USH costs about £200-300k to install and about £1-2k a day to run. Most clubs don't use it even if they have it because it costs so much. It can also have a detrimental effect on the pitch, making it difficult for some clubs to maintain a good playing surface. My club, Morton, are currently top of the First Division. If we get promoted under the current rules then we would be forced to install USH, which is financially illogical. We also have one of the best playing surfaces in the country, and suffer very few postponements due to a frozen pitch. There are pitch covers that protect the pitch up to -8oC at a fraction of the price of USH, so the positives of having USH are virtually nil. This is the kind of thing which makes the restructuring of Scottish football important. It's not as if Kilmarnock, Motherwell and so on are ever going to be European powers, so sustaining as many well-run full time clubs and encouraging youth development and entertaining football matches are the top priorities. Fair financial distribution, a pyramid system and increased competition (along with a decrease in repitition) are the important points of restructing Scottish football. Rangers and Celtic can do whatever the hell they want - hopefully that will involve them being elsewhere. Many of their fans, who often display a strange sense of superiority simply for a decision they made to support one of the big clubs, will find the experience of competing in a more difficult league character building, I'm sure.
Scotland should have looked at the Welsh league and realized that their model was probably better than everyone going under trying to keep up a pretense of being a real competitive league system. Let Rangers and Celtic go to England (Hearts and Hibs, too, if they really want) and let the rest get on with rightsizing things. It's better to be irrelevant and alive than dead.
Not sure would Uefa do it. But a pyramid system below the SPL would cut travelling costs. like the welsh league's and i could see the big two leaving but not hearts and hibs. They would be League one at best, Celtic and Rangers would be Championship and over time prob make Premiership.
I doubt the English FA (and the league clubs) would let Rangers and Celtic in at any level above League 2, unless there is some money changing hands.
Historically grandfathered in (they started playing in the English pyramid before the Welsh league existed IIRC).
quick check, and there was no league. Ok, fair enough. However, there IS a precedent of teams from one country competing in another country's system. Curious.
They never played in a Welsh league as there wasn't one till 1992. They were too big to play the welsh league, the Welsh Football Assocation would love them but nobody other than Cardiff and Swansea would have a chance, I can imagine Cardiff beating Port Talbot 20-0 in a ten team league. Wrexham and Newport County are two more Welsh club playing in England and are prob be too big for welsh football too (just about) I think there is one or two other welsh clubs playing in England who would be better off playing in the Welsh Premier league but they dont think so. They wouldnt allow Northern Irish clubs play in the FAI cup or for Newry to play in the league of Ireland. Derry City were given special dispensation due to the Troubles in Northern Ireland.
UEFA's rules in this regard are archaic, harmful and woefully inconsistent. If they were serious about these sort of things, they'd have forced all the Welsh clubs to play in Wales, for example.
I agree, but it's not just UEFA. CONCACAF was actually progressive allowing the Canadian teams to play in MLS, but a single Caribbean League or Central American League, at least combining the first division in those countries, would really help the bigger clubs in those countries IMO. Not only would joint leagues create larger TV markets and generate more revenue for the clubs, it would raise the level of competition.
I can't agree more with this. I mean, the two regions already have/had their own version of the CL with the former Copa Interclubes UNCAF in Central America (2007 last season) and the still contested CFU Club Championship. It isn't like they can't organize or work together. I'd love to see both a Central American and Caribbean Premier League.
But probably not teams switching leagues just because they felt like it. There's practical reasons why Cardiff and Swansea can't go and play against village teams on fields with one man and his dog on the sidelines. Scotland has lots of decent sized teams so Celtic and Rangers shouldn't go bust if they're run properly.
the reason there was no Welsh league is because there's never been any reliable north-south transportation in Wales, so it made a lot more sense for Welsh teams to play in regional leagues within north and south England... if there hadn't been a push in the early 90's to force a single British FA, there still wouldn't be a Welsh league. Rangers and Celtic are about as far apart from the likes of St. Mirren and Ross County as Cardiff and Swansea are from The New Saints and Bangor Town. There are maybe 4 other SPL clubs that have any business being in a league with the Old Firm (the Edinburgh clubs and the New Firm). And they'd all be better off in England.
Dunno about Central America, but I can't imagine that the potential increased revenue in the Caribbean is enough to match the extra cost of all the island-hopping. As it is the Jamaican teams won't bother with the CFU Champions Cup. Regional league for the smaller countries in Europe is a no-brainer though. Seems to work well in basketball.
Welsh clubs played in England because the original football league contained only northern and midlands clubs, so when the southern league formed a few years later, it picked up the best clubs from the south of the UK. There would have been no thought about whether it was right or not for Welsh clubs to be in the league. Just as "The Football League" made no reference at all to it being English, nor did the Southern League. It's a bit more than that. Even at championship level, Cardiff and Swansea pull crowds 50 times higher than typical League of Wales crowds. While crowds for those other clubs would no doubt rise if Cardiff, Swansea, Newport, Wrexham etc were there, crowds at those four would shrink hugely.
Rangers are playing in the equivalent to the Welsh league right now. TNS get home crowds about 300, even the lowest SPL teams get about 4000. I hate this 'have any business being in a league with the Old Firm' stuff. If people supported their local club instead of one of the OF we'd have a much better and healthier league, and a much better national team (with more well-funded youth systems). Aberdeen, Dundee Utd, Hibs and Hearts aren't so much bigger than many other clubs in Scotland. There's no need for them to go anywhere.
I didn't say Scottish clubs were in absolute terms equal to Welsh clubs, I said financially the gap between the 4 best supported Scottish clubs and the rest isn't that far off the gap between the 4 Welsh clubs who play in England and the rest.
It seems odd that the same people who were dead set on ensuring that Rangers incurred the maximum punishment would then turn around and streamline their path back to the top flight. Perhaps life sans-Rangers wasn't as rosy as they thought it would be?
Except, as noted earlier when I made a similar comment to yours, this doesn't streamline the path Rangers takes. They are virtually guaranteed to be promoted this season, so either way it is two more seasons for them to get back into SPL.
Following up from the beginning of the thread: http://www.queenofthesouth-mad.co.u...onstruction_plans_revealed_785479/index.shtml No relegation from 1st to 2nd if the 12-12-18 plan goes ahead. Instead of a playoff between 9th in the First and 2nd, 3rd, and 4th in the Second it will be a playoff between 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th in the Second for a second promotion spot to the First, joining the current First Division 9 that don't win the division, the SPL relegated team, and the Second Division winner (almost certainly Queen of the South) to make the new 12 team First Division. The remaining Second Division teams would merge with the whole Third Division to make the 18 team lowest division.