The 2007–08 Scottish Premier League season was the tenth season of the

Scottish Premier League The Scottish Premier League (SPL) was the Scottish football league system, top-level league competition for professional Association football, football clubs in Scotland. The league was founded in 1998, when it broke away from the Scottish Foo ...

. It began on 4 August 2007 and was originally due to end on 18 May 2008. Due to the death of Phil O'Donnell and extremely poor weather causing the postponement of fixtures during the winter, as well as a backlog of Rangers fixtures and their progression to the UEFA Cup Final, the SPL decided to move the final round of fixtures back four days to 22 May 2008. It was the first season under the sponsorship of the Clydesdale Bank. Gretna had been promoted from the First Division and played in the SPL for the first time, replacing Dunfermline Athletic. Gretna did not play at their home stadium Raydale Park as it did not meet the SPL stadia criteria of 6,000 and instead used

Motherwell Motherwell (, ) is a List of towns and cities in Scotland by population, town and former burgh in North Lanarkshire, Scotland, United Kingdom, south east of Glasgow. It has a population of around 32,120. Shires of Scotland, Historically in the p ...

's Fir Park for all but one of their games; that match was at Livingston's

Almondvale Stadium Almondvale Stadium, also known as The Home of the Set Fare Arena for sponsorship purposes, is a association football, football stadium, located in the Almondvale area of Livingston, West Lothian, Scotland. It has been the home ground of Scottish ...

. The championship was determined on the final day of the season with

Celtic Celtic, Celtics or Keltic may refer to: Language and ethnicity *pertaining to Celts, a collection of Indo-European peoples in Europe and Anatolia **Celts (modern) *Celtic languages **Proto-Celtic language *Celtic music *Celtic nations Sports Foot ...

and Rangers even on 86 points. Celtic travelled to Tannadice to play

Dundee United Dundee United Football Club is a Scotland, Scottish professional association football, football club based in the city of Dundee. Formed in 1909, originally as Dundee Hibernian, the club changed to the present name in 1923. United are nickname ...

knowing that a win would likely secure the title due to their superior goal difference (+57 to +53). Meanwhile, Rangers needed to better Celtic's result in their match against

Aberdeen Aberdeen ( ; ; ) is a port city in North East Scotland, and is the List of towns and cities in Scotland by population, third most populous Cities of Scotland, Scottish city. Historically, Aberdeen was within the historic county of Aberdeensh ...

at Pittodrie (or in the event of both winning, overhaul the goal difference). As it turned out, Celtic won 1–0 following Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink's second-half header, while Aberdeen beat Rangers 2–0 thanks to goals from Lee Miller and Steve Lovell. Celtic qualified directly for the Champions League, while second-placed Rangers qualified for the Second qualifying round. Third-placed Motherwell qualified for the

UEFA Cup The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , , "little star", is a Typography, typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a star (heraldry), heraldic star. Computer scientists and Mathematici ...

and Hibernian qualified for the Intertoto Cup. First Division side Queen of the South also qualified for the UEFA Cup after reaching the Scottish Cup Final, losing to Rangers. Gretna were

relegated Promotion and relegation is used by sports leagues as a process where teams can move up and down among divisions in a league system, based on their performance over a season. Leagues that use promotion and relegation systems are sometimes call ...

after just one season in the SPL and were replaced by First Division champions Hamilton Academical for the following season.

Clubs

Promotion and Relegation from 2006–07

Promoted from First Division to

Premier League The Premier League is a professional association football league in England and the highest level of the English football league system. Contested by 20 clubs, it operates on a system of promotion and relegation with the English Football Lea ...

* Gretna Relegated from

to First Division * Dunfermline Athletic

Stadia and locations

Personnel and kits

Managerial changes

Notable events

*29 December: Thirty-five-year-old

captain Phil O'Donnell collapsed on the pitch at Fir Park during a match against

, and died later that evening. *29 March: Gretna were relegated after losing 2–0 to St Mirren at Love Street. *19 April: Hamilton Academical won promotion to the

as First Division champions following a 2–0 over Clyde. *22 May:

won their third successive SPL title after defeating

1–0. *29 May: Gretna were demoted to the Third Division after administrator David Elliot could not guarantee the Football League that the club would fulfil its fixtures next season. *2 June: Gretna resigned from the Scottish Football League because the administrator concluded that the club could not continue to run as a business.

League table

Results

Matches 1–22

During matches 1–22 each team played every other team twice (home and away).

Matches 23–33

During matches 23–33 each team played every other team once (either at home or away).

Matches 34–38

During matches 34–38 each team played every other team in their half of the table once.

Top six

Bottom six

Goals

Top scorers

Hat-tricks

Kits and shirt sponsors

For the first time in the SPL, certain teams also carried secondary sponsors on the back of their jerseys, above the players' names.

Attendances

As of 22 May 2008 ¹ Gretna were sharing Motherwell's stadium whilst Raydale Park was being upgraded. However, in March the Fir Park pitch was considered unplayable so the game between Gretna and Celtic was played instead at Almondvale, the home of First Division club Livingston.

Managerial changes

Awards

Clydesdale Bank Premier League Monthly awards

Clydesdale Bank Premier League Awards

Broadcasting rights

Setanta Sports provided domestic TV live coverage and highlights as in previous seasons, with STV and

BBC Scotland BBC Scotland is a division of the BBC and the main public broadcaster in Scotland. Its headquarters are in Glasgow, employing approximately 1,250 staff as of 2017, to produce 15,000 hours of television and radio programming per year. BBC Scotla ...

also broadcasting free-to-air highlights.

BBC Radio Scotland BBC Radio Scotland is a Scottish national radio network owned and operated by BBC Scotland, a division of the BBC. It broadcasts a wide variety of programmes. It replaced the Scottish BBC Radio 4 opt-out service of the same name from 23 N ...

continued to provide domestic radio coverage, with many games also available internationally, and all domestically, through their website. The

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

held rights to show highlights online and do so through the BBC Sport website. Internationally, the Premier League's overseas television broadcasting partner was TWI, with coverage of the SPL available in over 100 territories worldwid
Overseas Broadcasting , Scottish Premier League , Broadcasting , Overseas

Transfer deals

External links

*Scottish Premier League 2007–08 on

BBC Sport BBC Sport is the sports division of the BBC, providing national sports coverage for BBC BBC Television, television, BBC Radio, radio and BBC Online, online. The BBC holds the television and radio UK broadcasting rights to several sports, broadc ...

: News

Recent results

Upcoming fixtures

Live Scores

Current standings

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:2007-08 Scottish Premier League Scottish Premier League seasons 1

Scot Scottish people or Scots (; ) are an ethnic group and nation native to Scotland. Historically, they emerged in the early Middle Ages from an amalgamation of two Celtic peoples, the Picts and Gaels, who founded the Kingdom of Scotland (or ...