footnotes

My advice to Mr Goodwin is to allow Trapanovski the freedom to play off either wing. Babunski is best utilised as the most advanced of a central midfield 3. I feel like Jim is trying for a symmetrical formation up front and is lessening your most potent talents by doing so. Square pegs, round holes. So a 3-5-1-1 formation. Otherwise, great job so far. Good to see our biggest clubs doing the right things.

Jambo! If I was Mr Naismith I would be looking at starting your more attacking fullbacks, Salazar and Taylor, in your home games then subbing them after about 60-65 minutes for Penrice and Oyegoke - then doing the opposite for away games, starting with Penrice and Oyegoke, subbing them for Salazar and Taylor for the last half hour. Keep them all fit and fresh. I would also start Spittal (left) and Dhanda (right) in a box midfield for your home games, playing closest to the lone striker as part of a 3-4-2-1 system. For away games, it would be 3-5-2 to start as per the weekend. I would rest Shankland until your European games begin, and give Drammeh and Oda as much game time as possible. Remember that Alex Ferguson never settled on his favourite team for any season until he had given everyone plenty of game time so he could assess each player's form. Then from about late November it was continuity all the way to the end of the season. Hearts and Aberdeen have good enough teams and squads now to challenge the OF - they just need to believe it themselves. All the best!

It was 2 directly promoted from the second level for quite a while in the '80s - but it might have been reduced to 1 automatic, plus 1 in a playoff with bottom of the Premier in the end. 2 were directly relegated to the third level, too. That wouldn't be enough to keep the leagues interesting. I can see that (in leagues of 12) having a middle four after 33 games would take some of the pressure off, as it would be a kind of repechage, but it would surely be easier just to have open leagues of 14 teams and no split? 3 leagues of 14, which would also raise the Lowland, Highland and the rest up a level. Maybe you would only want to relegate 2 automatically from the Premiership, with 1st in the Championship going up and 2nd-5th in the playoffs. Then have Championship-League One a bit more fluid, with two directly relegated and 3rd bottom in the playoffs with 2nd-5th from League One.

If that's what the people involved are saying then there'll be something in it. I can see that a 14 team league with no split would remove the desperation of trying to reach a 'top 6' place. I don't know if that's just for kudos, or if it's because they're cut off early from a run at Europe, or trying to escape the risk of relegation. I suppose the current risk of 1/6 being relegated could be worse than the certainty of 1/7 being relegated if it was a 14 team league with 2 automatic relegation places. With 14 teams and no split, maybe finishing 7th-10th becomes more acceptable, developing players with a view towards building for future seasons. No wonder clubs outside the top division won't risk developing many young players if potentially 1/5 are relegated with no decent financial recompense.

Regarding revenue and 14 team divisions. If it was 39 games each in the Premiership then that would be 45 more matches to sell every season than we now have, which would possibly offset the commercial income lost from one fewer Old Firm derby and offset matchday income lost from some teams playing the bigger clubs less often. There's also the consideration that the two new clubs coming into the division would be of a decent size. For instance - with the Championship's current leaders - I would compare Ayr's home support to Ross County or St. Johnstone, and Falkirk's to Dundee or St. Mirren. I don't see any dilution in quality there, either. I'm not sure if larger leagues give more opportunities for youth development, because to keep those leagues interesting there needs to be additional promotion/relegation places to battle for. If they did go to 3 divisions of 14, there would be very little difference in the overall number of games outwith the top division. I calculate it to be 546 games over 2 divisions of 14, versus 540 games over 3 divisions of 10 - but you lose 6 play off matches with one fewer division, so it's about equal.

