© EuroFootball.com
On Saturday, the new 2006/07 season of the Scottish Premier League begins with a match between last year's champion "Celtic" and "Kilmarnock" in Glasgow, promising plenty of intrigue in the battle for gold medals.
Although Gordon Strachan's "Celtic" became the national champions for the 40th time last year, leading by a margin of 17 points over second-placed Edinburgh "Hearts," who secured a spot in the Champions League for the first time in the club's history, this year the capital club, along with the rejuvenated team led by French coach Paulo Le Guen at Rangers in Glasgow, are expected to pose a serious challenge to the "Bhoys" and fight until the end.
Starting the season without several experienced players who have been very useful to the club in recent seasons - forward John Hartson returned to English football and will represent W.B.A., former Man Utd captain Roy Keane was forced to retire, and defender Stilian Petrov expressed a desire to leave the team and was linked with a move to England.
However, G. Strachan tried to fill the gaps and acquired Czech defender Jiri Jarosik from Chelsea, as well as young and talented Scots - defender Gary Caldwell and forward Derek Riordan from Edinburgh Hibernian, and forward Kenny Miller from Wolves, but the coach himself admitted that his team currently lacks experience: "When you look at the foundations of our team, you can see that it is really very young, quite terrifyingly young. It wouldn't be bad to add a few more experienced players by the end of August."
The team coached by Valdas Ivanauskas and starting the season with an away match against "Dunfermline," where four Lithuanian national team players - Nerijus Barasa, Saulius Mikoliūnas, Deividas Česnauskis, and Edgaras Jankauskas - play, find themselves in a similar situation, as key players of the team, Czech defender Rudi Skacel and Scotland defender Andy Webster, were not impressed with the management of Kaunas businessman Vladimiro Romanov and have been looking for new clubs for some time.
Strengthening the team with good players will be important if "Hearts" want to achieve better results than last season when the Edinburgh club interrupted the long-term dominance of the two Glasgow clubs and finished second in the league while winning the Scottish Cup. So far, the only addition to V. Ivanauskas' team is the young Chilean national team forward Mauricio Pinilla.
However, team captain Steven Pressley believes that qualifying for the UEFA Champions League group stage could inspire the team to challenge for the Premier League gold medals: "I believe that 'Hearts' club can win the Scottish champions title, and a good performance in Europe at an early stage of the season would positively motivate us."
Nevertheless, experts believe that the biggest threat to "Celtic" will be their eternal city rival, who will play against "Motherwell" away on Sunday. The coaches of the Glasgow clubs have a habit of becoming champions in their debut seasons, and the most important thing for P. Le Guen will be how well he adapts the peculiarities of Scottish football to his new signings such as Jeremy Clement, Karl Svensson, and Libor Sionko. Of course, fans gathering at Ibrox Stadium will also cherish the romantic hope of playing in the UEFA Cup final next year on May 16 at the nearby Hampden Park.
The favorite in the battle for the fourth position, allowing participation in the Intertoto Cup, despite the departure of two leaders from "Celtic," is likely to remain the club, but they will have to seriously contend with and . The latter, as usual, will not be easily overcome and will also target the top six along with , , and , while in the battle for survival with and , the role of the outsider is assigned to the debutant coming from a lower league.
