Uncertainty stalks this season as Celtic and Rangers could well prove title enigmas – Keith Jackson

This will be season number 33, watching on from the press box.

For starters, please excuse this moment of shameless self indulgence. There’s actually a very good reason for it. Because, throughout all of that time, it’s difficult to remember a single summer when the most likely destination of Scotland’s top flight title felt just as uncertain as it does right here and now.

Of course, a sense of monotony has long since taken a stranglehold of our national sport. It’s been 38 years since the league crown last escaped from Glasgow’s city boundaries and, even for us old timers, that title triumph for Aberdeen seems like a lifetime ago. Barring some sort of Sheikh Mansour intervention elsewhere it could be another 38 years before we see it happening again. In other words, never in the rich history of the Scottish game has the Old Firm’s dominance been so iron fisted. There was a period, shortly after the turn of the last century, when they shared a run of 27 titles between them, bookended by championship wins for Third Lanark in 1904 and Motherwell in 1932.

But, that aside, this ongoing neighbourly skirmish for superiority spanning the best part of four decades is entirely unmatched.

And yet, despite all of its wearisome predictability, it must be said there’s an unavoidable sense of excitement and anticipation as the clock ticks down to the latest instalment, which will kick off on Saturday when Celtic open up their title defence with a lunchtime visit from Ross County.

For the first time in a long time, it’s very close to impossible to know for sure what happens next. Yes, Ange Postecoglou threw in a curveball a couple of seasons back when he arrived at the scene of a car crash in the east end of the city and somehow ended