VincentGuerin

It's not entirely without merit. Like it or not, OF fans make up a very big chunk of Scottish football supporters. Cutting them out would give us a really small pool to choose from. It's one of these opinions that a lot of non-OF fans have, but I'm not sure it's that well thought-out. Declaring your support and never reffing your team is fine in a country of 60 million and a spread of well-supported clubs. It makes a lot less sense in a country of five million with two huge clubs,

Shirley not.

f**k league name changes. Funniest masonic-length injury time ever.

Some people will read it like this. I'm not saying sacking Neilson will win Hearts the league. This is a tiresome take on what I think is a reasonable thing to say. Hearts should aim to win the league. That's up to you.

It's obvious, but we skim over it all the time. Any club's period of success is in part due to failings elsewhere. Levein's first spell came when Aberdeen were utter shite and Hibs mediocre, we finished second in 2005/06 with a good side, but we benefited from Rangers being shite. In the last decade Aberdeen benefited hugely from chaos at Rangers, Hearts, and Hibs. It's just the normal run of things. We all see our successes as coming from our club alone, but it's rarely true. We're benefiting now, and so is Robbie.

The question was about the future. I don't think we'll win the league next season.

It's been a mad decade in lots of ways, as you say. Within Hearts and in Scottish football in general. It is never some huge achievement for Hearts, Hibs, or Aberdeen to be third in the league. It's going to happen for each of us from time to time. And we've definitely been helped by how shite both of those sides are this season. It's overly-simplistic to say we should just be happy with what we have because we're third. Again, I don't think Neilson is dreadful. I just think he doesn't make the best of what we have.

I think Hearts should be looking to eventually win the league. I don't mean we will win it, but we should be aiming to win it. Neilson won't win it. But he is a step on the way. He may deliver group stage football and the cash it brings. I understand people use this kind of thing as 'entitled Hearts fans' etc etc. But it's not that. We have a good squad and our coach doesn't get the best out of them. And he has spent years showing he under-performs in big games. He's not bad and I'm not dying to see him chased out tomorrow. But we can do better.

Yes, we've known this for some time. We can still under-perform our level, even if we parachute into a group. And I think that's what most Hearts fans are bothered about with Neilson. It's not protest out the back of the stand stuff, but I think most fans are keen for the club to look around and see what else is out there. It's a clear pattern with Neilson. I'd love him to prove me wrong, but there's a huge body of evidence that this is as good as it gets.

'Next level' is one of these fuzzy concepts. I think we'd be more likely to win big games. Finishing third is completely meaningless unless it leads somewhere. A decent stab at the Conference League or winning something would be good. Otherwise, what's the point? I don't fancy Neilson to do either of those things. As a club, there's no reason why not.

This is true, but I don't think anyone would deny that derby week, for example, is just more exciting. I wouldn't want to cut them in half for extra games against smaller sides. I think it would just make the season less fun and interesting.

The best any of the medium-sized clubs can hope to do is produce one player every few years who goes for a big fee, or buy one cheap from a smaller club and hope he develops. But the odds are massively stacked against it. Hearts and Souttar a good recent example. You're walking the renew/don't renew contract tightrope, and as soon as it becomes obvious it's a safe bet, the player knows he can move on in a year and make a fortune so you're fucked. Laughable to blame the clubs. The transfer market compared to the 90s is completely different.

I agree on the general point about away days. More variety would be good. But I'm not sure Hearts would make that swap given the relative away supports, and given that most fans don't go to away games, I'm not sure we'd gain by replacing big home games with small home games. In fact, I'm certain we'd lose out. I'm not sure it's ever been done. But I think a survey of Hearts season ticket holders would show a preference for Hibs x2 rathen than Hibs x1 and Raith x1.

This is very silly. As I explained when I first responded to this point. I'm happy with 12.

What's your point? I'm not sure if you're implying I might enjoy a 6-team league. This is a very silly point to try to make.

This post hurts my head. My point was very simple. I pay to watch Hearts and I'd like to see them play big games more often. A big league gives us fewer big games.

