Soccer Scottish Cup final: Michael Walker talks to Glasgow Rangers chairman John McClelland

Dundee's odds are 9-1 to beat Rangers and win the Scottish Cup final this afternoon. If they fail, and obviously they are expected to, Rangers will have completed the treble - another one.

Scottish football may have enjoyed something of an uplift of late, but it is still regarded as a two-horse town.

Celtic reached the UEFA Cup final and the Premier League was not decided until the last minutes on the last day, but the flush of enhanced credibility is unlikely to glow quite as strongly should Rangers mete out a thumping today and then Germany do the same to Scotland when they visit Hampden next Saturday.

Alex McLeish's achievement of steering Rangers to a treble in his first full season at Ibrox - matching what Martin O'Neill did at Celtic - looks less glittering in the context of Scottish football.

Outside Glasgow, this is perceived as a league barely deserving the description. When Rangers put six past Dunfermline on Sunday to clinch their 50th league title, they were hammering a club 51 points behind them. Yet, Dunfermline finished fifth in the SPL.

To then hear Rangers chairman John McClelland yesterday call this season's championship "a nail-biting marathon" could provoke the odd guffaw.

But McClelland, who succeeded David Murray as chairman last July, put up a stern defence of Scottish football.

He is prepared to accept that "it is not realistic" that a club outside Rangers and Celtic could win the SPL "in the next two or three years", but he is hopeful that "in five years it is a possibility".

"The bottom line is that the SPL is a more competitive league than some people imagine," McClelland said. "Just because only one of two teams wins the league it doesn't make it a bad league. Bayern Munich romped the Bundesliga: does that make it bad?

"How many teams can win the English league, the Dutch league, in Belgium, in Germany? The competition that Rangers and Celtic face every week is intense.

Both Rangers and Celtic won 31 of their 38 SPL fixtures, drew four and lost three. Manchester United lost five of 38 in the Premiership; but abroad, Juventus lost four of 34, Bayern lost five and PSV Eindhoven lost just two games in winning the Dutch league again. The comparison is valid.

"If Celtic lost five times and we lost four it would be an even better league," McClelland said. "That would be excellent in Scottish terms and what I hope is that Scottish clubs outside Rangers and Celtic can now go and surprise Europe.

"There are always clubs who surprise in Europe, look at Basle. A Dundee or an Aberdeen could be that.

"Winning today isn't guaranteed. Dundee are a very good footballing team and we didn't beat them a few weeks ago."

A degree of self-justification is always expected under questioning, but it is greater in Scotland because of the persistence of the Old Firm-to-England agenda.

In Manchester this week for the European Cup final and a UEFA meeting, McClelland departed with the certainty that Rangers' future is in Scotland.

"I must have met six chairmen (from the Premiership) and not one of them mentioned it. Really, there haven't even been formal discussions. There is no plan, no process and I don't think there is an invitation."

Even though the SPL, in the words of a Celtic director, is "a failed economic entity" and Rangers have serious debt?

"I don't think it is a failed economic entity. I'm not sure how much Celtic would have grossed from being in the UEFA Cup final but they got into the Champions League and the UEFA Cup from being in Scotland. Would they be guaranteed that in England?"

There are obvious counter arguments to that, McClelland agreed. A good one from Dundee this afternoon would add to the debate.