bluearmyfaction

Yeah, I wasn't exactly being 100% serious. But the SPFL has made such a pig's breakfast of things because it is the clubs making the decisions and none of them wants to take a hit. It's the anarchist-sewage problem. Really the game needs independent regulation. The EFL is just as bad.

Bound to be a lot harder next season, they will have lost their advantage of getting in from the Juniors first. But on that basis why promote anyone over a season? Make them prove it over several. Like in the 1900s when the First Division was as much of a closed shop as the Second.

Or staying in the bottom tier. Depends on perspective. Not sure about this though... ...think there might be a few around Easter Road way who would disagree.

How about two of 22 then? Hearts don't go down, everyone in the second and fourth tiers gets promoted, you can still swap Raith and Partick, give Cove and Dundee Utd a trophy, and Brora & Kelty come in. To make the next season more interesting for more clubs for longer, make it five up five down.

Benoit Assou-Ekotto. Said he had no passion for the game unless he was having a kickabout with his mates. Happy to say he played purely for the money. Gabriele Batistuta said in interview that he didn't like football, it was just his job. Apparently never talked about the game with his team-mates. Ended up getting obsessed with polo.

45 team league (promote Kelty, Brora, and Bonnyrigg). Each team plays each other once. Each team gets 22 home matches. Other than the Old Firm Derby which is at Hampden. Job done.

REALLY like that QoS home shirt design. Other than it seems to have one sleeve long and the other short.

Basically Sheffield United's from the late seventies.

With the way television money is split, it's got to the point that some clubs cannot afford to play, but others cannot afford NOT to play...

To be fair, it has been recycled.

Not sure why they should. There is a logical case for saying they earned it. There's also a logical case for Kilwinning. But it's better that someone who half-deserves it gets the reward, than nobody gets the reward at all.

So how would they nominate someone for the Scottish Cup? As the original minute suggested they had to do? Presumably on a points per game basis. So it would still have been Talbot. I think it is logical that the SFA may have said "you can't do that because you've voided the season, therefore there are no points you can use for a PPG average". Hence the suggestion of a rethink. It's not so much a conspiracy in my view as Talbot ensuring they got their place in the Scottish Cup. Not sure what value the League trophy has now they are no longer in it. But it may be that there could either be a title and a club in the Cup, or neither. All or nothing.

I think it's that the SPFL can legislate within the SPFL. But unilaterally banning a play-off with two other leagues is not within the SPFL's purview. The SPFL could agree to scrap the playoff with the HL and LL, and maybe the SFA has a part to play, but you can imagine what price Kelty and Brora would demand in return for scrapping the playoffs. So it's a dilemma for lots of SPFL clubs. Have two more clubs in, raising the risk of relegation whenever football gets underway; or face legal action that will be costly to defend and uncertain in outcome.

How would it be impartial if the SPFL funded it in that case... It's about time there was independent regulation for football. The clubs are not fit to do it themselves. You've only got to look at the shambles elsewhere in the British Isles. The FA of Ireland is bankrupt, the EFL is biased, incompetent, and under-resourced...

I must have driven past that last year going from Burghead Well to Fort George and I never noticed it...

It's possible. Hartlepool saved themselves from 14 re-elections out of Division 3N/4 because they served the best hospitality in the division, and their chairman was friendly with most of the other chairmen in the League. Ken Ferguson presumably is a fairly popular figure, given his role on the SPFL board. On the other hand Gateshead got knocked out on their second go because they were not very good at the political game - and for years were the worst-supported club in the English League. Long shlep for no gates.

Not been abandoned. That connotes the match starting. The EFL got itself in a pickle when Bolton didn't turn up to the Brentford match last year. As nothing hung on it, they just gave Brentford a 1-0 win, but that was by using a similar provision to this. I.e. abandonment. The real penalty for not turning up is points deduction and the match still to go ahead, and if it cannot, expulsion, but the EFL don't want to enforce that because it makes them look even more hideously incompetent than they are.

Celtic and Rangers are basically Man U/Man City in terms of crowds, then Hibs, Hearts, and Aberdeen are on a par with Swansea and Reading, and Kilmarnock are Wycombe Wanderers. Very sharp drop-off. And that's taking into account big crowds for a minimum of four Old Firm visits.

I think the big change is that the chances of someone doing a Kelty are probably fairly decent. It won't take much money to take someone from the WoS into the SPFL. E.g. Irvine, population 30,000 or so, easily big enough to host League football and already with a foundation level of fans on which to build. More of an incentive than just to dominate the Junior game.

From my more southerly perspective it looked more Caley because they'd had the success in recent years and both Clach and Thistle had been struggling. Thistle seem to have lost out to Ferranti in the seventies because so many HL teams pitched in that it split the vote several ways. By the time that had all been sorted out, there was momentum behind another team in Edinburgh. 20 years after they forced Leith out. Bizarre.

At the risk of opening everything up again...given that Ross County got into the Scottish League at the same time, from a smaller and more remote place, why did it need a new, combined, Inverness side to make an application? Could Caledonian, who seem to have been a lot bigger than the others at the time, have gone it alone and left Thistle behind in the Highland? Or would that have meant Thistle also applying and splitting the vote?

I think the reason the Netherlands voided their top league was that the top 2... Ajax and Feyernoord were on the same points.... totally different to our top league... perhaps more similar to our league 1 Ajax and AZ Alkmaar. There's also the thing that Dutch clubs do not have the same history as British clubs. The team denied an almost certain promotion to the Eredivisie, SC Cambuur, replaced the other team in the town of Leeuwarden in the Dutch League in 1965 when the latter went bust. Over a quarter of the current Eredivisie are clubs that emerged from mergers in the sixties and seventies. It would be as if the Scottish Premier had Strathclyde Academicals and Dundee City in it. And Edinburgh United wound up (as FC Amsterdam, a triple merger, were).

They could just have 14-14-16 and keep promoting clubs to make it 14-14-20. 38 games instead of 39, but not having to play Stranraer 3 times per season.

It's really a terminology thing, the Spanish league has 122 clubs in its professional system, but 80 of them are in regionalized third divisions, which include reserve outfits and those which are part-time. But the league numbering goes down to the Tercera, which brings the total to 462. Nothing wrong with a national league of 42 even if half the teams are part-time.

True - but the bigger sides have not been affected. Crowds are up at Celtic and Rangers, plus Hearts and Hibs, they're about the same at Aberdeen, Killie, and Motherwell. It's the struggling poor that have lost the little they had. The opening of the trapdoor could kill them off, they won't have that ability to bumble along surviving on prize money and League prestige. Would 22/22 help teams to develop? Take a risk at bringing on youth players in greater numbers because for a Hamilton the threat of relegation is reduced? It's not vanished, though, given the teams that have dropped/are dropping into the bottom half of the League. (Plus Arbroath and Alloa would have been top flight clubs, and that would have given hope to literally everyone of a similar size.)