theboke

My problem with tribalism in football is that, as a neutral, I can't go along and watch a game that I'm interested in. Where the hell would I sit or stand? I'd be pilloried by one set of fans or the other, just for being quietly interested in a game. That's dosh clubs are missing out on by not catering for the neutral, who may well be a supporter of another team but whose team ain't playing at that particular time. It doesn't matter much, anyway, as football in its current guise is pretty much doomed. Florentino Perez of the European Super League is right to be worried about the game being unattractive to the younger generations, who prefer gaming and more instant rewards. Football needs to be not more than one hour per game, and ten-a-side on a full-size pitch, and not played in freezing conditions if it's to continue its popularity.

Another possibility would be to turn the Highland League and Lowland League themselves into a semi-national tier 5, by having some games against one another as part of their regular season, but earning points towards their own division as normal. If they were both leagues of 12, then they could play teams within their own league at home and away (22 games each), and teams in the other league at home or away (12 games each), for a 34-game season each, involving 6 of the long away trips that are either feared or relished depending upon who you listen to.

Sounds exciting. Lots of variety in fixtures and would spread money down to smaller clubs. But maybe the Premiership clubs wouldn't be as keen on that. Might have a a similar drawback if it was suggested for Championship-League One divisions of 12. Possibly best suited to 12 team divisions in League One and League Two. Edit. They could use the same principle to support the pyramid - A 10 team League 2 playing home and away for 18 games each, but also playing once against every team in a 10-team Lowland League, and once against every team in a 10-team Highland League, giving a 38 game season for each League Two team, with lots of interesting away games, at the apex of the pyramid. So the LL teams would just play one another at home and away, and would play each League 2 team either at home or away, for a 28 game season - and ditto for the HL teams, in their respective situation. (Or the LL and HL teams could also play each other once, at home or away, for a 38 game season - but that may be too many games.) And all that familiarity between League 2 and the Highland/ Lowland leagues would enable more promotion and relegation between league and non-league, without the fear of the unknown opponent and within a known, tested league structure.

I'm not surprised. The new Champions League format is absolutely pants. They could easily come up with a better way to have the best v best more often yet keep domestic leagues meaningful. A Uefa Super League of 4 divisions of 9, playing every opponent in your division once, for 8 pre-Christmas games each. Divisions initially filled on merit, via clubs' Uefa coefficients. Top division initially with Real, Paris, etc. 2 up/down between divisions, and 2 automatically dropping out of the fourth tier to be replaced by Europa League finalists from the season before. Top 4 from each Uefa Super League division qualifying for a 16 team post-Christmas knockout European Cup. Teams failing to finish top 4 in their domestic league (for the most successful leagues) drop out of the Uefa Super League, top 3 for the next most successful domestic leagues, and so on.

I was surprised by that. Seems like restructuring is doomed for that reason. I was also persuaded by Longmuir's enthusiasm for the proposal, although It's not like we're short of excitement the way the league's structured at the moment. (For an armchair person like me anyway, who pores over league tables and doesn't see much of the actual football.) I was confused by your reference to a Championship group. Then realised you meant the group consisting of the Premiership top 4, with 4th going into play offs with the winners of Group A and/or Group B. I like it, but I'd maybe tweak the groups so that 5th, 8th, 9th, 12th were together, and 6th, 7th, 10th, 11th were together. Edit - see Gordon Smith's Pyramid for another take on 16 team divisions... https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.sundaypost.com/inside-the-sunday-edition/gordon-smith-league-reconstruction-with-old-firm-b-teams-would-be-a-boost-to-everyone/amp/ ... regionalisation at tier 2 AND colts! Gott in Himmel!

Teams placed 5th-12th after 30 games each could all just play one another the once more, in a middle section of 8. It's ugly-looking but would keep European opportunities open for them all. Ten or so years at there was an investigation done by an accountancy firm, KPMG or some such, on the best format for Scotland's top division. They chose 16 teams, dividing into 4 fours. Edit: The SFL also once had unanimous agreement on a change of league structure to 16-10-16... https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.scotsman.com/regions/sfl-vote-new-three-tier-league-all-42-clubs-under-one-roof-2479308%3famp ...amazing to think!