I'm not much of a gambler, but I did manage to break even with the bookies using the system I'll describe below. If you are a gambler, then you could make better use of it and do the unthinkable... Goals are the most fundamental thing in football, so you take: 1) the home team's home goals for, and divide by the number of home games they've played so far. 2) the away team's away goals against, and divide by their number of away games. Multiply 1 and 2 together, to give the home team's most likely number of 'goals for' in the scheduled match between them. 3) the away team's away goals for, and divide by their number of away games so far. 4) the home team's home goals against, and divide by their number of home games so far. Multiply 3 and 4 together to give the away team's most likely number of 'goals for' in the match between them. Then just compare the likely number of goals for the home team (1*2) against the likely number of goals for the away team (3*4), and choose the likely result (W/D/L) accordingly. All you're doing here is comparing the strength of the home team's attack (1) to the strength of the away team's defence (2); and then the strength of the away team's attack (3) with the strength of the home team's defence (4). I found this forecasted the correct result 48.0% of the time, which is quite good considering that there are 3 possible outcomes (i.e. football is a three-sided coin toss in terms of results). I have read that 46% of games are home wins, 26% draws, 26% away wins, so there may be value in considering that, too. Some of the scores that it predicts do seem a little extreme, but it's quite good with identifying draws and you can use the handicap bets available to take advantage of any extreme scorelines. I actually made £18.70 from £40 of free bets using the system. I used the system to break even with Bet365 and Ladbrokes, which then released the free bets with each of them. Note that you don't need to bet more than pennies at a time in order to release the free bets: the sums that you bet just accumulate until you reach the stipulated free-bet threshold. With Ladbrokes you receive 4 x £5 free bets, which I eventually realised the best way to use was to place on the Old Firm's opponents, at long odds, and simply cash out before the game begins. I never actually bet on any Old Firm games, so the system is a slight underestimate of its capabilities. Also, I only used it mid-season once teams had played each other many times already.

I believe that there would be some midweek fixtures dates available in spring, but the SPFL try to keep them free for rescheduled matches. If they didn't, then the rescheduled games would have to be played the same nights as Uefa competitions - and they may be fined for that. Although I think there was a free date a couple of midweeks ago: the English Premier seemed to be playing, but we weren't up here. Another possibility would be extending the season through May towards the June international date, although I think the top clubs are more likely to vote for any restructuring that gives less games rather than more.

No! Each league season needs to be a fresh start. If you want to have 14 teams in a division, playing opponents three times, then you can be fairer than that. 1) Schedule the fixtures as normal for the first two 'round robins', which is everyone plays everyone else once at home and once away from home, giving 26 games per team. 2) The final 'round robin' of 13 matchdays is also scheduled before the beginning of the season, with opponents and dates known in advance BUT with whoever has home advantage unknown until they reach 26 games each. At this point, home advantage in the head-to-heads during the final 13 games is assigned as per each team's position in the table after 26 games, which is an advantage that they have earned during that season. So when the team sitting in 1st after 26 matchdays meets 2nd (at some point in the final round robin), 1st has home advantage; whenever 2nd meets 3rd in the final round robin, 2nd has home advantage, etc. The fixtures for the team in 1st after 26 games (in no particular order) would therefore be: (home) 2nd, 4th, 6th, 8th, 10th, 12th, 14th, (away) 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th, 11th, 13th. The fixtures for the team in 2nd after 26 games (in no particular order) would therefore be: (home) 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th, 11th, 13th, (away) 1st, 4th, 6th, 8th, 10th, 12th, 14th. And the rest would follow that same pattern. So there's no change to the fixture dates or opponents, which are already completely scheduled before the season begins. But whoever is playing home or away in the final 13 matchdays is left unknown, until teams reach the end of the first 2 round robins. At which point the small imbalances are made as fair as possible, by using their league position after 26 matchdays (i.e. after having played each opponent at home and away) to determine who has home advantage in the subsequent head-to-heads between closest rivals. The unfairness would be that the team sitting in 3rd after 26 games would have an additional home game that the team in 2nd would not, which is why you might choose to try to fit in game 40, somewhere - such as an additional derby, as mentioned above - to balance the fixtures at 20 home games per team.

