How to save Scottish football

Discussion in 'Scotland' started by Pedro's greasy do, Mar 18, 2009.

  1. ECUNCHATER

    ECUNCHATER Member

    Sep 30, 1999
    I know this is off topic, but the MLS schedule is not based on the weather. They play in the summer because they can get more exposure and have less conflict with other sports. When MLS starts, NCAA basketball, NCAA football, the NFL, NBA, and NHL are all either in their off season, or down to playing a limited post season schedule. In 1996 MLS would have gotten almost no games on tv, if the season started at the same time as almost all other pro and college sports in the USA.
     
  2. Ed NYC Firm

    Ed NYC Firm Member

    May 14, 2000
    NY
    Club:
    Dundee FC
    Nat'l Team:
    Scotland
    Here is my structure for Scottish Football

    Eliminate SPL and SFL . All football under the SFA.

    16 team top division
    2 18 team lower divisions

    bottom team relegated from top and 2nd division
    second bottom enter a 4 team playoff with the 2-4 teams from lower division for a spot in the higher division.

    Bottom team in 3rd Division enters a 4 team playoff with the champions of the EoS, WoS and the Highland League for a spot in the 3rd Division the following year.
     
  3. Gordon EF

    Gordon EF Moderator
    Staff Member

    Jan 15, 2004
    Edinburgh
    18 team leagues with 1 and 3 quarters promotion places? No thanks.
     
  4. Ed NYC Firm

    Ed NYC Firm Member

    May 14, 2000
    NY
    Club:
    Dundee FC
    Nat'l Team:
    Scotland
    Then make it 2 auto down and 2-4 playing for the 2nd promotion spot. Is what I propose perfect, no but it's better than anything I've heard proposed by the "powers that be".
     
  5. Gordon EF

    Gordon EF Moderator
    Staff Member

    Jan 15, 2004
    Edinburgh
    Yeah, fair enough. I think 18 is far too big for th elower leagues. You'd have clubs marooned in the same league for decades with very little excitement in being involved in promotion/relegation like the bad old days.

    16 team leagues. PLay each other twice then split into top and bottom halfs. 37 games a season. Two up and down with play-offs. That's what I'd got for. Three leagues then North/East and South/West regional leagues below that.
     
  6. Ed NYC Firm

    Ed NYC Firm Member

    May 14, 2000
    NY
    Club:
    Dundee FC
    Nat'l Team:
    Scotland
    I use the 16,18,18 because that's what the total clubs of what's in SPL+SFL now. What 4 teams will voluntarily go down to the Juniors?
     
  7. Gordon EF

    Gordon EF Moderator
    Staff Member

    Jan 15, 2004
    Edinburgh
    There are 42 league clubs. 3*16 is 48, so we'd have to invite/promote 6 non-league clubs in. Which I'd be happy about. It'd also make the current league clubs feel like they have a bit of a cushion from relegation.
     
  8. Goforthekill

    Goforthekill Member

    Aug 13, 2011
    Minnesota
    Club:
    Tottenham Hotspur FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    3 leagues of 14, play each other twice, league split with top 6 teams after 26 games, play each other twice, total of 36 games. 2 teams Promoted/Relegated from/to each league (except 3rd division) worst team in 3rd division plays best team in pyramid for their spot. Champions league style league cup w/group stages. Season starts august until the christmas break. Season re-starts in the beginning of february. Split league starts in april and goes through may.
     
  9. Gordon EF

    Gordon EF Moderator
    Staff Member

    Jan 15, 2004
    Edinburgh
    Well the current proposal being floated by the SFL is 16/10/16 with two up/two down and play-offs with a play-off for non-league teams to enter the set up. I don't like th euneven leagues or the idea to call it the Premier League, The Championship and the First Division. Why not just go the whole hog and call it Premier Division 1, 2 and 3.
     
  10. oneeyedfool

    oneeyedfool Member+

    Nov 17, 2012
    Club:
    New York Cosmos
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    An alternative to the re-orgs the Scottish and Irish leagues have been going through:

    Celtic Super League (well, maybe you'd need a different name) with 6 clubs from Scotland (say, Celtic, Rangers, Aberdeen, Hibernian, Hearts, Dundee United); 5 from the Republic of Ireland (say, Shamrock Rovers, Sligo Rovers, St. Patrick's Athletic, Bohemians and Cork City);
    5 from Northern Ireland (Derry City would go here despite playing in ROI, and say Linfield, Glentoran, Cliftonville, Crusaders); and 4 from Wales (say, Cardiff City, Swansea, Bangor City and The New Saints).