Yes I am, thank you. I am also stupid, smelly, ugly and stupid. The key point, though, is that loaning players to the Scottish lower leagues doesn't produce much in the way of international-class players. And neither do colts or B teams. The best players we have tend to break through as teenagers at their club, at whatever level, stay in that nurturing environment for a couple of seasons, then move on up. Clubs should be using them or releasing them, not turning them into loanee journeymen. So I wonder if we shouldn't be looking at increasing the number of full time clubs, so that these youngsters can play and train day-to-day full time alongside senior pros, in first team rather than development squads. How to increase the number of full time clubs? A league structure that enables more part time clubs to play more regularly against full time clubs, earning money from their travelling supporters? A bigger second tier, then? Or simply corral the prize money the Old Firm don't seem to need, going by their colts proposal, over the next 5 years. And redistribute it lower down? I think full time clubs maybe add something to their communities, too, in terms of the local employment they support.

I am seeking your approval, in light of your recent campaign of red cards against my posts. Would you prefer 12, 12, 12 12? Just sticking with the Lowland League and Highland League at tier 5, though, and abandoning the national league idea. Therefore admitting four lowlanders and two highlanders to expand the SPFL to 48. It'd be a bit untidy, with a split required in every SPFL division, but there's enough non league quality nowadays to enable those 6 teams to be promoted to the SPFL and so to keep that bottom 12 of the SPFL competitive. And that surely would mean they'd be able to open up more promotion/relegation from/to the LL and HL, if the SPFL was larger. Then just stick with the usual promotion/relegation/playoffs between the SPFL divisions themselves. Making each tier a wee bit fatter wouldn't hurt, either, in terms of helping build teams and players over a couple of seasons, rather than the constant uncertainty of leagues of 10? @Cyclizine Stop it. That tickles! (more)

Doubt it, since those clubs will have just recently been in tier 6 and working their way up. But no colts is fine. Just trying to find a solution to an ongoing issue. I'd probably scrap colts teams altogether along with barring loans for youths, which seem just to turn talented teens into journeymen. Make clubs use their youngsters or release them: they'll soon be picked up by clubs at a lower level, which they can enrich with their talents whilst playing real football alongside men. If no colts, I'd go for an SPFL 10, 10, 10, 10. With a tier 5 national league of 10 teams at the tip of the non league pyramid, composed of 2 ex-SPFL, 3 ex-HL, 5 ex-LL. Standardise promotion/relegation from Premiership down to National League: one automatic promotion/relegation place, plus 9th from division above vs 2nd, 3rd, 4th of division below. And two relegated automatically from tier 5. Ultimately, tier 6 would be four separate divisions: West Lowland, East Lowland, Grampian, Highland. With two of the four champions promoted each season, after play offs. @Crawford Bridge @DA Baracus

Reading around contributions to lower league and non league forums on P&B, two ideas that seem to have majority support are that people want to see more promotion/relegation to/from the SPFL and also no colts teams in the SPFL. There's also a lot more depth to the Lowland and Highland leagues these days. So why not have a national league of 10 teams at the fifth level, pulling in the best LL and HL clubs, where SPFL League Two clubs are more comfortable being relegated to? This would enable SPFL clubs to vote to open up more promotion/relegation, such as a National League division at tier 5 with the usual one automatic promotion/relegation and 9th in L2 in playoffs with 2nd, 3rd, 4th in the National League. I think the clubs could afford it in terms of travel costs, as I calculated on the Reconstruction thread that it doesn't cost League One and Two clubs much more than about £20,000 collectively to play nationwide rather than in parallel East and West divisions, so there's not that much extra cost for teams moving up to play nationwide. Maybe the Old Firm would be happy to pick up the bill, entering their colts teams at this level, which would be a good standard, and no higher? Because of population imbalances in the catchment areas, they could start off with 7 lowland teams, 3 highland teams. Or substitute 2 colts teams in for 2 lowlanders. Relegation could be 2 automatic, with 1 promoted directly from the LL and 1st HL v 2nd LL for the other place in the National League.

