quicker the Old Firm get out of Scotland, the better for all concerned was my view. They agreed, but only because they were convinced that their teams would become even bigger clubs in England than they already are. In fact they went on to argue that they could expect very quickly to compete with Arsenal, Chelsea and Man U for the title.

I tried to point out that to do this they would need:

(a) a hell of a lot more money than they currently have;

(b) the ability to beat not just the top three but also the likes of Newcastle, Liverpool, Spurs, Middlesbrough, Sunderland, Birmingham, Aston Villa, Fulham etc on a regular basis; and

 (c) while they adjusted to that league, the capacity to survive for a decade or so on not much more than finishing outside the top half.

But no, not a bit of it. Just being in the premiership would give them a lot more television money, they would need to expand their grounds to accommodate the 20,000 to 25,000 more season ticket holders who would come forward just because of entry into the Premiership, and they would be ready to compete immediately with the English top three.

This last point was supported by the evidence of Celtic's performances against UEFA cup sides and their unbeaten home record. What they were unable to admit was that while Celtic performed above themselves to reach the final last year and have had a bit of a run this year, most of the teams they did beat were not first rank European sides. The European game also is not currently as strong as it once was, so winning some games against some of its lesser ranking sides does not mean that we suddenly have serious Champions League contenders on our hands. What it means is that Celtic have an outstanding manager who has successfully got his players to amount collectively to a lot more than they do individually. But they still cannot win a European trophy, and certainly not the Big One.

Any Hibs fan knows that we had our biggest and best crowds recently when we were winning regularly and comfortably in the First Division. That was because fans like to see their team winning - in which league doesn't really matter. It is for exactly that reason that a much more competitive Premier league, one without Celtic or Rangers, would attract greater crowds for everyone else. It is for exactly that reason that Celtic and Rangers would see their attendances fall in the English Premiership. These 'diehard' bigots - oops, sorry, fans - would have to watch their teams getting beaten regularly in the Premiership. If either of the Old Firm clubs genuinely think their glory hunting fanbase are going to pay to see that on a regular basis, they are even more deluded than their talk of acceptance into the English Premiership suggests.

It was depressing to read, against this backdrop, that the Scottish Executive wants to put £30m into the Scottish game. Firstly it left me wondering whether they would be so quick to stuff gold into the mouth of any other business which had been so badly managed for so many years. Secondly, any investment which is going to make a real difference will only pay off in the long term, and it isn't necessarily cash which is needed anyway. Trusting the SFA either to know what is required or to be able actually to execute the right action is the ultimate in stupidity. This is an organisation which is run for the Old Firm by remote control. The SFA has no genuine interest in Scottish football. It only has an interest in the free travel and free ticket arrangements for its officers, and in doing the bidding of Celtic and Rangers.

Not that I would put that money into the hands of those running the clubs either. Our own management have proven themselves spineless and gutless (the premature sacking of Sauzee to dig themselves out of a hole), have shirked responsibility (letting it be known that they were starting to renegotiate Williamson's contract downwards in order to deflect blame from themselves at exactly the point when most fans were becoming aware that we weren't improving on last season) and have shown a truly alarming lack of commercial awareness (when they sold Cup Final tickets to 40,000 Hibs fans, they did not even bother to collect the names and addresses of the purchasers, though this would have created an enormous marketing database to sell next season's season tickets and merchandise).

But there is a way forward for Scottish football. It involves either getting rid of the Old Firm altogether, or forcing the creation of a league system which looks more like what the rest of the world looks like. If the Old Firm want to stay, the price to them should be a reformed league structure, shared gate receipts, collective investment in the youth structure, a restructured SPL and SFA, fairer television coverage, fair shares of television fees, professional referees (preferably from outwith Scotland to reduce the bias) and some kind of collective agreement about the role of player agents, probably limiting the number of within-Scottish Premier League player purchases teams can make in a season.

Oh and one other thing. Can we please have Stevie Archibald as our new manager?