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.

News broke last week that at least one Premier League match in the last two seasons has been fixed. The player, whose name has not be revealed due to the Sporting Chance clinic's stance on patient anonymity, is alleged to have intentionally gotten himself sent off and persuaded three teammates to get booked in order to pay off large debts that had piled up as a result of his gambling addiction.

The Arsenal boss, Arsene Wenger, is leading the charge to have the player banned for life from football, be it as a player, coach, or any other job within the game. Wenger doesn't believe footballers should be allowed to gamble as the temptation to bet on matches is too great, and I agree wholeheartedly. Some will say that's a violation of players' personal rights, but when you consider they're getting paid upwards of $250,000 a week to do a job most would do for free, it doesn't seem like much of a sacrifice to stay away from the bookie. Wenger has also called for the player to be publicly named and shamed, again, I agree. Working class people work hard to get enough money to go to Premier League stadiums every week, they go without certain things they like in order to watch 90 minutes of football on the weekend, they deserve to know who did this to them because they're the victims. We don't know if that loss may have seen a club relegated, or had a possible domino effect on the league standings and knocked another club out of contention for a European spot.

Americans and Canadians, or any non-North American who follows baseball will be able to tell you about the outrage caused by Pete Rose's allegedly betting on games when he managed the Cincinnati Reds. Rose is currently serving a lifelong ban from the sport of baseball. Like the unnamed player, Rose was said to have bet on his own games in order to pay off the heavy debts he had collected from a severe gambling addiction, there is no reason why the situation should be handled any differently.