    Champions league places remain in tact for the top finishers from each country, and lowest finisher from each country is relegated to a national top league which resides in the national pyramid. Basically this super league goes at the top and gets the champions league places and a few europa but say leave one europa place for the champion of the national divisions each, who are of course promoted to this Celtic Super League to replace the relegated team the following season.
     
  11. Gordon EF

    Gordon EF Moderator
    Staff Member

    Jan 15, 2004
    Edinburgh
    This will never happen. For a start, Cardiff and Swansea are big clubs in the English leagues now. They'd never go for it. All the other Welsh clubs are way too small to merit a place.

    Also, throwing the OF into a league with Irish clubs is asking for trouble. And why would these Scottish clubs want to join a league with the Irish clubs? The quality wouldn't be any better, the crowds wouldn't be better and the vast majority of fixtures (in fact all of them) wouldn't be very appealing to the Scottish clubs. Why would Hearts etc want to leave the Scottish Leagues and join a league with the likes of Crusaders and Sligo Rovers?
     
  12. oneeyedfool

    oneeyedfool Member+

    Nov 17, 2012
    Club:
    New York Cosmos
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    I agree Cardiff and Swansea would be the toughest gets, but if you don't get them its easy enough to simply cut the Welsh out of it and let them be part of the English league if they prefer. Or you could take away one of the Welsh places and give it to Scotland to fit an extra club in.

    Rangers and Celtic would make a ton of money playing regularly in Ireland, and so would the Irish clubs playing them. Scottish population is 5.2 million, and Ireland total is 6.2 million, throw in the Welsh and you add another 3 million. So you can go from 5.2 million to 14.6 million in market size in this league.

    And Sligo Rovers may be better than Hearts.

    Summary: Bigger market, more likely to attract bigger sponsors, and spur more money and interest for all involved.
     
  13. Gordon EF

    Gordon EF Moderator
    Staff Member

    Jan 15, 2004
    Edinburgh
    Easy to say, harder to turn into reality. The biggest Irish clubs are, at best, on a level with lower SPL teams in terms of size of club and probably quality, it's just not enough of an incentive to move from your own league. I doubt you'd find more than a handful of Hearts fans who'd like this idea.
     
  14. frasermc

    frasermc Take your flunky and dangle

    Celtic
    Scotland
    Jul 28, 2006
    Newcastle-Upon-Tyne
    Club:
    Celtic FC
    Nat'l Team:
    Scotland
    Population totals are all well and good when the main sporting team game in that country is football. But Ireland has a far higher amount of people interested in rugby, all-ireland football etc which reduces the amount of support, and interest, in football teams.
     
  15. Scottish_Morton

    Jul 7, 2003
    Irvine, Scotland
    Figures from last season:

    Average attendance in Irish top tier: 1551
    Average attendance in Welsh top tier: 296
    Average attendance in Scottish 2nd tier: 2297

    The 4th tier in Scotland is better supported than the top tier in Wales, and the 2nd tier in Scotland is better supported than the top tier in Ireland. I see little to gain from combining the leagues.

    I like the proposal that the SPL has agreed on today - two top leagues of 12, splitting into 3 leagues of 8 after 22 matches. All we need then is the SFL to organise into a national division with regional divisions below it. As long as the SFL clubs aren't shut out (by whatever means) and there are plenty of promotion/relegation places into the SPL then it would be a good set-up IMO.

    I would still prefer one governing body only, but this would be a massive improvement.

    My preferred set-up:
    2 x 12 (3 x 8)
    16 (potentially 4 up, 4 down)
    Regional leagues.
     
  16. Gordon EF

    Gordon EF Moderator
    Staff Member

    Jan 15, 2004
    Edinburgh
    I'd quite like that part from the top two splitting into three. It just sounds completely hare-brained. A league should be a league for the whole season. One league splitting for the last round of fixtures is about as much madness as I could take.
     
