effeffsee_the2nd

Appetite for change has always been minimal or non existant unless alot of money is involved. Make no mistake there would not even be discussion nor a single change to anything had the rangers fiasco not happened. Wed still have spl sfl 1 up 1 down and the finiancial gulf between spl and sfl. Anyway the point about long journeys in to play against minimal support could be argued all day. If you want to have bigger leagues then your going to have stenhousemuir type clubs in the 2nd tier, thats unavoidable becuase we simply dont have enough big clubs to pack out 2 large divisions like england do. Under this set up only the best part time clubs will make it to play in nationwide leagues and the long distance travel will be twice a year rather than 4 times. You will also get games against bigger full time sides and a decent season could see you in the play offs for the premiership. That has to be more attractive than getting promoted to SPFL 2

out of that list, morton, st mir queens livi and dunfermline are full time ,depending on how they are doing airdie and ayr utd could be looking at full time. thats not too bad going

You could phase it in over a few seasons, try say to merge 2 small leagues into bigger ones untill everyone has a suitable home rather than fastracking / preferencial treatment

im not very keen on play offs to decide the champions and euro spots, the league doesnt lie, the winners should be the winners not a team whos scrambled 4th then played a blinder in the play offs, creates interest aye but hardly fair to crown the best team in the land. also it would probably not hurt to send our best teams into europe rather than the jammiest teams, probably why the cup runners up spot was discontinued due to some embarrasing results (my own team included) just keep it simple, avoid convoluted formats. a simple round robin with enough meaningfull league position (winners euro, rel play offs and relegation) should keep enough interest dont americanize it too much. Theres no perfect set up for us, scotland has a unique set of challanges when it comes to regionalising the pyramid, we dont have alot off full time clubs and we realy dont have many big clubs. we dont have alot of money. whatever changes happen need to benefit the game overall, the one with the fewest negative side effects for me is still; 1 - 16 2 - 16 N/S -16 N/E/W -16 N2/E2/W2 -16 whatever you want below that kEEP IT SIMPLE!

Tbh if it doesn't happen soon I doubt it will. Sooner or later rangers will get promoted and it will be business as usual.

Into league 1 where you are now

Not including sevco , Who brought the biggest away support to east end park in the league since you went down and what was it?

Still thinkin that going from east/west/north straight to the championship against full time clubs is too big to do in 1 step. Its not much of a pyramid if the promoted teams only last one season before going straight back down again. North and south leagues of 16 for a 3rd teir with the top 7 qualifieng for the league cup group stage to hopefully give a bit of a carrot for smaller sides. For those who think this is all a bit unfair on the current spfl 2 sides i say tough. Football is a competetive sport. 4th tier clubs very rarely make it past the 3rd round in the current league cup but they are now going to get 4 games with 1 guarenteed against premier opposition. If they want to funnel that money into directors pockets fine but failure to invest in the squad will result in relegation. A fate not possible untill last season and still not a real enough danger. None of this finishin bottom 3 years in a row with 8 points all season nonsense

I think going from national to 3 way regional is too much to do in one go, it would need 3 automatic relegations spots to accommodate the 3 respective champions, now the thing with that is with it being such a step up you may find that very few promoted teams last longer than 1 season in that league, you may also find that all 3 relegated teams are from the north most years whilst only 1 promoted team is, so the northern teams get replaced at a rate of 3 to 1 until there isn't a home for them. A north south intermediate level isn't really what anyone wants but its probably necessary to build up strength in the north . 2 leagues of 16 , draw the boundaries where appropriate. 2 champs go up, play of between both 2nd places, 3 delegations spots isn't as big a deal with this step down.

If he can play against hibs he should play against the weeker sides. Get him started against livi at home

i get that, not sure why you want to keep a div of 10 tho? unless for a couple of seasons till things get settled, i do support the idea, just that it comes with unique challanges, the very idea of regional football is that small teams with small support, small budgets and who rely on part time players dont have to spend several hours on the road just to play another small skint poorly supported part time club. it doesnt relay matter where you draw the boundry, the population make up of scotland means that one area (the highlands ) is going to be fucking massive OR one area is going to be as week as piss

Aye but they have a much bigger population and much more money . Not to mention big densly populated areas in the north like greater manchester and tyne&wier . We have large parts of the country with very low population and poor road networks. North of dundee there are a grand total of 9 league clubs ATM. So there are issues with it that need to be overcome Anyway i support the ops plan it just needs carefully thought out and by someone a bit smarter than me

you may find for the first few seasons that the same teams go up and down every other year tho that will evolve over time as big teams always have a rotten season now and again and smaller teams currently in spfl 1 will get bigger away supports. The other issue is having 3 way promotion and relegation from a national level, but then again a north south split would also be murder to impliment as to keep the 2 regions roughy equal in stregnth even it would have to be the central belt and the borders vs rest of scotland, which kinda defeats the whole purpose of regionalising. still i think its worth doing, so its worth making the effort to make it fit as someone pointed out on another thread we are now one of only a handfull of uefa members that still has different independant league competitions rather than a fully integrated pyramid. needs to change cause we are getting pretty gash for a traditional footballing nation of 5 million

