Another year in the weird and wonderful world of Scottish football

Often one to be apathetic towards domestic success from either of the Old Firm due to their exorbitant following and, therefore, wealth, even this writer must admit to being impressed by the scenes at the end of May’s Scottish Cup final when Adam Idah netted in the 90th minute. This Roy of the Rovers-style ending for the Celtic fan from Cork denied Rangers a modicum of revenge after they fell to pieces in the title race around the same time Philippe Clement became overly fixated on Dundee’s decaying pitch.

While it may be depressing that the two Glasgow behemoths are once-again displaying a vice-like grip on every Scottish football trophy (St Johnstone’s mad 2020/21 cup double aside, nobody else has won anything since 2016) it will at least be a little more tolerable if they keep serving up all-Hampden encounters like the one witnessed in the League Cup final earlier this month. Danillo’s equaliser seconds after Nicholas Kuhn looked to have won the game for Celtic was a proper mouth-agape moment for anyone watching, while the VAR blunder over a Rangers penalty in extra-time further demonstrates that the SFA plot to stop Celtic from prospering has to be the least functioning conspiracy in the history of conspiracies.

Aberdeen have to be in with a shout for the most box-office team of 2024. They started off the year terribly and things got worse when they enabled Neil Warnock to tick off ‘managing a game at Ibrox’ from his bucket list by bringing him in on a short-term appointment. The legendary lower-league English manager tinkered with some strange team selections, alienated his best player in Bojan Miovski and then dramatically decided he’d had enough following a rare high point with a Scottish Cup victory over Kilmarnock.

Peter Leven, probably buoyed by the simple fact that he wasn’t his predecessor, did a fine job in relief, including almost masterminding a semi-final victory over Celtic. This included Joe Hart deciding he wanted to be the hero of the hour: taking the deciding penalty in the shoot-out, striking it in the manner you’d expect from a goalkeeper and seeing it cannon back off the post. He would eventually win the shoot-out with a save, but looked a little sheepish in the celebrations due to his faux pas.

Aberdeen improved dramatically over the summer with some new signings and the arrival of Jimmy Thelin, a Swedish coach with an initial penchant for winning football matches. The Pittodrie side did this so much that talk of a title race – or, at the very least, them splitting the Old Firm – started to stir. Then reality arrived to slap them around the face with an eight-game winless run to end the year.

Though they haven’t had too much to shout about of late, at least the Dons were involved in the most dramatic league game of the past year (or any year, frankly), drawing 3-3 with Hibs at Easter Road in a game that was 2-1 to the visitors going into stoppage time. Speaking of Hibs, aside from being their usual predictably-unpredictable selves, they did provide a tremendous moment for 2024’s time capsule when Nectar Triantis tried to launch a free-kick 60 yards into the opposing half at Ibrox in March – only to succeed in skelping the ball off two of his team-mates’ faces from close proximity.

Aberdeen and Hibs were the opponents when St Mirren and Dundee United, respectively, each scored twice in injury-time to turn defeats into dramatic victories in 2024. The latter have quietly impressed upon their return to the top-flight, which is massively at odds with the banter-club outfit who exited in 2022/23, while St Mirren look on course for successive European finishes despite a summer transfer window that was seemingly inspired by The Usual Suspects.

Away from the top-flight, Partick Thistle once again treated us to a dramatic play-off encounter in which they didn’t win, Dunfermline Athletic’s owners decided to sell up because they were sick of fans moaning about the team being crap, and Inverness CT supporters discovered the true cost of having both Scot Gardiner and Duncan Ferguson employed by your club at the same time.

Raith Rovers decided that an unexpected league title challenge was enough to earn Ian Murray precisely one game’s worth of credit in the bank for 2024/25, Michael McIndoe demonstrated that the secret success to management is to say the name of the man he’s talking to in interviews over and over again (“Dave”), and Stanraer put a bow on their season by having commentator Brian Martin saying “your boys took a hell of a beating” to an East Kilbride roundabout.

All of this without mentioning Falkirk’s march to the Premiership, Stenhousemuir winning their first title, Dumbarton’s shock administration and probably much more that I’m forgetting.

We don’t yet know what 2025 has in store for Scottish football, but it will certainly be weird and wonderful in its own unique way.