    C-bus repped this.
  17. Scottish_Morton

    Jul 7, 2003
    Irvine, Scotland
    It's tough to figure out a good enough compromise.

    No-one really wants the same system of playing another team 4 times a season. So 16 team leagues sound good. Except you have to make up for the loss of games, and you have to start worrying about the gap between a full-time top tier and part-time 2nd tier. 14 is an awkward number without a split, and with 12 it's either a split or back to playing each team 4 times.

    For me the viable alternative would be to standardise the whole league system and involved the Juniors, Highland League and East/South League Teams:

    top tier: 16 (2 auto down, 2 play-off)
    2nd tier: 16 (2 auto up, 2 play-off, 2 auto down, 4 play-off)
    3rd tier: 2 x 16 (North East and South West, 1 auto up + 2 play-off from each, 2 auto down, 4 play-off)
    Regional league systems

    I can't see this happening though. Which makes some variation of the SPL proposal (without the invite rubbish) the best of the realistic options.
     
  18. ceezmad

    ceezmad Member+

    Mar 4, 2010
    Chicago
    Club:
    Chicago Red Stars
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Premier League, League 1 and Division A. :p
     
  19. Green Monster

    Green Monster Member

    Feb 5, 2013
    Scotland
    Club:
    Celtic FC
    Very disappointed with the decision to only fine Sevco for the second contracts that they issued to their players for all those years, which meant all those players were incorrectly registered. It is an absolute travesty. I'm nt saying this as a Celtic fan, becuase IMO, if the titles had've been stripped they should have been left voided and not re-assigned.

    No. Scottish Football needs to move forward and needs to be restructured. Yet allowing this to get off with a extremely leiniant slap on the wrists of just £250K fine is a throw back that the powers-that-be have not paid attention to the way that the fans reacted over the summer. The powers seem to just want to go back to the way things were - but the thing is, the way things were was not either progressive or was promting the best interests of the game, rather protecting the status quo.

    This culture needs to change. Itr's all well to talk about restructuring the leagues but unless the governance of the game is not similarly restructured, then waht is the point? There are 3 govberning bodies and not 1 of them seems to b e doing the job right.
     
  20. Goforthekill

    Goforthekill Member

    Aug 13, 2011
    Minnesota
    Club:
    Tottenham Hotspur FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    I was on board with the 12-12-18 plan for a while, but then i read about how it was tried in austria and it was really boring (read the article on STV). I think the best way to restructure would be a 10-16-16, or a 10-10-10-12. ten teams in the top flight seems right. 12 is perfect but 44 games is too much. 36 is plenty. there would be 1 automatic relegation place and two spots in a pr0/rel play off at the bottom of the premier division. This would make a more exiting relegation battle for teams at the bottom. in the second division there would be 1 automatic promotion spot and either 4 pro/rel playoff spots (if 16), or 2 (if 10). The pro/rel play-off would work like this: the 4 teams 2-5 in the championship would play each other, 2 v 5, 3 v 4, and the winners would go on the play the two teams second and third to last in the premier division. The two winners go to the premier division, the two losers go to the championship division. I've got more details to my proposal but i don't want to write them all out, so ill just get the idea out there. 10-10-10-10 would be perfect IMO, but that would mean kicking out 2, or having two mergers (obvious possibilities would be East Sterlingshire and Stenhousemuir, as well as Dundee United and Dundee)
     
  21. Goforthekill

    Goforthekill Member

    Aug 13, 2011
    Minnesota
    Club:
    Tottenham Hotspur FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Actually, being an ignorant american, thought that the SPL played 44 games, they play 38. I think that a fully balanced schedule of 36 would still be better but a top flight with the same 38 game format would be ok, if an additional automatic relegation spot is added and there are 2 spots in a pro/rel playoff. still i think 10 would be better.
     
  22. frasermc

    frasermc Take your flunky and dangle

    Celtic
    Scotland
    Jul 28, 2006
    Newcastle-Upon-Tyne
    Club:
    Celtic FC
    Nat'l Team:
    Scotland
    Playing each team 4 games a season minimum (cup games excluded) breeds familiarity, which breeds contempt, which stagnates the league.

    The league needs increased and get it down to 2x matches per season. The difference between the top 6 in the 1st div and the bottom 6 in the SPL is almost negligible.
     
