Clyde01

Give it time, with Tommy Wright away now I’ll bet you are wishing for a bigger top flight before too long.

What doesn’t make sense to me is that at least 4 of those clubs have a more than realistic chance of being in the bottom 6 of a 12 team league and at risk of relegation any given season. Surely increasing the league to 14 gives you more of a buffer against relegation and a chance to consolidate as a top tier side. Surely maintaining long term top flight status is more financially beneficial than the short term season by season how much cash can we leach from the old firm approach.

It was a similar match day access only arrangement we had in place at the time that led to the absolute embarrassment of having to rearrange an important playoff match due to a BMX tournament at the stadium.

No, cove are coming up, stranraer are going down.

As much as I have sympathy for some of those clubs I would rather teams in relegation positions went down and teams not in automatic spots didn’t go up if the only other option was relegating clubs NOT in relegation places to shoehorn in a 14-14-14.

6 premier league clubs coming out and saying they wouldn’t back ANY form of reconstruction at this time doesn’t really suggest they were open to it.

At the very least we should be demanding a substantial compensation package to try and lessen the financial impact and allow us to challenge better. Longer term you would like to think we could establish ourselves in the second tier far more easily than under the current setup. However, getting out of that bottom 14 would not be easy as cove & kelty seem to have money to burn. QP seem to have some financial backing now too plus teams like Peterhead and Forfar who are similar strength to ourselves. Getting stuck down there for another long spell would be soul destroying and isn’t a gamble we should be having to take if ‘fairness for all’ is being applied.

On the other hand if they accept that’s more players we are paying with limited income. Would love to keep grant, possibly Mcstay and lamont but can’t see it in current climate. Imagine we will want as little outgoings as possible.

The fact they can throw cash about to sign players from the championship would suggest they will be a problem. Barry Ferguson is a shite manager but their cheque book will be hard to compete against.

#burgergate

Can’t see us offering any contracts just now until there is more clarity. When the league is going to start and what level of opposition we will be facing has a huge impact on the budget. I’m sure we will keep the 6 or 7 under contract and wait to see what happens.

Obviously we won’t have 52 games. I would imagine there will be 26 games and then a split. If not, the other option of playing 3 times is even worse.

In a 14-14-14 setup you will still be playing teams 4 times so would be as well leaving it as it is.

You shouldn’t need to be convinced of the case to promote them. Does the premier league need convinced of the case to promote Dundee United? No, they won the tier below, you get promoted. That’s kind of how a pyramid system works.

They spend a small fortune to cake walk the league and turns out it’s all for nothing. Pleasing in a way....

They are still in the bottom tier of the SPFL, one tier above the highland league and with all the same clubs they played last season, some of whom they beat by cricket scores. I’m not sure that will seem like much of a promotion.

If 100% of clubs don’t vote in favour then it has failed to meet the ‘nobody is disadvantaged’ criteria stated by the working group. Although we all know what they really meant is nobody important is disadvantaged.

On reflection cove are probably quite happy. Their path to the second tier is significantly easier than it would have otherwise been. Plus being new members of the SPFL they won’t have the same ‘repetition fatigue’ issues with playing mainly the same sides again. Unfortunately ourselves, Peterhead and Forfar are getting absolutely screwed. Stranraer less so as they have been abysmal, but why should hearts and thistle escape relegation and not Stranraer. (Before someone claims otherwise it’s a relegation on all but paper). Sadly I can’t see enough teams objecting to kick this into touch. Our best hope is premier league teams but an increased buffer from relegation (14 teams instead of 12) will probably be enough to sway most of them in favour. There should be financial compensation (parachute payment style) made available to Clyde, Peterhead and Forfar as a result of this, which I won’t hold me breath for but definitely something we should pursue. Automatic relegation from bottom tier is a must too.

Derek Johnstone could be the worst I’ve ever seen. I used to watch ‘Football First’ a lot in the early 00’s for our highlights and he was terrible. Came across as totally wooden and like he was reading the autocue constantly. Didn’t have a clue about players at that level either, the show was riddled with mistakes, embarrassing stuff.

But the bottom teams place in the division has already been taken by the champions of the league below. So you would end up with 1 extra team from your playoff winner. Eg raith are promoted. Thistle, Falkirk, airdrie, Montrose playoff for a promotion slot. We now have 11 teams in the championship.

But as things stand thistle and Stranraer ARE relegated. The only way this will not happen is through reconstruction. If nothing can be agreed you’re down.

Obviously not, this isn’t about Clyde, it’s about knowing what your playing for in advance of the season starting. If Clyde are towards the bottom of league one next season under my proposal and slipped into the bottom tier we could have zero complaints. The lines in the sand were clear from the off. That’s massively different to what’s being suggested now using this aborted seasons standings to craft new leagues in retrospect. The rest of your post was a bit of a word salad to be honest but a couple of points I would raise. 1. I am well aware of the financial repercussions of expanding the top flight and haven’t suggested expanding it beyond 14 at any time. 2. You do realise that not all our leagues need to be exactly the same size. We could easily have an 18 team middle or bottom tier in a 3 league system.

If 14-14-14 is the model that most clubs want then I’m sure Clyde wouldn’t have a major issue providing it is not imposed on current standings. We should go 14-10-10-10 next season (I still maintain it is the least offensive way forward) as a transition to a permanent 14-14-14. This could be achieved by no relegation in the championship in season 2020/21, promote the top 3 of league 1, teams 4-6 in league 1 playoff with league 2 winner for last spot in new tier 2, teams 7-10 in league 1 join league 2 clubs and playoff losers to form new tier 3. The very bottom is where it gets tricky either we relegate 3 and promote 1 (that will set the arses twitching) or go 14-14-16 to maintain 44 clubs and only have 1 relegation spot at the bottom. None of this really answers the question of why 14-14-14 is such a desirable model though, I’m still waiting on a good answer to that. We either play 3 times or split and play 4. One is shite, the other is little different to present.

Stranraer’s 2 league wins all season would suggest you were unlikely to string 5 or 6 together in the last 8 games. Clyde on the other hand were closer to the promotion playoffs than the bottom so we’re not really comparing like for like. For what it’s worth I favour 14-10-10-10 next season which would see Stranraer stay in league 1.

I didn’t say keep the status quo after a temporary 14-10-10-10 though did I? I said go 14-10-10-10 next season to get us out of the current predicament and come up with a model that works best without our thinking being clouded by self interest. The structure needs to come first then clubs play a season for their position in that structure. Instead we’re trying to enforce a structure based on the current standings, which is always going to be unfair on someone.