Indeed. Regarding dividing the Premiership into 3 after 33 games... 1) It would relieve pressure on the fixtures list for those of our teams competing in the expanded European group stages, as there would only be 36 Premiership games each rather than 38. 2) It would be better because the teams in 7th and 8th at the split would have meaningful games against 5th and 6th to aim for that final European place (or play off with 4th, if need be). Bit of a travesty this season with Hibs and Motherwell, vibrant teams, being cut off from a battle with St.Mirren and Dundee for Europe, and now with little to play for. 3) The post-split games could be complete within an exciting week (Sat-Wed-Sun), so although a double split may look unusual it would be a quick finale to the table (with the last Old Firm derby always scheduled for the first post-split game, which is equivalent to this season's third-last matchday). 4) There wouldn't need to be a second automatic relegation place from the Premiership bottom 4. If the Championship went to 12 teams, too, with the same split at 33 matchdays, then the middle 4 (i.e. 5th-8th at the split) could be aiming for a play-off quarter final away to 4th, the winner of which would play away to Premiership 11th in a semi-final, with the winners meeting the winners of the 3rd v 2nd semi final, for a place in the following season's Premiership. It would favour the Premiership team slightly less than at the moment, but still pretty fair. I would use your system to extend the 4 SPFL divisions to 12 teams each, using the double split after 33 matchdays across the divisions, with play offs as described above, or relegating 2 automatically from each division, once the everyone reached 36 games. Hopefully it would enable automatic promotion from the Lowland League and Highland League, too. But, please, no colt teams (except Cumbernauld).

If they were having a 40 'match day' season, they might have to reduce the League Cup to a Saturday-Wednesday-Saturday competition, to free up a fixture date or two. Teams would have 3 games each, but maybe it would be like the new Champions League format with one overall league table, and the 40 teams would be drawn from 4 groups of seeds rather than 5. So the top 11 from the overall first round table would qualify for the Second Round, to meet the 5 teams who were playing in the European competitions. But if it was acceptable to have a "showpiece" additional, initial round of fixtures for the Premiership, then they could surely be doing that already, with teams then going on to play opponents x3, for 34 games each in total. No split, and 4 old firm games pretty much guaranteed. They could do it for the top 4 divisions of 12 teams per division, all national, and so open up automatic promotion and relegation to/from the Highland and Lowland leagues. But they'd probably need 2 teams to be automatically relegated from each SPFL division in order to keep it interesting.

Two possibilities that I like at the moment. A. Three divisions of 14. Teams play home and away before each division splits after 26 games into a top 8 / bottom 6. Bottom 6 play home and away (so 10 post split games, 36 in total) with 13th, 14th relegated and 12th into play offs with 3rd, 4th, 5th from division below. Top 8 play home or away (so 7 more games), then a second split at 33 games into 1st-4th who play one another for a fourth time, and likewise for 5th-8th. 36 games each. That way 1-4 automatically qualify for Europe and attempt to win the league, and 5-8 effectively play off for the final European place as 1-4 are likely to win the Scottish Cup. For the Championship and League One, the top 2 are automatically promoted, 3-5 go into play offs with 12th from above (so the teams in the 5th-8th group have meaningful fixtures when aiming for the last promotion play off place). Not sure how many would be relegated from League One / promoted from Highland and Lowland leagues. B. Top division of 16. Playing home and away before a split at 30 games into top 8, bottom 8. Then play home or away, for a 37 game season. The fourth Old Firm game would come in a summer weekend, as part of a master's tournament (to be held on weekends, about the same time as the league cup) between our European qualifiers that would also help them find form and progress in Europe.

Since they've done away with the regional ties it seems like there's less point in having teams in a wee group, as it's not so much like a local league any more (well - it often wasn't anyway). Therefore... I'd like to see them try a giant league table in the way that the Champions League will be, but just with the top 11 qualifying for the next round. Keep the seeding system for the fixtures in the first round, so playing 4 opponents; keep bonus point for draw-win; etc.

A top 10 seems optimal commercially (and so earns more money to share around) because it guarantees that the biggest clubs each meet x4. As seen this season any split can prevent that - although the rejected 2 divisions of 12 splitting into 3 of 8 comes closest to replicating it. Maybe why it was nearly voted through.

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.

You'd need to be more consistent than that with your points intervals if you wanted to be fair. So you could say at the outset that every position a team finishes higher in the table before the split is worth a win / an additional 3 point head start after the split. Using your basic model. The Premier teams would begin the middle 8 with 12 points (4 home games), 9 pts (4h), 6 pts (4h), 3 pts (3h) and the Champ teams begin with 9pts (4h), 6pts (3h), 3pts (3h) 0 pts (3h). But I can't see why Premier clubs would vote for a far greater chance of relegation or the old firm being interested in a longer domestic season.