And no, I don't mean Partick and Queen's Park. Queen's Park means something, and Partick has a shred of dignity.

I mean the other two, the Old Firm. Celtic and Rangers. Two clubs that are about as important as Charlton and Leeds in the grand scheme of things.

Everyone knows by now that the Premier League turned down another attempt by the corporate best friends club to join their money printing enterprise, Premier League chairmen of clubs not named Bolton just didn't see the benefit of adding two clubs tarnished by racism and sectarianism to their ranks, and rightly so. If Crystal Palace or Watford had ten times the revenue of every other club in their division they'd draw 50,000 a week too.

But I'm not sure it's far enough. Celtic and Rangers take arrogance to a new level, they have the egos of Bayern Munich and PSG and play like, well, err, PSG. They enjoy bullying the smaller clubs in Scotland and telling them how things should be done, and with the notable except of Hearts, run by a complete mentalist, the clubs usually roll over for their Glaswegian masters. What gets me about the submissive nature of the other clubs is that it makes you think they need the Old Firm, when in fact it's the opposite. Celtic and Rangers are actually poisoning the rest of the Scottish League and the smaller clubs would not only survive, but flourish without them around. Bill Leckie of the Scottish Sun seems to understand that.

It's obvious to everyone that Celtic and Rangers simply put-up with Scotland, they want no part of it. Hell, judging from the grounds you'd think Celtic played in Cork and Rangers in Portadown. If they wanted to play in Scotland they'd focus resources on growing the Scottish game rather than taking any chance to bolt south to greener pastures. With this in mind, and the prospect of a competitive, financially balanced league without them, why in the world would Scotland take them back? It makes one of football's most ancient, and proudest nations look like an abused spouse that keeps on crawling back.

Leave him, you're too good for him.

And the "Old Firm to the Premier League" story rears it's ugly head for 2009.

Nearly every football season, without fail, we hear of how either Celtic, Rangers or both have an interest in joining the (English) Premier League and every year they get rebuffed with good reason. This year, it's Celtic again.

Yes, Celtic and Rangers are massive clubs that play before crowds of 60,000 and 52,000 nearly every week. Yes, Celtic and Rangers are worldwide clubs and yes Celtic and Rangers are punching well below their weight in the Scottish Premier League. But they need to stay in the Scottish Premier League.

The first and most obvious reason is how blatantly unfair it would be to First Division (sorry, "Coca-Cola Championship") clubs to deny them two chances at promotion to the most lucrative league in the world, a league many First Division clubs had a hand in building mind you, just to allow entry for the Glaswegian pair.

Another reason is how in the world would you pull it off? The Premier League isn't going to expand to twenty-two clubs and further dilute it's revenues just for the Old Firm which means there will be a bottle neck in terms of promotion and relegation. What do you do? Do you send two extra clubs down to the Football Conference, possibly killing them? Or do you expand the Football League to ninety-four clubs and again dilute the revenue which is so vital to many of those same clubs? You can't do either.

I know many will point to the fact that the Premier League could have a Welsh club (be it Cardiff or long-shots Swansea) among it's ranks, but there is a distinct difference. Cardiff or Swansea would have arrived on merit, having worked their way through the divisions, through tough aways at Birmingham, QPR, Wolves, Sheffield United, Watford, and the list goes on. Even Wrexham are more entitled to a Premier League place having given service and time to the Football League. The Old Firm haven't done this. I realize that Hearts, Hibs, Motherwell, Aberdeen and Killie are decent clubs with plenty of heritage, but they aren't First Division calibre clubs.

Would Celtic and Rangers allow Linfield and Glentoran to join their league? I think not.

Rather than bicker over the fate of Celtic and Rangers the Scottish FA should focus on more pressing matters. For instance, why was Gretna allowed to exist in the manner it was? Why are the fans in Gretna now without a league team because of this? Why are so many of our clubs facing financial ruin? Scottish football has bigger problems than two clubs crying for attention.

...and everyone knows it.

Scotland, unlike England, doesn't have an "open" league structure. This meaning that the team finishing at the very bottom of the league system, in this case the Scottish Football League Third Division, is not relegated to face the doldrums of non-league football this season. Recently this has been somewhat amended to state that if a club finishes bottom for three consecutive years they could be voted out of the league. Could, but not likely. Until this season this created a culture of mediocrity in at least one league club, that club being East Stirlingshire.

Between 2002 and 2007 East Stirlingshire were the strongest club in all of Scotland, and by strongest I mean they managed to prop up a league featuring 41 other clubs without budging an inch. In 2008 this changed, the mighty Shire managed to finish second-bottom due more in part to a dreadful season from Forfar than any spectacular revival from themselves. East Stirling finished one point above Athletic who had posted their worst season in recent memory, well over a decade. This Houdini act spared East Sitrlingshire the potential ax.

With that said it would be criminal of me to not mention that the club is currently second in the third division, indeed they sit only four points off the summit though Cowdenbeath have a match in hand.

Indeed, it seems the threat of relegation has breathed new life into what was basically a dead club.

Yet, worryingly, the executives in Scottish football do not seem to have noticed this minor miracle right under their noses. Yes, changes have been mentioned in Scottish football, but not the correct changes. What now seems like many moons ago, the SFL made a proposal to the SFA for a new division, the SPL 2. This would do nothing to stop the bleeding in Scottish football, in reality it's almost like putting bubble gum on an earthquake-damaged dam. Yet, it seems the SPL2 will be given the green light, and could play as early as August though August 2010 seems much more likely.

As an American I may seem out of my depth to talk about my ideas to fix Scottish football, and I will concede that I know little of the idiosyncrasies that Scottish clubs face, but I'm going to list my ideas anyway.

• 1. Adopt summer football: For reason 1A see Fir Park's pitch. The Scottish winter is hell on natural surfaces, and the summer sun on the pitches would improve the game in more ways than one.

• 2. Relegate SPL clubs in administration. Embarrassingly a few seasons back tiny Partick Thistle were relegated after having a fire sale of players in order to make ends meet. Patrick managed to avoid administration but not the drop, for Motherwell and Livingston it was the other way around (though Livingston would later see themselves relegated on merit).

• 3. Open the league, somewhat. Allow the Champions of the three senior non-leagues a change to meet in a playoff with the winner gaining promotion to the SFL at the expense of the Third Division's wooden spoon winners. Though make sure the promoted club meets league requirements before entry.

I realize that changes are extreme and will never happen, but I do think they could improve the standard of football in Scotland, and with Scotland being one of the homes of football, improvement is very much needed.