theboke

Maybe we're too well off in this country then. Good info, ta. I would have said Croatia because I've had a bit of a thing for them since France '98, so not a recent conversion for me.

Someone earlier mentioned our national team's performance versus that of a less populous country, Croatia. In my view they have the best players in terms of technique in world football. So I think we can either copy their league structure wholesale and hope it improves our national team performance, or we can send our young coaches out their to learn how it's done. @Crawford Bridge You missed this one!

I'm sure I recall attendances of 25k+ for Hearts' home games at Murrayfield against the bigger clubs. That would surely have raked in a lot of additional cash for them and made them more attractive to possible investors. Then again given their past experience of going down that road maybe they did make the right decisions.

How much would you pay for a Sportsound Watch? I imagine it with Richard Gordon's face at the centre. His wee arms would be the minute and hour hands pointing to the individual faces of the Open All Mic pundits arrayed around the clockface instead of numbers. Open All Mic's is superb. Sportsound: Listen.

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Status quo ante. Carry on with what actually has been previously agreed by board and clubs. Which is to progress with a 27 game season as far as possible and likely use the precedent of points per game which is our version of that complicated cricket formula.

Your argument has changed from being about probabilities of a League 1 side being promoted once they actually reach the playoffs to their probabilities of being promoted from the outset. Again the probability of a League 1 team being promoted is 50pc when there are 2 teams involved in the playoffs and only 25pc when there are 4 teams involved. I suppose clubs would need to take a view on that given the circumstances with a possible split to initially reduce their pool of rivals and how confident they feel about the head to heads thereafter.

No it doesn't. The champions do not have a zero probability of being promoted. Unless it's last season and we're in the Highland or the Lowland leagues ofcourse. Your original point seemed to be about the probabilities of League 1 sides who qualify for the playoffs gaining promotion by that route. Now you're talking about the probabilities of all individual teams in the league regardless of playoff qualification . Of course the probability of being promoted of any team not qualifying for the promotion playoffs however they're done drops to nil. Unless theyre the champion club. That's clear. As I said the probability of being promoted of any individual League 1 team that reaches a 9th v 2nd playoff is 50pc which is higher than the 25pc for reaching the current playoffs. What in reality matters to individual clubs may not be the same thing as what you feel should matter to the league as a collective. The proposed split if it was effectively substituted in place of the current playoffs would change the outlook again.

Well said. As it's the most minor Europa place though I'd make an allowance for keeping the domestic league interesting for supporters and have maybe 6th away to 5th and the winners away to 4th if need be. Winning the um high quality knockout playoffs would be good practice for them to prepare for their upcoming European knockout matches.

Ah but any individual League 1 team has only a 1 in 4 or 25 per cent chance of being promoted under the current system. That would rise to a 1 in 2 or 50 per cent chance of any individual League 1 team being promoted if clubs opted for 9th in Championship v 2nd in League 1 as the playoff. The same would apply for promotion in playoffs between leagues 1 and 2. And shorter playoffs would reduce fixture congestion. I'm not in favour of the proposed split and think they should just pick up where they left off with the fixtures list and play on a Saturday Tuesday basis to fit in as many of the original fixtures list as is sensibly possible. By pushing back the playoff date and shortening the playoffs to give additional league matchdays. And using points per game as the Plan B contingency to resolve imbalances in final totals of games played.

Great question, Darren. I see the huge cup final attendances of Aberdeen 40k+ Hibs and Hearts 30k+ Dundee United c.20k and wonder about how big these clubs really could be. I think Romanov for all his faults could see that an investment in Hearts has huge potential and it's not so difficult to overturn at least one of the old firm and grab a champions league place when all you really need is to be consistently a little better than the remaining 9 premiership teams. And a bit of luck against the Glasgow pair. If you do it right then it's just a case of money goes to money. Aberdeen almost had it too when they adopted the old firm's traditional policy of hoovering up the best talent from their rivals but just came up short against Deila's Celtic. I was hopeful of their new stadium being for 30k supporters including a 10k top deck to be opened for bigger games but it was not to be. I tend to think that filling in the corners of Tynecastle and Easter Road would help give them the extra money they need to put in a stronger challenge at home and in Europe. Doing so consistently and filling the stadium more regularly by cutting ticket prices at certain times would make them more attractive to investors.

"Postpone playoffs". FFS, that's one of the problems that we're trying to fix. Are you deliberately trolling here? I read that the SPFL board have already agreed to that aspect. But that they've rejected the 22 game with split proposal. 18 games is logical in a neat and tidy way but not the rational choice if there is no agreement for it amongst the clubs. Hence why my conclusion is that by default you have to carry on with what was agreed prior to the shutdown and mitigate it with PPG and extending the season. That to me is rational as it takes in some more realities than just an idealistic scenario that is logical but not likely. I'll be happy to be wrong about it.

