JamesM82

Although the report I've read says that the relegations of Amiens and Toulouse are only suspended, i.e. they might still be relegated if the French bodies are unable to agree a format that includes those two extra teams for 2020/21. French league tried to argue in court that they couldn't expand because they have a contract with the French federation (FA) to have a 20-team league, but the court said that wasn't relevant because that contract expires on June 30th. So if the French federation come back and say that the league has to have 20 teams, there won't be room for Amiens or Toulouse. Very little of this seems relevant to Scotland, other than the simple principle of relegating based on a shortened season.

Jambos will be getting their hopes up again, as the French courts have suspended the relegation of Amiens and Toulouse from Ligue 1. Although the court also chucked out the complaints of Lyon, who were saying that the 2019/20 season shouldn't have been stopped and that they could have still qualified for Europe. Feck knows what that all means. I guess the French league will try to negotiate a bigger league to include Amiens and Toulouse for 2020/21. But who knows what happens if that can't be agreed (as in Scotland).

Edinson Cavani is now a shock target for Aberdeen.

Joe Newell looked decent for a couple of games at LWB just before the stoppage. Takes a decent corner as well. Another (possible) problem is I'm not sure whether Scott Allan will be able to play/train straight away, as he is a type 1 diabetic. I think it depends if he has had a letter off his GP telling him to stay at home completely.

Hence why I said "similar". The regular league seasons are being stopped and positions decided by PPG, and anyone in an automatic promotion or relegation place is being promoted or relegated. The only difference, which I think is a bit ridiculous, is that the playoff competitions are being played using the teams in those positions according to PPG. If the SPFL had done what the EFL is doing, Hearts would have been relegated and Dundee United promoted (same), but Accies, ICT, Dundee, Ayr and so on would have had to keep their teams together and then play their playoff ties whenever they were ready to play.

BBC got this right - all the amendments were defeated. So the EFL will use simple points average for its divisions that are not completed, and promotion and relegation will happen as normal. The Championship will restart next week, but League 1 and League 2 will end in a similar way to the SPFL.

EFL teams are voting today on how to end the season if they can't play all the games. This is highly likely in L1 or L2, as they are only expecting to play the playoff matches at those levels. Championship (which is one of the richest leagues in Europe) is resuming the weekend after next, but this would also apply to them if anything goes wrong. BBC says they expect all the amendments tabled by clubs out of self-interest (e.g. cancelling relegation, or tweaking the PPG formula) to fail, and that relegation and promotion places will just be decided on simple points average. Sounds familiar. Championship teams don't want to scrap relegation from the EFL divisions in case the EPL does something similar. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/52971628

Because your youth system isn't particularly good at identifying who will make it? .... Times is saying today that the reconstruction plans are doomed, and claiming that the SPFL board will move on from them at a board meeting tomorrow morning (Wednesday). "The governing body will hold a board meeting tomorrow morning and the chief executive, Neil Doncaster, is expected to discourage any further talk of reconstruction for the coming campaign, and send a message that the focus now must be on planning for a 12-team top tier to start on August 1." Rangers are apparently "relaxed about the time frame" for their plan, i.e. it wouldn't have been able to start in 2020/21 anyway due to the pandemic, and were "encouraged" by the "generally positive reaction" to it. Although obviously not having enough support to be voted through now. 2020/21 fixture list can't be finalised until UEFA say what they're doing with their competitions - they're supposed to be having a meeting next Wednesday. Championship clubs are "close to agreement" on a short season (either 18 or 27 games) starting in October. Nothing on the two lower leagues yet. Championship teams will still get their share of the collective pot in August. 2 million from Anderson likely to be paid/received this week. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/scotland/hearts-moves-for-change-doomed-lz3zpf8jp

Bob Crampsey wrote about that period at some length in his centenary history of the SFL. The C division (including reserve sides) came about because a number of SFL clubs (mostly in the east: Stirling, East Stirlingshire, Montrose, Forfar, Brechin and Leith) weren't included in the (unofficial) 1945-46 national leagues, so they were put into an "Eastern" league with Dundee reserves and Dundee Utd reserves instead on a "temporary" basis. Instead of expanding the national B division to include Stirling et al they just created a C division instead, with the reserve sides. The C division was subsequently split into two regional sectors and attendance was poor. The clubs struggled to find a consensus of how to change things, but this logjam was eventually broken by several of the bigger clubs (including Rangers, Hearts and Hibs) saying they no longer wanted to field reserve sides in the league. A big enough majority was then found to expand the two top divisions to 18 and 19 (instead of 16 and 16), which meant the five first teams in the C division could be promoted to the second tier.

