Signing off on Celtic hosting Rangers in unique title shootout gives SPFL chance to do something spectacular

There was so much going on at Ibrox last Sunday, you half expected a blood-soaked Neil Doncaster to stagger on to the pitch at the end, Gladiator-style.

“Are you not entertained?” he’d scream to the stands. The answer, en masse, would have been, “Yes, very much so”. Likewise the 1.4million armchair punters who tuned in to watch it on Sky Sports. It was an epic encounter at a pretty handy time, with the SPFL chief executive and the rest of the suits batting their eyelids at potential sponsors to stick their name on the league from next season.

Those viewing figures are not to be sniffed at. You could tell by the reaction from plenty of folk down south – from respected pundits like Gary Lineker and Roy Keane, to definitely not respected ones like Joey Barton – there were plenty tuned in to the mayhem. Those figures prove the fixture burst out beyond our own borders and that can only be a good thing when it comes to making some dosh.

But now is not the time to stand back and pat ourselves on the back – now is the time to strike while the iron is hot and the temperature is rising. There’s another Old Firm to go and in the next week or so the bigwigs will get the crayons out to do up the post-split calendar.

We’ve already seen the stuff about where the final derby might be placed. “It can’t go there, it won’t go then, it’ll probably go here…” Hold on a wee minute. Why does this always have to be ‘what we can’t do’? Should it not be about ‘what we can’? Scottish football and our split has its quirks and critics. But what it does give us is opportunity. We can just about hand-pick the finale to the season.

And what happens? We spend endless hours trying to find ways to reduce the drama. “Ooh, we can’t have an Old Firm