So another SPL title won with barely a challenge, with Celtic officially crowned champions on Sunday after a typically late strike from SFA Players’ Player of the Year Shunsuke Nakamura. However, the destination of the league trophy had been decided long before. Rangers, the only realistic challengers, were 17 points behind the defending champions at the turn of the year, and worse was to come for the Ibrox outfit with the farce surrounding the departure of much-lauded new manager Paul Le Guen, and his highly publicised spat with club captain Barry Ferguson.

The return of Walter Smith and Ally McCoist has stabilised things in the West End of Glasgow and next year’s championship should be a tighter affair, but for how long will winning the championship be enough for either side of the Old Firm?

Since it’s conception in 1998, only on one occasion have either Rangers or Celtic finished outside the top 2 in the SPL. For the last 10 years finishing above your Glasgow rivals has meant winning the championship, but in a two horse race, is being first past the post good enough?

Since his appointment as manager in July 2005, Gordon Strachan has found it difficult to win over a considerable section of the Celtic support. Despite cruising to a second consecutive title, Celtic have made an art form of winning ugly this season, and the fans haven’t been entirely satisfied. Reaching the last 16 of the Champions League, a feat that Martin O’Neill never managed to achieve in his five years in charge, hasn’t silenced Strachan’s detractors, and next season fans will be looking for an improvement in the quality of the football they are watching.

Rangers and Celtic are undoubtedly two of the biggest clubs in European football. Both clubs have a great history and massive support all over the world. They regularly attract 50,000-plus fans to home games even against the likes of Inverness Caledonian Thistle and Falkirk. But it’s only on the big European nights that either stadium really comes to life.

Whether it was Rangers' run to the last 16 of the Champions League last year, or Celtic’s this time round, fans of the Old Firm savour the atmosphere on football’s biggest stage. Both clubs have entered new territory in the last two seasons by making it out of the group stages for the first time in the Champions League’s 15-year history. But can either team push on to achieve the greater success their fans crave?

Seven out of the eight quarter-finalists this year were teams from the four big leagues in Europe, England, Spain, Italy and Germany. And this continues the trend of the biggest leagues in Europe providing the best teams.

The domestic competition Rangers and Celtic face on a weekly basis just isn’t good enough to prepare them to face the best teams in Europe, and until that changes it seems highly unlikely that either team will regularly progress beyond the last 16 in the Champions League.

Talk in recent years of a move south of the border has diminished, as have plans for a European ‘Phoenix League’ involving clubs from Holland, Belgium and Portugal. Without increased domestic competition, Rangers and Celtic, despite being huge clubs with world-class facilities and fanatical support, cannot attract the best players in the world. As a result, participation in the SPL will mean fans of the Old Firm might have to put up with beating each other being the highlight of an otherwise dull football season.

How much are the Old Firm held up by the variable quality of the SPL? Send your views to Sportingo.