SPFL 16-16-10

[RabidAl]

On current status, of course they would. But.....and i'm opening up to a bit of optimism here.....Celtic win a helluva lot of games against already-beaten opponents. If Aberdeen play Celtic in mid-December, at Pittodrie, whereby a win would put them top, and very near a Final spot, in part due to Celtic's likely European involvement, its a lot less daunting than wondering how the f**k they'd stay there for five months. It would also provide a sterner test for Celtic themselves. One which, if they are as good as they believe, should represent little trouble anyway. Have all the shootouts for 3rd place and for the top six all you like, the real issue is how to bridge the gap from second to first.

A good start would be for all the clubs who are not Celtic to stop rolling over and giving them so much prize money. 1st place gets a 13.4% share, 2nd gets 9.6%, 3rd gets 8.25%, etc.

It's not that the loss of this prize money would make such a huge negative difference to Celtic, since it's such a small proportion of their overall income; it's more that any re-distribution away from 1st place to others will make a proportionately bigger positive impact on the less-well-resourced clubs finishing in 2nd, 3rd, etc who receive it. Which will inevitably help them to strengthen their challenge, if they're managed reasonably well.

The second factor seems to be that potential challengers have to play their rivals and Celtic four times each in a season, which means that they drop many more points than they would if they played each other just twice in a season - either in a larger league (e.g. 16 teams) over a traditional season, or in a small league (10 teams) over a short season (e.g. mid-July to early-Dec for an autumn season; winter break, then a separate spring season from New Year until late-April; with subsequent Champions' Final and Euro play-offs).

Fewer dropped points would clearly close the gap and, with it now being 30 years since we've had a non-OF winner of our top tier, it's about time we changed from the small leagues-long season model that has existed during all of that time.

[ShawfieldAggro]

I half-understand what you mean with the obstacles, but the longevity of a sustained run at challenging has been palpably beyond every team but three in the era you mention......Aberdeen in 91, and Hearts in 98 and again in 2006. If its the overall game we're concerned about, then the possibility of a quick-hit format to increase, if nothing else, the potential for something different shouldn't be discarded. The clubs are 100% to blame for all of this, displaying the greed and stupidity twice in negotiations at points when the game was never stronger. None of them except Celtic are self-sufficient.....how can players at any other Prem club seriously consider winning a league title as an option if the message from the boardroom is for the entire club to basically survive suckling at the teat of humiliatingly scant tv cash?? Hearts might, just might, give Celtic a fright next year, with those levels of consistency, and the re-creation of a positive identity giving them huge confidence. We can but hope.

[HibeeJibee]

There will never be an Apertura-Clausura system followed by Title Playoffs. Some difficulties would exist in scheduling terms, fitting the ties around the Scottish Cup Final for example... and fitting in 44 league games, unless you went to a 10-team Premiership... but mainly as Celtic - and no doubt Rangers in time, once they have recovered - would not stand for it. No-one in Europe does it either (except San Marino but they don't have a single division) and it would highly controversial.

Also, there is/was a poster on here called EdtheDuck who does/used to do a very good job of dismantling the 'play twice for people to finish above OF' argument. This season has been a bit of an exception, with Aberdeen dropping 12pt to Celtic and only trailing them by a further 2pts, but very often the gap was caused by the challengers inability to beat lower opponents as easily as Celtic. As such, you can argue that playing 4 times is a positive, as it provides double the number of opportunities to make-up then deficiency in 'head-to-head 6-pointers'. And if we look to history we find that Celtic & Rangers won every title except 1 from 1904 to 1948... which was during periods of 2x playing.

As for reducing the number of games - clubs have received at least 36 league games for the last 40 years. So you could nibble the number down from 38 to 36 and clubs would get on with it... actually the plan for 6/8 in the early 2000s, and 10-team SPL in the McLeish Review, and 12-12 splitting to 8-8-8 all did exactly that... but it would be a totally different story to savage it from 38 to 30 simultaneously with creating meaningless mid-table games, 'weakened 2nd tier', etc. etc. It would affect everything - matchday income, ST income, games available to TV, coverage for sponsors.

Admittedly cutting the number of games would suit Celtic - I saw Deila calling for it last week - and Rangers in time, as they'd often progress deep into Europe and both cups and have higher outside revenue streams. I don't see how it'd suit the rest.

[effeffsee_the2nd]

scottish football was at it strongest in the 1980s . lets forget about the turn of the century when no other c***s except ourselves and england played. i wasnt born untill 88. so can any auld feckers here tell me what we were doing right then that were not doing now?

[realmadrid]

There is a St Johnstone twitter account that covers the club but from 30 years ago and it was lamenting the fact the Scotland had dropped from 4th to 6th in the coefficient rankings at the end of season 84-85. Now if we got 14th we would be delighted.

I remember those days. Saints even finished 9th in the premier league as a part time team in 83-84 having piped a full time Hearts team to the first division the season before.

I honestly think things are better now but it's things outwith Scotland that have changed.

Back then it was gate money and a small amount of sponsorship and prize money that made up your turnover thus Celtic and Rangers could compete with the likes of Liverpool and Manchester United. The likes of Man U also had smaller grounds so cash wise we could compete with the best.

