Six in a row is the number on everyone's lips as the Scottish Premiership returns.
Six in a row is the number on everyone's lips as the Scottish Premiership returns. Celtic go again as champions after last season's final-day classic against Hearts came down to a two-point margin, but the summer has reshaped all three of last term's top sides, with Derek McInnes swapping Tynecastle for Ibrox and taking Lawrence Shankland and Cammy Devlin with him. Here's how the bookies see the title race and the Golden Boot shaping up.
Scottish Premiership Winner Odds
Scottish Premiership Favourites to Win
History is firmly on Celtic's side. Twenty of the last 26 Scottish top-flight titles have gone to Parkhead, with Rangers picking up the other six, and the Hoops arrive at Dundee on Monday night bidding for a sixth successive crown under Martin O'Neill.
The numbers say champions rarely need to be flawless to get over the line. The average points tally for a Premiership winner since the 2000-01 season sits at 91.65, rising to 93.5 across the 2020s alone, and the average winning margin over that same 26-year stretch is 12.12 points. Genuine title races are the exception rather than the rule - only seven times since 2000 has the gap between first and second been fewer than five points.
Last season was one of those rare exceptions. Celtic's 82 points were enough to see off a Hearts side that finished on a club-record 80, the smallest margin between the top two clubs (excluding third) in 26 years, and the closest an Old Firm side has come to losing the title to a challenger from outside Glasgow since Aberdeen's 1985 triumph under Sir Alex Ferguson. That's 41 years and counting without a non-Old Firm champion.
Whether Rangers can close the gap now falls to Derek McInnes, the man who came within three minutes of ending that run with Hearts before swapping Tynecastle for Ibrox. McInnes has raided his old club for both Lawrence Shankland and Cammy Devlin, while Rangers finished last season on 2.1 points per game under Danny Röhl - almost identical to McInnes's own 2.11 average at Hearts. It's a squad overhaul that gives Rangers a fifth different permanent manager since 2021, but arguably their most joined-up appointment in that time.
Hearts, for their part, have gone the other way entirely. Wouter Vrancken arrives from Sint-Truiden, where he guided the Belgian club to their best league finish in 60 years, but he inherits a Tynecastle squad stripped of its captain, its head coach and its engine room. A 6-0 aggregate Champions League qualifying exit to Sturm Graz before a ball has even been kicked domestically hardly settles the nerves.
Scottish Premiership Predictions
Based on the trends, backing Celtic to make it six titles in a row at 10/11 is the percentage play, particularly with O'Neill's pedigree at this level - his first spell in charge averaged 97.4 points per season between 2000 and 2005. Rangers at 6/4 represent the value if McInnes can arrest five years of managerial upheaval and get Shankland firing from the off, while anything shorter than 10/1 on Hearts to bridge that 41-year gap looks tough to back given the scale of their summer clear-out.
Aberdeen at 130/1 are a long way back, but Stephen Robinson's first full season at Pittodrie, backed by a busy recruitment drive, gives the Dons a puncher's chance of gatecrashing the top four rather than the title picture itself.
Scottish Premiership Top Scorer Odds
Shankland arrives at Ibrox as a two-time Golden Boot contender, with 88 goals in 171 appearances across four seasons at Hearts, including 24 in a single campaign in 2023/24 - still the benchmark figure this century. Now with better service to aim for, he heads the market as he looks to add a Rangers crown to his collection.
Camilo Duran's price reflects a red-hot pre-season, with three goals in three friendlies against Sporting CP, Middlesbrough and AC Milan following a £6m move from Qarabag, where he managed 15 goals and 10 assists last term. Chermiti, meanwhile, showed exactly what he's capable of once he found his feet at Dundee United, scoring 11 goals in his final 19 league appearances of last season having managed just one in his first 18.
Last season's Golden Boot went to Tawanda Maswanhise on just 17 goals - the lowest winning total in recent years - in a race so tight that Benjamin Nygren and Shankland tied on 16 and three more players shared fifth on 14. With the division seemingly more unpredictable than ever up front, this year's market looks just as open.