Having 4 national divs of 10 and 12 isnt helping. Especialy as in its current guise a pyramid is totaly unattactive to non league and junior teams as theyd be swapping one pish league for another , more expensive 1. Remember there are more than 42 clubs in scotland. We need a set up thats in EVERYONES best interest and that of the game overall rather than protecting unambitious diddy teams who have been hovering close to the foot of league 2 season after season.

f**k not doing anything. Its shite as it is. How will it kill the game for teams who get crowds of 200-300 as it is? The current set up has long run its course. By the time the clocks go back youve already played all the teams in youre league and you still have to repeat this another 3 times

Aye

More chance of a goal fest at our game

Fair enough but why stick with a 10 team tire 3? Just thinking it could be more appealing if the long distance away games only need to be once a season. The other question which I can't figure out even after reading the English system is - what happens when all the teams in the relegation zone are from the same region? Which means teams would have to play out with their area or divisions are imbalanced

Aye I kinda get that but then if the pyramid WAS split 3 ways like the juniors are at the moment would it not be more appealing to them to play along side their current rivals and the best non league sides in the area ? the stumbling block would be that you can't relay have 3 way relegation from the national league, you'd have to have a 2 way split before the national, could it then make more sense to only have 2 tires of nationwide then north and south below that then east west north below that? A bit like Englands one but with less levels between top and regional? Again it doesn't relay solve the problem of having a strong south and a weak north but its a start. If all divisions were of 16 or 18 teams then a half decent junior sides would only be 2 promotions away from the current championship level

Why will this never happen? If its worth doing its probably not going to be easy Y'know , what is the juniors aversion to joining up? Is it that the current leagues (by that I mean what they can realistically expect to b promoted to) aren't worth their while? Would they change their tune if the current spfl 2 and ll/hl was a better structure/ better quality? To me something is wrong if stronger teams are not interested in progression and some better players are favouring the over higher levels, it can't be doing our game any favours? Do they just want a local thing for local people?

f**k, IM SORRY I WONT DO IT AGAIN, I didn't mean to open a can of worms with the granny rule comment, without background checking the entire Icelandic team I thought it a bit suspicious that such a small population could be playing so consistently weld. Any way I know you can criticize Scotland as much as Ireland, most of our granny rulers aren't even that good, shuan Maloney has Scottish parents and was a military baby I think he's no more Malaysian than you or I, Jordan Rhodes spent his childhood here, the rest can GTF tbh their only with us cause they can't get a game for England. On the subject of the academies I can't help but think its a trade of between the first team doing well or the academies doing well. The likes of O'Hara and Gallagher would be playing every week 2 or 3 seasons ago but now we're playing well and holding a decent position in the league and theres no chance we'll be gambling on them, I do wish we'd gave them a run against alloa considering we were 4 nil up with 25 minuets to go. Maybe as the season goes on if it pans out that we're pretty secure in the playoffs but don't have much hope of getting 2nd or 1st then they can get more game time.

genuine question, are the iceland senior team all born/ grown up in iceland itself or are they full of granny rulers ? you could point to ireland as a measure of a succesfull small nation but theyd be feckin gash without their second rate english squad players, i know they have keane and coleman etc but their squad would be fairly weak if it was limited to born players,

i wasnt at this meeting, whats going to be in there thats going to make us money?

Even with the positives mentioned it is still a waste of money, get things right on the park and maybe we could get closer to filling the existing capacity, there will never be an atmosphere at TFS not unless its a sell out for us winning the league, its just to big and open and we are the most dour and miserable fans about ! nothing about this is good. When we're playing alloa or Dumbarton or even ross county or Hamilton or whoever, do we end up closing one end behind the goals just to keep that open? Nah we've got enough empty seats as it is.

f**k that , no point in putting capacity there just for the sake of it, we've got to put the best time on the park for the money we've got, if we're going to spunk it on a useless vanity project then I'm finished, I thought people had learned from such mistakes made at clubs you mentioned, after all we've been through in the last few seasons we now want to waste what money we've got on a fuckin white elephant? Build the fence up to the height of the stand roof if need be and paint some murals or even just get one of those canvases of the Brooklyn bridge or something? This is a joke. If you put terracing there my guess is the south stand would almost empty into it .