Now and then I see the idea mentioned of regionalising the SPFL's lower levels to save money or increase attendances. So I did a bit of distance calculating, comparing over a 36 game season the current Leagues One and Two versus the same teams divided into parallel Conferences East and West. The surprising result was that dividing into conferences saves about 17,944 miles of traveling, but that this only saves between £10,197 and £20,393 in aggregate travel costs across all 20 clubs. I found the total mileages to be as follows: 17,384 for Conference West, 29,232 for Conference East, 29,824 for League One, 34,736 for League Two, 66,364 for a National League of 18 teams - i.e. 3,687 miles travelled on average per team. (For average mileages per club, just divide by 10 for the leagues of 10, and 18 for the league of 18.) So while there's a huge saving to be made in terms of travel distances (about 28%) both for clubs and their supporters, the low cost of fuel seems to soften the expense of playing nationwide. (For travel costs, I estimated 5-10 mpg for a bus with diesel costing about £1.25 per litre at Tesco.) Fig. 1. Mileages from town to town for SPFL's 20 lower league clubs, plus part time Alloa and Arbroath. Fig. 2. Mileages added per club per opponent for one single journey. Leagues One and Two. Fig. 3. Mileages added per club per opponent for one single journey. Conferences East and West. Fig. 4. Mileages added per club per opponent for single journeys. National League of 18. Initial mileage in the hundreds is carried over from earlier Conferences calculations, with mileages against either Falkirk or Partick deducted as appropriate as they are not included in this hypothetical nationwide league of 18 teams. https://www.driving-distances.com/uk-route-planner-mileage.php

Dear Newbies, I skipped this thread when I joined because I was just so darn excited to be involved, but I'm back now to advise you to ru̶n̶!̶ ̶R̶u̶n̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶r̶ ̶l̶i̶v̶e̶s̶!̶ Hmm. Not sure what happened there. Anyway, if you want to reply to different bits of a long post, my advice is to: - quote the whole post - put the cursor at the end of an individual paragraph - press Return twice The editor should automatically divide up the post at that paragraph, so that you can make your point directly underneath their corresponding comments. And repeat, as necessary. So - enjoy!

I think it would be normal for those attending a meeting about the merger of two organisations, in this case the SPL and SFL, to expect there to be discussions on how they were to reach joint agreement on taking decisions for that new body. There was a lot of compromising going on at the time by those taking a wider view, some of whom would have had reservations about the league structure, so I think there would have been no shortage of allies at the three-year review if the league restructure was a flop.

In a meeting where they were discussing changes to league structure, financial distribution and organisational structure, it doesn't seem out of place that they were also looking at changes to the voting system. Particularly when that was something they almost had agreement upon in the recent past and had decided to revisit. Agreement to normalise the voting system would have freed them to restructure the league again if necessary. It seems like that is the wider perspective missed by the representatives of Ross County and St. Mirren at that time.

I wonder what scrutiny it would require to change a voting system from 11-1 to 9-3. How much time it would take to discuss. Representatives of the very same clubs, Ross County and St. Mirren, had already debated it and approved that change at a meeting earlier in the season. When that earlier vote failed, because of Aberdeen and Celtic, it was said that they would return to it later in the season. Which they did, eventually, at this meeting about fundamental change to the league. Maybe Stewart Milne repented! Yet it seems like St. Mirren's and Ross County's representatives could have taken a wider view, for the sake of the game, and joined him to change the voting system first, which would enable changes in league structure to be more easily agreed in the future.

I would accept the proposal if they made it an 18 team L2 with four from LL and two from HL gaining entry alongside the two colts teams. And if they also changed the pyramid play offs to relegate at least one L2 team automatically with another in a relegation play off each season. Because - I don't see any colts or other player development in a 16 team league with minimal relegation. Too many meaningless games. I don't think 15 home games in a 16 team league is enough when two of those are against colts teams. And having to play each colts team x4 is too much for real clubs and their supporters so a bigger division is required to avoid this. I don't see many HL clubs being ready or interested in playing nationwide and the LL covers the balance of the population so should have more representation. Basically if the league can afford to expand and open up opportunities for real clubs to come through then I feel that letting in the colts could be a price worth paying. And they just might develop a player or two. Maybe.

