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RabidAI
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Posts posted by RabidAI
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On 19/04/2022 at 11:27, footnotes said:
Maybe those who already invest in Scottish football aren't going about it in the right way.
I've been reading Football Hackers by Christoph Biermann. It's about clubs investing in the use of data and the success that can bring. One insight is that more money spent on players' wages is a better predictor of success than money spent on transfer fees. And a spreading resources across the squad is preferable to having a few star players. And it can be a waste of money attempting to develop youth when bigger clubs already have the best young players on their books. (I don't agree with those last two points)
It talks at length about metrics such as Expected Goals and Packing. The former gives clubs a better idea of how lucky or unlucky they have been in their results (as does ranking goal difference vs points total) so that managers such as Jack Ross at Hibs aren't sacked unnecessarily. Packing helps identify players who have the cutting edge, who can be retained on better contracts or signed more cheaply if other clubs don't realise it.
Some interesting ideas in the book. I think any Scottish club having regular access to the money of European group stages won't need any further investment in order to challenge for the league, but they maybe need to invest what they already have more smartly in order to reach that stage. Or else it's a Sugar Daddy needed to pump-prime clubs.
Partly agree. A 'sugar daddy' is only useful in situations where a club has a potentially large fan base, which just needs re-invigourating. No point in wee clubs signing players that bigger clubs should be, blocking their opportunities, then the whole thing collapsing in a season or two.
Regarding stats, etc - the BBC have a couple of super articles on the footballing origins of this at the moment - see link, and link within the article itself:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/61648608
Also: i'm reading 'Only A Game?' by Eamon Dunphy, a 1976 book detailing football in the old English Second Division from within the dressing room. Superbly insightful about the psychology of teams and footballers (not much to do with this thread, though!).
Sorry for interrupting!
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1 hour ago, footnotes said:
I think I can see your point. So maybe a 12 or 14 team second division with a split would keep clubs happy if it allowed more of the traditionally full time clubs to play themselves x4 yet also give more of the new wave their chance at a higher level.
I think ideally we'd do away with any splits. And have the top 10 playing x4, the middle 14 playing x3 and the bottom 18 playing x2.
Rangers and Celtic could make that happen, if they genuinely wanted a shorter, 36-game league season in order to boost their chances in European competitions.
They don't really need the domestic prize money that they earn for finishing in the top places - because they make significantly more from competing in Europe.
So they could certainly take a lower percentage of league revenues, as part of a genuine all-through financial model. One properly supporting the second tier, on a continuous sliding scale, without the great drop-off between Premiership and Championship payments.
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I can, yes.
I thought to make a virtue of it by awarding the top four teams qualifying for the top eight and bottom eight mini-leagues with home advantage for four of the final seven games. Hopefully the intensity of the competition (and better sponsorship) would eclipse any unfairnesses, and there would be more home games on average with teams playing forty games each.
For the middle eight, I might try to start with the following table:
1st - 10 points, 4 home games - 9th from Premiership
2nd - 8 points, 4 home games - 10th from Premiership
3rd - 7 points, 4 home games - 1st from Championship
4th - 5 points, 4 home games - 11th from Premiership
5th - 5 points, 3 home games - 2nd from Championship
6th - 3 points, 3 home games - 12th from Premiership
7th - 2 points, 3 home games - 3rd from Championship
8th - 0 points, 3 home games - 4th from Championship
What that does is reflect the current situation by giving preference to the best two Premiership teams; ranks first from the Championship above the bottom two from the Premiership; ranks eleventh from the Premiership marginally above second from the Championship; and ranks twelfth from the Premiership above the bottom two from the Championship - who still have their slimmer chance at success.
Difficult to balance out unfairnesses and to keep the pre-split games meaningful; post-split games, however, should be competitive to the end because of there being four relegation and four promotion places.
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Just thinking that the current investors at clubs near the top of Scottish football are a quirky bunch.
What with the spending tens of millions on a new stadium when all the present stadium needs is a thorough refurbishment and upgrade, in order to retain its quirky individuality - like any home should be.
Or the sacking of a manager who just about achieved all you can do, given the disparity of resources - third in the league, and two sucessive cup finals.