Complaining about clubs acting in self-interest is a laughable point. Why does Keith suppose that Rangers made this proposal in the first place? Out of the kindness of their hearts, or concern for the greater good of Scottish football?

Hearts are supporting the Rangers plan for obvious reasons, but I wonder if they would have been able to sign Aaron Hickey if Celtic had put him into their colts team instead of binning him at 16?

I think that's the biggest part of it. Rangers and Celtic obviously can't compete with top English clubs now for ready made players, but they also don't normally risk chucking untested players straight into their first teams in case they muck up their chances of winning the league / progressing in Europe. So the Colts team would be a useful staging post for 6-12 months while these players settle in, but it doesn't necessarily do anything to aid the development of Scottish players.

I don't think they will put fixtures out until phase 2 of the lockdown exit, i.e. when there is a more realistic prospect of games being played. That isn't due to happen until the 18th.

I think the Rangers plan was going to be the big exclusive, but they had to put it out last night because newspaper(s) got wind of it as well.

Aye, you're probably right. If the feedback on the Colts idea is poor again, Rangers will probably put it back in the drawer rather than adjusting it to something more acceptable.

The only significance to this Rangers plan is that it looks like a permanent proposal, rather than a Budge-style temporary adjustment. It suggests Rangers might be willing to support a permanent change, if they get something in return. Before now it looked like any plan was doomed because there was a bloc of Premiership teams (Rangers, Celtic, Aberdeen) who were opposed to permanent change, and a bigger bloc that were opposed to temporary change. Obviously this Rangers plan would have a lot of difficulty passing as the BBC describe it, but it may be a starting point for negotiation. Say permanent 14-10-10-10, with strategic partnerships rather than reserve/B/colt teams.

I don't think so. It all happened very quickly after the French government said that there shouldn't be any professional sports in France until the end of August, and I think they also said that the professional leagues should end their 2019/20 seasons. A day or two later the LFP announced the season was over and set out how it was going to work. In theory the SPFL board could have done something similar, i.e. just gone ahead and "called" the season without any of the voting palaver.

Although he also said that the "testing equipment" that only Celtic and Ross County have paid for was in fact for antibody testing, i.e. a test which shows if someone has had the virus at some point in the past. The papers were getting excited about that factoid today, but it's possible that clubs could have something else in place that would satisfy the SFA and government. Indeed, Rangers have already claimed that they are ready to start training.

Towards the end of today's podcast, the bold Thomas was promising more "news" for tomorrow. I think I will go for a walk instead.

I think that's what I was hinting at by "rejigging of the lower leagues". Championship could effectively become a league for whatever clubs are able to start up in the autumn. If there's more than 10 clubs who want to be involved, bring them in too.

This. It's not the end of the world for Hearts to be relegated, as long as there is a Championship to be played next season. That may require some outside funding (hence the Anderson funding) and/or some rejigging of the lower leagues, i.e. if teams in the Championship drop out, then others might be invited in to replace them. But as long as it can go ahead in some form it shouldn't hinder Hearts that much.

Dave Cormack should always have been on their "shit list". If it wasn't for him (and the Glasgow two by proxy) insisting on temporary change, they could have got a consensus for permanent change weeks ago. But Kickback is full of morons, so they don't realise this and lapped it up when he supported the Budge plan.

That also applies to voting on reconstruction. No point expanding the top two divisions to 24 (14-10-10-10) or 28 (14-14-whatever) clubs and then finding the extra teams don't want to play.

Bump

My view is that if you're curtailing the league season, you really should be curtailing the league post-season (playoffs) as well. There's no logical consistency in what the EFL are doing.