  23. Green Monster

    Green Monster Member

    Feb 5, 2013
    Scotland
    Club:
    Celtic FC
    Scotland is too small a country to be supporting 40 professional teams. It is time to bite the bullet & restructure the game at the professional level - even if that means focing clubs to merge so that they are viable and pursue the model of what has happened in Australia in various sports there, including the formation and continuing growth of the A-League.

    Nobody wants to see football clubs going down the drain as they cannot survive one by one, which is what we are seeing anyway. In Australia, clubs that were founding members of the Rugby League in 1908 were forced to merge together in order to be able to move into the 21st century, and yes it did hurt, but the fans gradually came back and the clubs involved are seriously vaible and more powerful together than being independant. Look at the case of ICT of how this canbe a success.

    Take Fife for instance. Dunfermline, Raith Rovers, Cowdenbeath, East Fife... If those 4 clubs merged together and fielded a single team they would be able to do so at a higher standard combined than any of these alone could. Yes, there is territorial rivalries that need to be overcome, but it is possible. Independantly these clubs are slipping. Raith have had 2 Cup ties v Celtic , which has pretty much seen them through a tough financial patch, but that is a bandaid over a long term problem. The Pars are teetering. Yet all 4 together could field a sroner unit, not to mention that 1 big club that coul potentially compete at the top level will be an attractive proposition to fans that may be initially disenfranhised, and entire them get behind a team that is representative of the hwole of Fife.

    Scottish ootball is sick, and pretending it isn't is not an effecticve way of dealing with reality. Ask RFC fans - they've had their heads buried in the sand for years while Murray and White destroyed that club with gross financial mismanagement. If restructuring means clubs face the prospects of either mering or culling, then there you go. Trying to emulate England is not doing - so perhaps it's time to truy a different model and adopt the drastic measures that has worked in Australia. It migh be tough love, but handling ith kitten gloves has not worked.

    Something has to & tough love might be just what is needed.
     
    frasermc repped this.
  24. Scottish_Morton

    Jul 7, 2003
    Irvine, Scotland
    There's a big problem there though. You're not going to get a large number of people in Dunfermline interested in a football team in Kirkcaldy. You might get a small number of extras but nothing meaningful. It's more likely that an increasing number would simply turn to Rangers or Celtic. If ICT and Ross County can thrive, then there's no good reason why Dunfermline and Raith shouldn't both exist.

    There is at the moment, and that first needs to be addressed by better distribution of the money currently all held by the SPL (which is one of the most importants parts of the reconstruction). Dunfermline are in real trouble and Livi, Falkirk and Hamilton are glorified youth teams at the moment. Thistle pay their players £300 a week and Morton are held together by Golden Casket 'soft' loans. If you simply sucked such teams into the top flight then you'd have too big a gap between them and the part-time clubs (or those who would have to be part time) left behind. If you want a larger top flight then you have to strengthen the teams just below it, or you end up with a closed top division. So the 2nd tier should be the priority for a period at least.

    12-12-18 seems ok as a stop gap. I like the idea but I don't think the majority will take to it. 10-16-16 would encourage the idea of 2 strong top divisions, and perhaps we could move on from there (essentially very similar to the 8-8-8, just 10-8-8). I don't think SPL clubs would mind the repetition as much if they had 2/3 new clubs each season. But again, despite any sort of financial sense, many fans just want a bigger top division. That should be the long term aim, but I don't believe that it can be achieved directly.
     
  25. Green Monster

    Green Monster Member

    Feb 5, 2013
    Scotland
    Club:
    Celtic FC
    In response to your first paragraph, had you read & responded to my entire post. rather than just that one section, you would see I pointed out I was using Fife as an example. And it might no be a Dunfermline team that is supported by Raith, Cowdenbeath & East Fife fans, rather a new entity that is made up of all 4... The Fife Flyers or something (completely out of the air), whilst these 4 clubs themselves can continue as independant clubs at a Junior/amatuer/under age level, the 1 professional team that represents Fife is the Flyers.

    Ironically the point you make in paragraphs 2-3 are, by your own admission, 'stop-gap' on the way to having just one league at the top direction. Your points are one way of doing it, in order to do it gradually, whereas my point was more about biting the bullet and doing it in one hit. The end goal of what we both think is in the eventual best interests - where we seem to differ is in the path to take in achieving the end game result.