Or the determination to pursue a new stadium alone, when your very near neighbours may just be interested in sharing the burden with you.
I'm wishing them every success in their efforts, because I want to see the Old Firm beaten in the league before I die, but my eyebrows are on the ceiling and my jaw on the floor when I read about what these successful businessman do when they become involved in Scottish football.
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On 19/04/2022 at 09:03, Donathan said:
It’s interesting, go back 5 or 6 years and everyone was saying that there are too many clubs playing at the national level and it should just be 2x16 or 12-10-10 and then regional after that. The emergence of Cove, Kelty Hearts, Bonnyrigg etc has created more demand to play in national level leagues not less.
If there’s to be an insistence on a 12 team top tier, then I’d prefer the 12-12 (8-8-8) structure that was mooted years ago. You play 22 games and then the top two leagues merge into top 8, middle 8 and bottom 8 for the last 14 games. The top 8 play for the title and European spots, the middle 8 play for promotion/relegation and the bottom 8 play to avoid relegation from the championship.
The one issue I can see with this structure is that the points are reset to 0 after the split so once it becomes apparent that a team will be in a particular section, there might be some dead rubbers towards the halfway point.
However, I think you could have a 24 team premiership (split into divisions 1 and 2) and then a 24 team Scottish conference league that consists roughly of the current league one teams (apart from Cove Rangers and Airdrie), league two teams and the top 3 from each of the HL and LL. This league would play a 46 game season.
Dividing into three wee leagues of eight at matchday 22 seems too early: having so many games after the split might end up with many meaningless matches in the bottom and middle sections as soon as teams are safe or relegated. As you have intimated, this would also be an issue if teams in the middle eight all begin with zero points - but with the meaningless matches coming before the split once teams have qualified for that section.
For those reasons, I would only split into three sections after teams have played each other three times - 33 games each. That would just leave a wee 7-game sprint to the finish, where teams just play once against those in their section - 40 league games each in total.
For the middle eight to be fair, league positions before the split would need to convert to an initial post-split points allocation. This would have to take into account how unjust it would be for ninth in the Premiership to be relegated or fourth from the Championship to be promoted, for example, aswell as to keep the pre-split games meaningful.
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Better
A 36-matchday season in the Premiership would make fixture scheduling easier next season, and in other Euro/World Cup years, without the need for restructuring the league.
A 36-matchday season in the Premiership would also enable relegation play-offs with a 10-team Championship to be the same as the play-offs in the rest of the divisions.
Worse
A top 4 rather than a top 6 would mean fewer head-to-heads between the biggest clubs.
It would also mean fewer clubs would be able to have four home games against the Old Firm.
Therefore...you will never see it in action!
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On 10/04/2022 at 16:55, Donathan said:
16 with a 4-8-4 split is a way of keeping a 36 game season with four OF games but still expanding the league.
Double round robin = 30 games.
Then split into:
Group A - 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th
Group B - 5th, 8th, 9th and 12th
Group C - 6th, 7th, 10th and 11th
Group D - 13th, 14th, 15th and 16th
Each group plays another double round robin for 36 games total.
Group A are playing for the title.
Group D are playing to stay up.
Groups B and C are playing for European places. The winners of each group will enter into European playoffs with the bottom side from Group A.
Only question I’d ask is to what extent should the points carry over after the split? Ideally I’d want to give everyone something to play for post split but without making the regular season totally meaningless.
More points before the split could convert to a home advantage for group games. Or perhaps a small head-start (3 points, 2 points, 1 point, 0 points to start each group). I'd maybe add in a semi-final knock-out stage.
Or the middle eight teams could just carry on with their 8-team mini-league, playing each other once more for 37 games per team. The top 2 in a European play-off, possibly with the team finishing bottom of the elite group depending upon who wins the Scottish Cup.
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16 hours ago, footnotes said:
Understood! I was just pulling yer leg.