The big games wouldn't be big games if they were the only games we played. So, that doesn't make any sense.

This is how I feel. At risk of losing superfan points, but I travel quite far to watch Hearts, and I can't honestly say I'd be jumping out of bed for an early morning train to watch us play a smaller team in the spring when sitting mid-table in a bigger league. At the moment we have a derby or the Old Firm every few weeks, and that's simply quite good fun. I look forward to those games. I wouldn't want them replaced.

In terms of a bigger league, it's not just about away numbers. It's about existing home fans. Possibly an unpopular opinion, but I'm not sure I'd be keen to pay my current whack for a Hearts season ticket if the league was 18 teams and one home game each against Rangers, Celtic, Hibs, Aberdeen each year was replaced with Raith, Hamilton, ICT, and Dunfermline. I like that in a small league, the big games come around often. I don't feel I'd gain as a season ticket holder from a bigger league. And I don't think Hearts would be any more likely to win it, since there'd just be more sides with few resources for the OF to blow away every week.

Agree it's not just the OF. Looking at the top 6 clubs in the second tier at the moment, I doubt Hearts would be keen to swap a second game with Celtic, Rangers, Hibs, and Aberdeen with home games against Arbroath, Killie, ICT, and Raith. Then maybe swapping a game with United with Partick Thislte and Motherwell with Accies. Good for Hearts' pocket in terms of away numbers? And to be perfectly honest, I like playing the teams we dislike more often.

It's not insulting to Dundee and St Johnstone. They are literally the two worst teams in the league and it would make for a very dull end to the season for them to play the best two teams when they all needed to win. Your final paragraph is where we get to the point, I think. Your team missed out and you're upset. That's fair enough, but you haven't made any convincing arguments for the league being improved by the split's removal. As for your final question. It's not an 'issue'. St Mirren knew they had 33 games to get into the top 6 and they failed. Case closed. The consequence of that is that they couldn't qualify for Europe.

It does happen a lot. And it's boring. And I'm not implying what you say in your second paragraph. I'm saying that fixtures late in the season between teams in direct competition with each other are exciting and I think it's a good idea to have them. If you disagree, you disagree. Dead rubbers will always happen, but I don't think you'll find many people who, if given the choice, would rather have more of them.

The split does provide competition. It produces 'big' ish games when the teams from 5-8 in the league are scrambling to get into the top 6. For example, this season everyone from 4th-10th could conceivably be in the top or bottom 6. That'll mean a lot of games with something riding on them in the next month or so. You could argue that this season's push for Europe would be exciting regardless, given how congested the table is. However, it's not like this every year. Even if it were only two clubs in any doubt about top 6/bottom 6, then that adds meaning to games in spring that would have little otherwise. It's very obvious that this adds to the number of meaningful games in the league in a normal season. Otherwise who would really care about a game between the team in 6th and the team in 8th in late February? But now for those clubs that game could result in a good cash boost, a bit of added prestige, and an outside shot at Europe. It adds jeopardy to the fixture that would be lacking. Then there's the obvious point that post-split run-in fixtures are massively improved by knowing the sides competing for titles/Europe/safety will have to play their direct rivals in the last few weeks. I don't see how anyone could object to that. For instance, we might have St Johnstone v Dundee on the last day this season. A last day with Celtic v St Johnstone and Dundee v Rangers wouldn't be too thrilling for the relegation battle or for the title race.

Fair enough. I just don't agree with you that there's a problem. Artificial competition is good for sport. Our league needs as much competition as possible. It's why we have play-offs for the lower leagues that allow the fourth-best side to go up. Loads of countries do stuff like this because sport needs competition. It's not meant to be completely fair. As long as you cling on to that notion, you'll always be unhappy.

I don't see the positive outcome we'd get if we removed the split. We'd lose good fixtures at the end of the season that add to the excitement. We'd lose an easy model for a 38-game season. We'd lose semi-interesting games as clubs scramble for the last top six place in the spring. What exactly would we gain?