I think the geography lends itself to an Aberdeenshire Aberdeen Angus Dundee division at tier 5 in parallel with a Moray Highland and islands division. So I predict that there will have to be a North representative in the pyramid playoffs. And this North representative will be the winners of a Highland League v Grampian League playoff. The Highland League will therefore be divisions of seniors and former juniors from Moray Inverness Highland and islands areas. The Grampian League will therefore be divisions of seniors and former juniors from Aberdeen Aberdeenshire Angus Dundee areas. If they get on with it now then the issues will be resolved and leagues set up in time for the new season.

So divide the Premiership into 3 at 33 games? And round the fixtures up to 36 games each, by playing once more against the other teams in every group of 4? Your top 4 would guarantee the necessary Old Firm games for TV. Instead of the way you've described the other two groups of 4, I'd draw them evenly into the groups something like 5, 8, 9, 12 (a) and 6, 7, 10, 11 (b). Then have the winners of each group play off for the final European place. And relegate the two groups' bottom teams. But I don't really like splits so maybe not!

Think that's when the regionalisation trope originated. Talk at the time was of 12+12 with a funky split then regionalised below that. But there were many issues to be resolved at all their meetings and cherry picking wasn't allowed. (Except that it was. Because they dumped the big one. League restructuring.)

With 16 teams and no automatic relegation and only one automatic promotion place, I don't see the argument for player development in the division they're proposing. There would be a lot of meaningless games, which isn't really any better than colts v colts in terms of developing youngsters.

It seems like they'd be turning League Two into a development division where clubs develop from Highland and Lowland to national status, and young players develop into senior pros. But without change to relegation too, it may as a bigger League Two become quite stagnant. What happens to it if these B teams are promoted within 5 years when the bribe runs out?

At the risk of seeming a troll. Not in favour of colts in the league, but it's not a red line for me because I honestly don't know if it would improve players for the national team. And I'm excited at the prospect of league expansion, to bring through new Lowland and Highland clubs into the national league, which I previously hadn't thought was affordable to the SPFL. I thInk that distributing £3m over five years is not enough, and worry about what happens to League Two after that when the beeb article suggests that the working group will be looking at restructuring again in the future. I realise that the Old Firm do bring in much of the commercial revenue to Scottish football, and certainly Ann Budge in the past has talked of downsizing the SPFL. Maybe the OF see B teams as them attaining value for the money they contribute, which enables clubs to play nationwide who otherwise would not be able to do so. The increase in loans of youngsters between clubs sounds like a positive step, and I wonder if that would be a better starting point for player development than inserting B teams into the league. Sorry if that's a bit de'il's advocate. Still working through it all in me noggin.

Death to my hopes and dreams

I think it's the opposite of that. It wouldn't take a massive investment to be consistently better than everyone outside of Celtic and Rangers. Then just see how the head to heads with them turn out, to determine whether you finish 1, 2, or 3. Any estimates as to the capacity of Easter Road, Tynecastle, Tannadice if the corners were filled in? 30k, 30k, 20k? If our biggest clubs are Celtic, Rangers, Hearts, Hibs, Aberdeen, then Dundee United, then Dundee... who's next, by fan base? 8 ) St. Mirren 9) Partick 10) Killie 11) Dunfermline 12) Motherwell 13) Falkirk 14) Morton 15) Ross County 16) St. Johnstone 17) Inverness 18) Raith Rovers 19) Ayr United 20) Queen of the South 21) Clyde 22) Hamilton 23) Airdrie 24) Livingston 25) Arbroath 26) Clydebank 27) Peterhead 28) Stirling 29) Elgin 30) Queen's Park 31) Pollok 32) Borrowstounness* 33) East Fife 34) ✓ these are all of our full time or potential full time clubs because of the size of their fan base × I know you're going to red dot this post but don't, don't be a dick

Their technique was outstanding even then. I couldn't believe how good they were, and yet they were only this wee nation. I'd still like to see us give young Scots coaches a broader education, if we can. Send them round various countries to learn what they can, maybe as part of an SFA apprenticeship scheme. That sort of experience should help them improve our young players (because we don't want to rest on our lauras from just one qualification), as one of a number of strands aimed at sustaining a higher standard of player (maybe including restructuring the league to give development teams real opposition, quotas of teens in first teams, etc as discussed on the preceding page). Because I've read that to make a system resilient, it needs to have various routes to success. Like the multiple fibres needed to make a strong rope, rather than trying to rely on a single magic silver bullet approach.