I quite like the idea actually as something to whet the appetite on Saturdays/Sundays for the season immediately ahead, and it might gain attention whilst the main European leagues are having a rest. I don't know if having our European teams playing in it in a league cup style of group would be as appealing as a knock out version, though. And even though a 36 match day season might only begin mid August, big clubs would still want their glamour friendlies on some of those July and August weekends. Nevertheless, such a high level of head to head competition isn't something our game has and could well improve the European performance of our teams.
Back to expanding the league. 16 teams splitting after 30 games, could give a top 8 and bottom 8 whose fixtures could be as I described in my previous post, giving a fair 38 game season per team yet retaining 4 old firm matches.
Yeah, that would be 40 games each you twit.
I'd be happy enough with 16 teams, playing home and away to split at 30 games into a top 6 and bottom 10.
Top 6 do the elite thing, home and away (40 games each); bottom 10 play again at home or away (39 games each). With the battle up to the split and plenty of relegation places (2.5?), and possibly involving 7th in a play-off for Europe then it could be decent.
Or maybe just 18 teams playing home and away for 34 games each, with the top 4 going on to play home and away in a m*****s series, with 5th-8th in Euro play-offs.
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It's not lunacy to try to retain your elite fixtures in order to facilitate league expansion. Or to showcase those best v best fixtures in the summer, when other leagues have shut down. That's probably an improvement.
I see you've reduced the fixtures burden to a 36-game season, so that would give more freedom for a wee elite tournament, perhaps across July weekends.
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For more investment in Scottish football you're really talking about how to attract more viewers, which can be either bums on seats in grounds or attention through the media.
Therefore, as a club chairperson I would surely be aiming to fill as much of the stadium as possible with home fans each game. I don't think you can charge adults under a fiver because of the baddies you might attract, but more than a tenner for most league games will keep people away because they also have to pay for food and transport. For me, £5 at the gate or £10 for entry plus voucher for a pie and a bovril would be enough to attract me back to the game. There'll be plenty like me who listen to the radio or do cheaper things on a Saturday afternoon - particularly those with families who would hugely benefit from a consistent approach to fair pricing, rather than the occasional gimmick that clubs usually go for just to tick the 'we tried that but it didn't work' box in order to excuse their bloated prices. Children free with paying adults is good for the future, as is £1 each for youngsters going along with their mates who all have hollow legs and will spend plenty on grub once in the ground.
I don't see any point in just knocking-off a couple of quid from the usual high prices in the hope of attracting a few more to less glamorous games: you just end up losing money on the usual punters and no-one else turns up. People aren't THAT sensitive to a change in ticket price (also shown by a willingness to pay much more for the biggest games), so you have to go further and over a sustained period in order to bring them into the habit of going along to matches.
It's also worth potential sponsors/media remembering that it's not the same people who make up the home support each game, as different people have different commitments on Saturday afternoons - therefore the actual home support/eyes on their product is larger than seemingly-consistent home attendance figures suggest.
That's my view of the bottom-up approach to increasing investment. From the top-down, it's about the collective product and having competitions as sellable as can be.
So for me you're looking at some sort of Masters competition between the best teams, even if it's just a re-brand of the post-split top 6 - but possibly something new, beyond the League competition, as part of a wider restructure. The League Cup I like, as it has quirky dynamic to it. The Challenge Cup would benefit from a stronger identity, such as including the best Scottish part-timers (16HL+16LL in Round 1) - rather than its recent nebulous lack of focus with invites to B teams and those from other countries).
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I have this idea that, because most clubs are within the lowland area, the Lowland champions could be automatically promoted to the SPFL with the LL being the de facto national tier 5.
Highland area clubs could always have sort of branch-line access via a play-off with SPFL Club 41, but there would generally be a smooth main-line transition of one lowland-based SPFL Club 42 being automatically replaced by the LL winners most seasons.
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If we're going to have twelve teams in the Championship aswell as the Premiership then split after 33 matchdays into 3 divisions of eight, playing opponents one more time for 40 games each.
That improves on the current system by having two more teams each season with definite home games v the biggest clubs, and an additional home game anyway. The middle eight improves on the previously rejected proposal because it only requires a 7-game each post-split sprint, rather than splitting too early after just 22 matchdays.* The bottom eight (rump of Championship) remains interesting with only seven fixtures each and two automatically relegated.
