Celtic and Rangers to face tougher European task

Those bloody Belgians!

You could see it coming but the fact that Belgium is now above Scotland in the Uefa co-efficient table is bad news for the Scottish clubs in Europe. Primarily, this will affect Celtic and Rangers but there will be a shakedown for the chasing pack as well.

From 2011-12, Scotland will have only one Champions League place, making it an even bigger battle between Celtic and Rangers to take the title. It is not as if the two teams are complacent about the league at the moment but with second place carrying no qualification route, it could get desperate.

Both of the Glasgow two released six month financial reports this week and the difference the Champions League money makes was very obvious.

At the moment, Celtic are just about remaining on an even keel without the Champions League money but being without the Champions League cash for a further year or two more may see a massive downward spiral of downsizing.

Rangers financial situation is well documented and if they missed out on the Champions League money there could be big problems. For next season, the Ibrox club look to be okay to go straight into the group stages but from 2011-12, the Scottish champions will be forced to enter the knock-out rounds too.

The introduction of the Champions and Non-Champions route should provide some reason to be positive for the Scottish champions and ensure they avoid the big guns from the major leagues.

As Celtic found this season, drawing Arsenal was a virtual guarantee of Europa League football so drawing other champions from the lower leagues will make the chances of group stage qualification a more even opportunity.

Scottish teams seem to struggle in the qualifiers and a lot of this is due to the fact that they are barely back in first team action when their qualification campaign begins. If they are drawn against a team that operates summer football, the chances of the Scottish side progressing will diminish again.

The co-efficient points tend to go in a cyclical nature and part of the problem at the moment is due to previous successes. When Celtic and Rangers performed well, they enabled more Scottish teams to gain European entry.

These teams usually fell at one of the first hurdles so they added very few co-efficient points but added to the number of teams the points would be divided against.

If the fewer number of Scottish teams in Europe can achieve a higher level of performance, the points will rise again.

It is easy to take the negative viewpoint and yes, there could be a further downward shift to come but these things can change quickly with a little bit of luck.

For the moment though, it is worrying if not unexpected news for the Scottish clubs.

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