Marten

Hearts v ICT

I saw them as well when I was on my way into the social club. [emoji1]

Elgin City v Dundee United

The only unseeded teams in the champions route were the CL preliminary round dropouts, who all got drawn against a CL Q1 loser and all remaining teams went into an open draw.

Some friends of mine who support Brechin City / Albion Rovers tend to disagree with that (or at least did last season)...

I see I picked a great day for my first visit to Tynecastle...

The first 3 games today all finished 0-0, interesting day... Ajax 1-0 up v Sturm Graz though after scoring the first goal of the night.

Dumbarton 2 Kilmarnock 4

Comparing Salford to the Scottish Premiership is not really a fair comparison in that sense. Not blaming Salford, but they have more money at their disposal than many clubs in the English League One, so not many Scottish clubs will be able to outspend them.

When I lived in England, I always loved the early FA Cup rounds. I've been to quite a few games in them, taking me to some lovely grounds.

The system works correctly in the official access list: 2nd qualifying round: 3 losers CL PL + 17 losers CL QR1 (20 total) 3rd qualifying round: 10 winners QR2 + 10 losers CL QR2 (20 total) 4th qualifying round: 10 winners QR3 + 6 losers CL QR3 (16 total) group stage: 8 winners QR4 However, due to the title holders spot not being used with Real Madrid qualifying via their league, the Czech champions went to the group stage of the CL, the Dutch champions took their place in QR4, the Austrian champions (due to start in QR2) took the Dutch automatic place in QR3 and finally the Danish & Belorussian champions moved from QR1 to QR2. This meant there were 2 fewer teams in the CL QR1, so 1 fewer loser in EL QR2, resulting in a bye being needed.

That would only move the problem, as there would be an odd number in the next round instead.

Interesting... I wonder how much their subscriptions are going to be.

Stenhousemuir 4-0 Albion Rovers, extra entertainment provided by seagulls fighting each other for food on the pitch.

They've done it wrong in Cumbernauld. They first built the town and later the football ground. They should first have built a football ground & let a club play there. The town around it would come eventually...

I just read that the next World Cup final will be in a city that doesn't exist yet... It's being built currently.

A condition of the bidding process is that fans/players/staff of all teams taking part will be allowed in the country. South Korea had to guarantee they'd allow North Koreans in the country should they have qualified for example. The same goes for Israel at this tournament. Safe to say that FIFA will hope they won't make it though...

Falkirk 0 Montrose 1

And with results elsewhere, especially Progres Niederkorn winning, they could well end up in the bottom 4 of the coefficients (meaning CL preliminary tournament). They are 5th bottom now and 1 more point for a team from Luxembourg (providing Welsh teams don't get any more points) will put them in the bottom 4.

You could well be right. Kosovo will rise in the rankings, football is really big there, but the league is just now getting serious as they are now accepted into FIFA & UEFA. Before then, the league also existed, but it wasn't officially recognised as a national top flight. Obviously, the ranking being over a period of 5 years with this only being their second year taking part won't help either. I'm not saying Kosovo will become a major force, but at least better than the level of Luxembourg/Wales/Faroer.

I agree in getting rid of the labels altogether. I think that's what they've done in England, so in theory a tier 11 club can pay their players if they wish.

There are few professional sides in tier 10, if any. And in a new tier 8 over here, I highly doubt the clubs there will be very professional.

If all the remaining south of Tay juniors move over, there will be 59 clubs. That can then be split into a 16 team Premier, 16 team First Division and 2 regionalised Second Divisions, meaning there are 5 spots left for amateurs to make it to a 64 team structure. Once that's been achieved, I think it does make sense to link up with the amateur leagues, possibly in the same way as promotion/relegation is done between tiers 10 and 11 in England (tier 11 is effectively a collection of amateur leagues that have at some point been put at tier 11 in the pyramid). Down there, tier 11 clubs have to indicate by a certain date whether or not they want to make the step up to tier 10. The teams that want to get promoted will (providing they match the requirements) fill the promotion spots in the order of how high they finished. If there are fewer eligible teams wanting to get promoted than relegated teams from tier 10, one or more relegated teams will get reprieved. There is no reason why something like that can't work in the East of Scotland.

I don't see why not. Plenty of nations that are now good (and with good I mean at least regularly qualifying for tournaments) were completely rubbish in the past. Obviously, major reforms are needed and it might take a long time, but one day Scotland should at least be at the "good" level again.

Wales seem to be on their way to the bottom 4 in the rankings, which would mean that their champions will play in the Champions League preliminary tournament...