    Again, using the situation that unfolded in Australia with the A-League was that clubs that used to represent different parts & ethnic groups within Sydney that had long be part and parcel of the old national competition (NSL) either downscaled or folded, so that there was originally 1 team only in Sydney when the A-League launched (subsequently a 2nd has been added) that was a new team that was representative of Sydney, rather than one that was elevated over the others.

    So the likes of Sydney Croatia, Sydney Olympic and Marconi all scaled back their operations in order to continue as independant entities that now operate in a State League, rather than the National Competition, while Parramatta Power & Northern Spirit (they were supposedly a feeder/partner club of the old R*ngers FC, lol) pretty much ceased to be (the former was the sister of the rugby league team, the Eels, and chose to focus on the Eels, whilst RFC withdrew their 'support' of the Spirit - all around the same time as gross mismanagement at Ipox was spiralling out of control in the early 2000's). This is not even including Wollongong hat also lost it's own team into account. The Sydney Metropolitan Area is huge, covering a vast area (if you drove from Edinburgh to Glasgow and back again you would be lucky to cross Sydney once in the same time.) but it became representative of all these. This is just 1 example.

    My point being residents of Kirkcaldy and Dunfermline (as you highlighted) can support the same club. We are not talking about the 19th century here, when travel of even 10-15 miles was pretty problematic for a lot of people - which is when these clubs were formed. Urban growth and technology (affordable transport & even the very notion of cars makes such distances easily traversible) means that people needn't be so insular in their immediate area.

    It has worked in Sydney, which is an area much larger, more diverse and with greater numbers than what Fife has, so why can't it work in Scotland? It might not be immediately palatable, but it was effective and it has been proven to work.

    Again, I was using Fife as an example, but it can work throughout the country. If the professional game was completely restructured from 40 teams and reduced down to 16 (for instance), by means of teams merging etc & forget about the concept of a 2nd tier, hence no relegation (again representative of what you see in America/Australia) there is a scale that this would greatly improve the standard across the board.

    This also eradicates the need for 3 governing bodies - and all those accompanying perks and 'jobs for the boys'. Australia restructure and within a couple of years qualify for the World Cup for the first time since 1974. Scotland has not qualified since 1998, so there is no reason why this could also be replicated here.

    As far as the fans are concerned, some die hards may say that they are only ever going to support 'their' team, but this they can still do - it will be just at Junior level - and as has been seen in Aus, they can straddle both - supporting their 'traditional' as well as the new club after a couple of seasons the numbers attending the home games of any given team will also swell.Again, this has been sen in Australia.

    There are traditionalists that will also argue that i would feel 'too plastic' or demand that they would no longer follow the game. Again, these same voices were heard in Australia, both in regards to the A-League restructure and the premier rugby league competitions when they went through a 'civil war' in the 1990's. Some fans did indeed walk away from the game, and ventured to supporting other football codes (be it football, AFL or rugby), but gradually they have drifted back.

    The only one exception that really stands out from this is the situation where the Central Coast were promised a relocated rugby league team, and when the 'Bears' who were going to relocate there got screwed (it really is the only word for it) by Manly, this left the Central Coast disenfranchised with the NRL and football took advantage of this, by placing an A-League team there (the Central Coast Mariners), which has been embraced by that regional community as a result.

    Realistically, apart from Glasgow and Edinburgh, the teams that this would effect the most are those that are stretched across the 'belt' of Scotland. Many of these would be the ones to bear the brunt of such a restructure, so it could be that there will in fact be 33/34 clubs merging into 9-10-11 regional teams.

    Of course it would be unrealistic to say that these new clubs will all turn into powerhouses, because that just ain't going to happen. However you would see all 16 with average attendances similar to what (if not exceeding) what the 2 Edinburgh sides can maintain as well as improved competition for spots by players, meaning that if someone wants to make it as a professional they have to work harder than ever to get a professional contract.

    It might not be popular at first, the unfamilarity and concept may 'pinch', but the long term benefits are there to be seen an had - if there are people with the vision, spine and the balls among the governance of the game to execute it.
     

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