The 2021–22 Scottish Premiership (known as the cinch Premiership for sponsorship reasons) was the ninth season of the

Scottish Premiership The Scottish Premiership, also known as the William Hill (bookmaker), William Hill Premiership for sponsorship reasons, is a professional association football league in Scotland and the highest level of the Scottish football league system. Th ...

, the highest division of

Scottish football Association football is one of the national sports of Scotland and the most popular sport in the country. There is a long tradition of "football" games in Orkney, Lewis and southern Scotland, especially the Scottish Borders, although many of ...

, and the 125th edition overall of the top national league competition, not including one cancelled due to

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

. Celtic claimed the league trophy back after an outstanding run with a 1–1 draw with

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 ...

on 11 May enough to confirm them as champions. Twelve teams contested the league:

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 ...

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 ...

Dundee Dundee (; ; or , ) is the List of towns and cities in Scotland by population, fourth-largest city in Scotland. The mid-year population estimate for the locality was . It lies within the eastern central Lowlands on the north bank of the Firt ...

, Heart of Midlothian, Hibernian, Livingston,

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 ...

Rangers A ranger is typically someone in a law enforcement or military/paramilitary role specializing in patrolling a given territory, called "ranging" or "scouting". The term most often refers to: * Park ranger or forest ranger, a person charged with prot ...

, Ross County, St Johnstone and St Mirren. The season began on 31 July 2021. In December, the Scottish Government imposed stadium capacity restrictions as part of its response to the new

Omicron variant Omicron (B.1.1.529) is a Variants of SARS-CoV-2, variant of SARS-CoV-2 first reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) by the Network for Genomics Surveillance in South Africa on 24 November 2021. It was first detected in Botswana and has ...

. As a result, the winter break was brought forward from 4 January to 27 December. The rule of five substitutions per match was also re-introduced (as used the previous season) after the winter break.

Teams

The following teams changed division after the 2020–21 season. Promoted from the

Championship In sport, a championship is a competition in which the aim is to decide which individual or team is the champion. Championship systems Various forms of competition can be referred to by the term championship. Title match system In this sys ...

* Heart of Midlothian *

Relegated to the

Hamilton Academical Hamilton Academical Football Club, often known as Hamilton Accies, or The Accies, is a Scottish football club from Hamilton, South Lanarkshire, who currently compete in . They were established in 1874 from the school football team at Hamilto ...

Kilmarnock Kilmarnock ( ; ; , ), meaning "the church of Mernóc", is a town and former burgh in East Ayrshire situated in southwest Scotland. The town has served as the administrative centre of East Ayrshire Council since 1996 and is the region's main ...

Stadia and locations

Personnel and kits

Managerial changes

Format

In the initial phase of the season, the 12 teams will play a round-robin tournament whereby each team plays each one of the other teams three times. After 33 games, the league splits into two sections of six teams, with each team playing each other in that section. The league attempts to balance the fixture list so that teams in the same section play each other twice at home and twice away, but sometimes this is impossible. A total of 228 matches will be played, with 38 matches played by each team.

League summary

League table

Results

Matches 1–22

Teams play each other twice, once at home and once away.

Matches 23–33

Teams play each other once, either home or away.

Matches 34–38

After 33 matches, the league splits into two sections of six teams i.e. the top six and the bottom six, with the teams playing every other team in their section once (either at home or away). The exact matches are determined by the position of the teams in the league table at the time of the split.

Top six

Bottom six

Season statistics

Scoring

Top scorers

Hat-tricks

Clean sheets

Source:

Attendances

These are the average attendances of the teams. Games with restricted attendances are not included in these figures.

Awards

Premiership play-offs

The quarter-finals were contested by the teams placed third and fourth in the

2021–22 Scottish Championship The 2021–22 Scottish Championship (known as the cinch Championship for sponsorship reasons) was the ninth season of the Scottish Championship, the second tier of Scottish football. The season began on 31 July. Ten teams contested the league: Ar ...

. The winners advanced to the semi-finals to face the team placed second in the Championship. The final was contested by the semi-final winners and the team placed eleventh in the Premiership, with the winners securing a place in the

2022–23 Scottish Premiership The 2022–23 Scottish Premiership (known as the Cinch (company), cinch Premiership for sponsorship reasons) was the tenth season of the Scottish Premiership, the highest division of Football in Scotland, Scottish football, and the 126th edition ...

Qualified teams

Quarter-finals

First leg

Second leg

Semi-finals

First leg

Second leg

Final

First leg

Second leg

Broadcasting

Live matches (UK and Ireland)

Sky Sports has exclusive rights to the Scottish Premiership and will show up to 48 matches, and the Premiership play-off final. BBC Scotland will broadcast the Premiership quarter-final and semi-final play-off ties. Due to the impact of the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

, clubs will continue to stream matches (not broadcast on Sky) to fans on a pay-per-view or "virtual season ticket" basis, whilst capacities in stadia are limited due to social distancing restrictions.

Highlights

Highlights are broadcast on

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 ...

's flagship

Sportscene ''Sportscene'' is the name of a range of Scottish sports television programmes produced by BBC Scotland. History ''Sportscenes predecessors were ''Sports Special from Scotland'' and ''Sportsreel'', which was broadcast every Saturday at around ...

programme on both Saturdays and Sundays. Sky Sports also show highlights. Gaelic-language channel

BBC Alba BBC Alba is a Scottish Gaelic-language free-to-air public broadcast television channel jointly owned by the BBC and MG Alba. The channel was launched on 19 September 2008 and is on-air for up to seven hours a day. The name ' is the Scottish Gae ...

has rights to broadcast repeats in full of 38 Saturday 3pm matches "as live" at 5.30pm. The SPFL also uploads the goals from every Premiership match onto its

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

channel.

References

External links

Official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:2021-22 Scottish Premiership Scottish Premiership seasons 1 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 ...