European competition was a lot easier. Only 33 UEFA members and 3 competitions. In the European cup and cup winners cup two wins and you were in the quarter finals (unless you got the 1 preliminary tie) and with only 1 team in the European cup the larger UEFA cup was harder to win, especially with 3 rounds before Christmas. Suddenly the Eastern block falls down, new nations arrive the competitions get bigger and group stages come in along with the demise of the cup winners cup. Taking my own team St Johnstone it was a massive achievement to win the Scottish cup last year but would we win it in a group stage format in the earlier rounds designed to keep the big teams in the competition as that's what the Champions league does.

Along come live TV and the extra cash for the big nations. Another squeeze on nations like Scotland. Would the likes of Malmo get to another European final now? Under the old system they did in the European cup, now making the group stage is an achievement.

[effeffsee_the2nd]

There is a St Johnstone twitter account that covers the club but from 30 years ago and it was lamenting the fact the Scotland had dropped from 4th to 6th in the coefficient rankings at the end of season 84-85. Now if we got 14th we would be delighted.

I remember those days. Saints even finished 9th in the premier league as a part time team in 83-84 having piped a full time Hearts team to the first division the season before.

I honestly think things are better now but it's things outwith Scotland that have changed.

Back then it was gate money and a small amount of sponsorship and prize money that made up your turnover thus Celtic and Rangers could compete with the likes of Liverpool and Manchester United. The likes of Man U also had smaller grounds so cash wise we could compete with the best.

European competition was a lot easier. Only 33 UEFA members and 3 competitions. In the European cup and cup winners cup two wins and you were in the quarter finals (unless you got the 1 preliminary tie) and with only 1 team in the European cup the larger UEFA cup was harder to win, especially with 3 rounds before Christmas. Suddenly the Eastern block falls down, new nations arrive the competitions get bigger and group stages come in along with the demise of the cup winners cup. Taking my own team St Johnstone it was a massive achievement to win the Scottish cup last year but would we win it in a group stage format in the earlier rounds designed to keep the big teams in the competition as that's what the Champions league does.

Along come live TV and the extra cash for the big nations. Another squeeze on nations like Scotland. Would the likes of Malmo get to another European final now? Under the old system they did in the European cup, now making the group stage is an achievement.

this istrue i suppose. i like the gag about yugoslavia they used to be one team that could beat scotland now theyre 6! big money did kinda make football more fun to watch for a wee while but its gone way to far now. you have less than half a dozen teams who have all the best players between them. and alot of them dont have any real competition apart from when they play other heavywieghts ala bayern munich and psg

we had a massive head start aswell and i guess you could say were just finding our level now. but if we had been a bit more proactive in the past things could have been different. you can see scottish ruby going thesame way now hat more countries are gettin decent at it

[grazza]

i think I will stay on the role of championing the second tier. I have seen someone post here that the current setup locks teams out of the top flight. I think when it was just 1 up 1 down then that had more resonance but clubs like Hamilton, Inverness and Ross County have made it up and been competitive in the top flight so I don't buy that argument and I think the top flight the last couple of years is a reflection of the top teams that have lived within their means and had some continuity in personnel.

In terms of the championship how can we best work it to encourage full time football. Maybe even smaller clubs that used to be part time might not see that much of a rise in costs if they are made up of younger players on a normal wage. More match days at this level might make sense so go to 44 games. This will give more opportunities particularly for younger players. Clearly some thought in fixtures so play through international breaks and try and concentrate more midweek games in autumn and Spring. Two going up to Premiership each year would be better for all.

Regardless of if the top league gets bigger or not the championship is in trouble once Hibs & Rangers go up and their away supports and tv money etc they will be back to really struggling day to day to sustain full time football. I just find it weird that if we want to consider this a predominately full time level we don't expect clubs of that level to play more games. I also think below 2nd tier that is where to look at playing a few less games and regionalise fully or in conferences

[realmadrid]

And so the change to summer football begins

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-3078990/Scottish-League-Cup-set-major-reboot-summer-switch.html

Now there is talk of TV coverage so I assume the groups are going to be at the weekends or at least not on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday as they would be blocked by UEFA.

They also are keen to get back to the pre Christmas final, which if its possible I would support, just not sure if it means teams with free weeks in the later rounds.

[effeffsee_the2nd]

f**k me! im going to just keep repeting myself until the sfa give into all my demands.

[ShawfieldAggro]

I don't see why it's taken so long for the 'airtime gap', as the fuckwit journo calls it, to be filled in, even at lower league standard. There's barely a dozen Scottish based players playing in those tournaments anyway, let alone outside the top flight. There's a chance to capitalise on the 'goldfish' supporters who might well fancy taking in games because they just watched a cracking Euros semi final, in the same way that tennis clubs are generally full for around ten days after Wimbledon is done and dusted. After that, the only time you'll see whites and a racket would probably be Halloween. Quite why they'd not be so interested any other time with plenty of football on all year round would grind my gears a bit, but some things are not all about me.