You should work for the SPFL. That kind of "thinking" would fit in well there. Starting on the 20th would give you 13 matchdays if you play Saturday midweek Saturday. The most anyone has played is 11, so immediately theres no way that you'd finish, and all you'd be doing is benefiting the team who were due to play the top of the league teams in the last 3 weeks. That sounds about as good as it gets. There's already past agreement on attempting 27 games each. No agreement yet on an 18 game version that may be controversial. There's the precedent of last season for PPG to even out inequities. Just press on with fixtures as they were. Except maybe postpone playoffs just to build in some slack and give the LL a fair chance to complete as far as they can also. Good enough might be all there is.

18 games makes most sense except that the clubs involved don't seem to have an agreement on it but have reached agreement on a longer season of 22 or originally 27 games each. 18 games each could also lack credibility since it's just one game more than a void season. So maybe that's where Championship clubs are coming from. The SPFL board might have to have a word with them about it since the board seemed to be content with 18 games each.

Latest from the beeb on this https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-56296109

Exactly. So since the clubs have already agreed that they want to play more than 18 games each...

Was thinking they may need to split before all teams had caught up with postponed fixtures. In order to stay on schedule for end of season playoffs. To this outsider it now looks like the most rational way to progress is... ...use Saturdays and Tuesdays OR Thursdays to work through as much of the original 27 game fixtures list as is sensibly possible ...rather than trying to squeeze in a daft number of games in any given week agree in advance to use PPG as a fair way to decide the season once the final pre playoff matchday is complete no matter how many games each team theoretically has left to complete their respective 27 game season ...push back the playoffs by a couple of weeks to enable this and to build in a bit of leeway in case of mishaps and to give LL a chance to produce a champion club as I assume the LL will be back late April.

But the UK are a long way ahead of other European countries on vaccination, so it makes sense for Uefa to look here to host the tournament...yet Scotland has a Covid stricter government...which all points to down south as being Uefa's best option for successfully hosting the tournament this summer.

The clubs are probably just keen to give their season as much legitimacy as possible. An 18 game season looks like nullandvoid plus 1. Even though the SPFL seem happy enough with it. PPG is a good contingency to be agreed on in advance. Take it that teams in fifth and sixth at the time the league splits will be scheduled to sit out the final round of fixtures. As they're least likely to be involved in meaningful games. Bit of a pickle if they need PPG to decide where the split falls too. Oh dear.

Might end up being a championship entirely hosted by England then. Given they have made the greatest progress on vaccination combined with a relatively relaxed view on opening up after lockdown. Wonder if the SNP will close the border to stop the Tartan Army heading down to games and bringing new variants back with them.

I was just reading that on the beeb sport website. Sounds like England are ready to take over. There is no mention of how many fans Uefa are looking for to be in the stadium. Maybe the Scottish government could just give the thumbs up right now to SOME fans being allowed in this summer and fill in the blanks when they know more about the virus's regression as vaccination progresses. It would be a real shame to miss out. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/56250120 Edit. Realised my earlier idea about opening up an increasing percentage of each stadium's capacity to fans every 3 weeks wouldn't work unless it was restricted to local home fans so that a resulting spike in infections could be properly monitored and also because there won't be many games left after lockdown ends. That's what I get for thinking.

Cheers Dale. It's surprising the SFA are aiming to have the Scottish Cup finished this season. I can't see us going from leaving lockdown on 26 April to full Hampden a month later. If they could have the final in a full Hampden as a curtain raiser to the new season then I think that would be an emotional moment and maybe symbolic that we're through the pandemic. And would fill the SFA's pockets. With the daily case numbers static around 800 or so for a couple of weeks there I think we had reached the limits of this lockdown. The further reduction now seems to be due to the effect of the vaccine. At the current rate I don't see any area remaining in level 4 after lockdown but we're still some way from the case numbers that will enable many supporters back in grounds it seems. The best way to do it might be allowing a percentage of capacity back but phase it. 25pc then wait 3wks for spike in cases. If none then 50pc wait 3wks. If none 75pc then wait 3wks. Something like that.

Intuitively against the colt firm but gave it some thought this morning. Possible benefits depending upon how it's done 1. League expansion to 44 teams could push everyone up a couple of notches in a 14, 10, 10, 10 setup. I'd demand this as a tradeoff for their inclusion. B. Colt teams would likely be relegated immediately from L2 because they'd be pants inconsistent so they would stop current L2 sides being relegated and would therefore expedite promotion of real teams in their place. So demand that they could be relegated to the LL and beyond as a tradeoff for their inclusion.

Having lived in a Haymarket tenament for a number of years I found both football and rugby fans to be noisy and messy. But no more so than stag nights hen dos students and the usual weekend revellers. They added a lot of character to the area and atmosphere. The council wagon that swept up after them in the wee hours was probably worse for noise and mess. Never did find out who took a dump on my stairs tho.

(s)he