I would also name the current post-split top 6, or top 8 in the above scenario, as the SPFL Masters or Scottish Masters, which sounds a bit naff to us but could sell well abroad.
My current preference is for a top tier of 16, splitting into top 8 and bottom 8 after 30 matchdays. Then playing opponents once more to reach 37-games per club, whereupon positions are finalised except for the top 4 who play one another for a fourth time in the SPFL Masters (continuation of league points) to complete 40 games each. Two to be automatically relegated, with one relegation play-off place v 3/4/5 of Championship).
*Middle eight post-split would only be fair and prevent spectre of meaningless games if the initial post-split points were re-set based upon league position up to that point.
E.g. - 9th Prem starts with 14 points, 1st Champ with 12 points, 10th Prem with 10 points, 2nd Champ with 8 points, 11th Prem with 6 points, 3rd Champ with 4 points, 12th Prem with 2 points, 4th Champ with 0 points.
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That's a bit conservative.
If, instead, you have the bottom two SPFL teams and the top three from each of the HL and LL going into the pyramid play-offs then you give good opportunities for relegated clubs to return immediately and you also can be more sure that the clubs deserve their place in the SPFL the following season.
So you might have the winners of SPFL41 v HL3 meeting the winners of HL1 v LL2 for one SPFL vacancy, and the winners of SPFL 42 v LL3 meeting the winners of LL 1 v HL2 for the other SPFL vacancy.
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7 hours ago, anonanist said:
My most recent partner gave me a 'Chinese burn'. On my knob. With her teeth.
Gonnae no dae that!
In fairness to her, I hadn't recently trimmed my finger nails - which had resulted in me accidentally cutting her in a very sensitive place. She described the experience as like "losing my virginity over again".
That was 8 (eight) years ago. After which I gave up on the whole relationship thing.
I can better that.
The following is a completely true confession...
...my one and only shag was in January 2001 when my girlfriend took pity on my bungled attempts at, eh, 'lovemaking' and went cowgirl for the duration. Bless her.
Sadly, we broke up soon afterwards. Half a dozen other failed attempts with various ladies, and I gave up - for good.
Sorry for the overshare.
What always amazes me is how all animals know automatically how to do it, and what goes where, and at which angle. Humans seem to know, too; but not me.
Must be why I take out my frustrations on here! Or did, anyway: don't think I'll be back, somehow.
Oh, is that the time? I'll get my coat...
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I should have declared my bias at the beginning that, although I was born and raised in Scotland and so consider myself a Scot...
...go back one generation and I have a parent born in London, making me one-quarter Londoner I suppose...
...go back two generations and similarly I'm one-eighth a Yorkshireman...
...and so on.
All of which makes me a mongrel, I reckon.
My point being - how many others have mixed parentage that would see them identify themselves with a London Caledonians? Londoners with Scottish heritage, and vice versa?
I'm sure it'll never happen, but I like the idea all the same.
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On 31/08/2020 at 20:21, Classick said:
I think 14 teams is the ideal number for Scottish Premier, so I'd go with 14 teams.
I dislike splits, but 26 matches would be not enough and playing each team three times would bring to 39 matches, which is ok, but there is an issue who would play the third game at home. The only solution would be a split and I'd go with top 7 and bottom 7. This would solve home/away games madness, 19 home games for each team and would keep four Old Firm derbies. The main drawback is that after the split each team would have two free weekends and that would extend the season to 40 weeks rather than the current 38. Anyway a week off might help ease the strain on squads, especially on those playing european cups.
Below Premier two more divisions of 14 (14-14-14 system), but other possibilities could be considered, like 14-10-18 system. More than 3 national leagues would be useless.
Below senior football : 3 regional leagues (North, East, West) which fits well the number of teams in each part of Scotland
On 01/09/2020 at 08:30, Stag Nation said:It's not the only solution.
Play 39 games, then a 40th to even out homes and aways. The additional round could be seeded, or local derbies (both would potentially give 4 OF games), or simply drawn at random.
On 02/09/2020 at 15:38, RabidAI said:Good solution.
Another possibility would be to reverse the fixtures the following season and, similarly, just accept the inequalities - as we do now with the post-split fixtures. In that scenario, newly promoted teams could replace the relegated teams in the Premiership's reversed fixtures schedule. And the Old Firm could play their third match at Hampden.
On 11/09/2020 at 20:34, Classick said:That's a good solution! A similar system was used recently in Argentina playing the additional match against the main rival team.
I'd choose a system to give 4 OF games (derbies or seeding based on the last table).
...but this sounds more promising.
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12 hours ago, Andy groundhopper said:
Seeing as there's a 'no split' proposal on the table, I'll go for something ridiculous now ! The OF play each other all season ,as I expect most fans find them tedious and boring. The winner of that mini league plays the top 3 in the SPL to work out the champions. The OF naturally give a cash handout to all clubs to compensate for lost earnings.
1 hour ago, anonanist said:Or a top league of 8, play each team x4 (28 games), and play an 8-team Championship x1 (8 games, 36 in total).
...other unusual proposals are...
On 17/08/2020 at 16:00, prodcast said:The main issue with this proposal, for me, was that the middle 8 would have points reset to zero after 22 games, which would be unfair on those doing better in the earlier part of the season and would see some teams with not much to play for if they qualified early for the middle 8.
I would address this by awarding starting points before the middle 8 begins based on pre-split league position.
You would normally expect 11th in Prem and 2nd in Champ to play off, so they'd need to begin on the same points; you wouldn't expect 4th in Ch to be promoted, so they'd begin on zero.
So I'd start the middle 8 with points pre-allocated as follows:
1 - 12pts (for team 9th in Prem)
2 - 10pts (team 1st from Cham)
3 - 8pts (for 10th Prem)
4 - 6pts (for 2nd Champ)
5 - 6pts (for 11th Prem)
6 - 4pts (for 3rd Champ)
7 - 2pts (for 12th Prem)
8 - 0pts (for 4th Champ)
...which was for the top two leagues of 12, dividing into three divisions of 8; and, on the full east-west split...
On 18/08/2020 at 12:13, prodcast said:22 games - absolutely. Less is more.
I'd regionalised from the top, though, with a 12-team East Premiership and a 12-team West Premiership, playing just 22 games per team as you say, then a winter break.
After the winter shutdown, the top 4 from each of the two regional Premierships would go forward to the National Premiership, playing eachother home and away to settle the European places and crown Scottish Champions (36-game season, in total).
The 8 teams remaining in each regional Premiership would play each other again, home and away, to avoid relegation (36-game season, in total) -
with the top East and top West teams at the season's end playing off against the National team who is sitting in the final European place, winners taking that European place.
Or, the remaining 8 teams in the East could play the remaining 8 teams in the West at home and away to complete a 38-game season, points being added ongoing to their early season tally, with the same European incentive and relegation disincentive as before.
Edited to add - it would be interesting to see separate West and East of Scotland cups, including all the biggest clubs, too.
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Less miles = less money on petrol, presumably?
13 hours ago, Classick said:That's a good solution! A similar system was used recently in Argentina playing the additional match against the main rival team.
I'd choose a system to give 4 OF games (derbies or seeding based on the last table).
Sounds decent. Three divisions of 14 then? Or 18 teams in the bottom division, to bring more through from the LL, HL?
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I'm not sure that it is.
Part-time clubs can also offer youngsters the first-team games that they need to develop; seemingly they often train with their parent clubs, if they are on loan from full-timers to part-timers
Having more full-time clubs is a good thing if there are the fan bases to justify them.
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2 hours ago, Gordon EF said:
It all depends though, doesn't it? A part time L2 club with revenue of £200k and 'subsidy' of £50k who balances the books at the end of the season is exactly as sustainable nationally as a full time Championship club with revenue of £500k and 'subsidy' of £100k who also balances their books.
Of course you would imagine that travelling makes up a larger proportion of the average part time clubs costs.
But also, because of the geography of Scotland, partitioning Leagues 1 and 2 wouldn't result in vastly reduced distances for most clubs with a few clubs probably travelling much further, depending on the make up of the leagues. I looked at this a while ago and the only significant advantage really is saving the clubs furthest north and south from 2/4 extremely long journies every year. Any way you cut it, the vast majority of away games will always be in the relatively small strip from west central Scotland to Angus.
The top part time clubs playing in national leagues is an entirely made up 'problem' with precisely zero of the current part time clubs in the SPFL calling for regionalisation.
Possibly because they would fear it as a first step towards them being out of the national set up.
It looks like there's money to be made from it, as per the arguments set out above. I remember the Stirling chairman several years ago worrying about losing the away crowds from local home games against Clyde, if the league had expanded to accommodate the Old Firm colt teams.
So not a fiction; not so much a problem, as an opportunity.
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On 06/09/2020 at 20:09, welshbairn said:
You probably had it set on FM instead of digital.
Nah, it was just a crap radio.
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2 hours ago, Gordon EF said:
Haud me back from all the money we'd make in that league!
Isn't Arbroath's recent success built on the proceeds of a season where most of League One looked a bit like this sort of north-east conference, where it was mostly Angus and Fife clubs?
Or maybe it's just been due to the inimitable genius of Dick Campbell. BBC Sportsound did an excellent interview with him last year, entitled Desert Island Dick.
Those conferences sound okay to me. They wouldn't have to be regionalised in order to be interesting, but I don't see how you restructure into non-regional conferences without a dead season the year before; 'opportunity' missed this year, then.
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36 minutes ago, Ginaro said:
Pretty sure there was commentary on DAB on Friday, I listened to the build-up but turned it off to watch a stream.
Ah well - maybe it was just the radio that I bought, then.
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23 hours ago, Thistle_do_nicely said:
i'm not quite as much of an economics expert as top boi Varoufakis - i've always assumed that the main problem with a household budget analogy is that a country has to think competitively with other nations. So if other countries (especially if they're nearby geographically) are going into debt in order to fund infrastructure such as broadband or travel links and you aren't, then you might have a bit of trouble attracting private investment down the line/retaining current private investment.
There's also that whole thing of "if you owe the bank £1 it's your problem, if you owe them £1,000,000,000,000 then it's the banks problem". Could try to control inflation if you really need to but afaik there's a broad consensus that INFLATION BAD
It's also to do with what economists call 'multiplier effects', whereby any investment the government makes creates jobs, which enable people to pay the money back into government coffers via taxes, and more people in work means they have more money to buy stuff, more firms employ folk as a consequence, more firms and more people in work means more tax revenue for the government, and so on.
Gordon Brown understood this, but built a whoppingly large public sector on the tax revenues that he assumed would always be there. Then - financial crisis, fewer jobs, less tax revenues, huge overhanging public sector expenses.
David Cameron failed to understand about multiplier effects, cut too many jobs too quickly using the 'household budget' analogue as an excuse, and we had a longer and deeper recession than necessary; only the Bank of England keeping interest rates so low for so long prevented a depression, as low interest rates encouraged people and firms to spend and invest, despite Osborne (Cyril Sneer?) 's economically illiterate policies.
In my opinion. Ahem. Sorry about the sermon.
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League reconstruction: Let's hear your view
in Scottish Football - Fans' Views
Posted
In terms of the changes that the SFA are looking to make to the Lowland League in time for season 2023-24, my first thought would be to have 24 teams overall including the 8 elite development teams and the 16 clubs who are already there - who I would divide into the 8 most westerly, and 8 most easterly.
For fixtures: each 8 plays one another twice each (once at home and once away), and plays the other 16 once each (either at home or away), to give 30 games per team.
For tables: an overall table of 24 teams to see how the youngsters compare to the oldsters; a table of 16 teams to see who the best seniors are; and three separate tables of 8, to find the best of the youngsters, the best if the West, and the best of the East, with a possible play-off between the West and East winners since they would have had different fixtures lists (winners progressing to pyramid play-offs; or East winners, West winners Highland winners, and Club 42 could meet in play-offs; or Club 42 relegated automatically, with Club 41, East winners, West winners and Highland winners competing for 2 SPFL places).