[HibeeJibee]

Football has changed massively since the 1980s and 3 huge adjustments can be identified: TV money, Bosman, and the break-up of the Warsaw Pact countries (which has seen more countries and thus more international teams and CL/EL entrants - but also the rise of capitalism, wealth and oligarchs, which has improved their buying power). I was at a pre-season friendly between a Hibs XI and a non-league team a few years ago - the same night as St Johnstone were playing, in Turkey - and a group of men were bemoaning that all our Scottish clubs weren't favourites against clubs from places like Turkey, Greece and Russia. Quite simply the circumstances have changed and size really counts. We're a small country, they're big countries.

EDIT: Also I haven't a problem with this idea of replacing friendlies with League Cup group-stage games. Personally I think League Cup sections will not be as appealing as some people think - particularly if the best clubs, i.e. those playing in Europe, are going to be exempt - but it uses July and will get better crowds than most friendlies will. I would just start the league itself off in mid/late July but for whatever reason clubs seem to be against that - it was tried before and ditched, and the SPFL rulebook actually explicitly forbids having league games earlier than 31st July.

As covered earlier in the thread, playing groups in July - or the first couple of rounds even if the format was still knockout - also facilitates a return to a pre-Christmas final. Although the article says October and I don't see how that could be done without tight turnarounds or using weekends. If they plan to use weekends eliminated clubs will have plenty thumb-twiddling as there are already 3 blank weekends due to international breaks.

[parsforlife]

I'm not sure how group stages can replace friendlies? Surely clubs will want to perform at their best in these games and will arrange friendlies before hand?

[RabidAl]

I've put the new revenue figures (after the Ladbrokes sponsorship announcement) into a spreadsheet to show who'll get what at the end of each season, including European minimum payments and parachute payments. It's attached to the OP.

scottish football was at it strongest in the 1980s . lets forget about the turn of the century when no other c***s except ourselves and england played. i wasnt born untill 88. so can any auld feckers here tell me what we were doing right then that were not doing now?

My view was that the introduction of a smaller top tier (from 1975-76 onwards) had the impact of increasing competition amongst clubs of similar resources, because at this time gate receipts were split 50-50 and there wasn't the scale of commercial revenues that we've had since the '90s - the money from which has skewed competition in favour of the big two. So the very healthy league competition and reasonably even spread of revenues on a domestic level helped in terms of our teams playing in European football, alongside the other factors mentioned by folk already. Once clubs stopped sharing gate receipts (from 1981-82) from league matches, and the influence of shared revenues was lost from teams built in that era (by 1986), the league clearly became less competitive, and the smaller top tier had the effect of exaggerating the subsequent difference in resources. I think that's a universal law of sports - the more times you play a stronger opponent, the more they beat you. Or not.

f**k me! im going to just keep repeting myself until the sfa give into all my demands.

Doncaster was even starting to cave on league re-structuring on Sportsound yesterday. He'd previously always said that clubs needed 18-19 home league games per season so a 16-team league was out of the question, but last night he was saying that there are too many fixtures as it is. Keep up the pressure FFC!

[ShawfieldAggro]

If its less games he's on about, perhaps 3x14, with a 7/7 split and playing your half-mates once.....three home three away, is in his sights. Those championing the importance of the second tier being strong as possible however mustn't let their sphincters pop at the first sighting of an easy top-flight place if it is to go higher than 14. Thats the problem with the top-flight clubs attitudes since 1998, and probably beford that. Ultmately a country is viewed on how good its top tier is, with next to nothing to play for in title terms, its important teams who.enter the top.flight are properly equipped and prepared to do so. Sustaining full-time clubs in the second tier is fundamental to this.

[effeffsee_the2nd]

14 sounds like the magic number in terms of spaces for relegation Europe etc etc until you look at it . you either have a very short 26 game season. or a 7/7 split leaving one team without a game every week incl the final day of the season. or uneven 6/8 splits - messy. or worse uneven numbers of home and away games.

its all about the 16!

[realmadrid]

I'm not sure how group stages can replace friendlies? Surely clubs will want to perform at their best in these games and will arrange friendlies before hand?

I was told by a person of influence 4 months ago that the majority of friendlies cost teams cash and they could play a couple of early closed door games and then start with the group games which would allow for 1 or 2 bad results and teams might still get through. You certainly cannot do that under the current set up in the lower leagues with both the challenge cup and league cup first rounds being in the first two weekends of the season.

[ShawfieldAggro]

One idea, which was basically a hyper-extension of what we're hoping to solve here, was floated in a general discussion among friends attending a Scotland game. It centred on the possibility of expanding/extending the current European competitions formats, say 4 groups of 8, playing 14 games, qf sf and an introduction of promotion/relegation between the CL and Europa League. On one hand, the biggest clubs (we know who they are) get more games against each other, but on the other, second and third tier perennial champions like Celtic, Shakhtar, Galatasary, BATE and Basel, in trying to compete and stay a part of the top table, could suddenly find their domestic crowns under serious threat. Some say the answer is in Celtic and/or Rangers (if they reinvent themselves properly) leaving the Scottish game altogether......that would be the death knell.for any aspiration or self respect the game has left. Under such a format, whereby Celtic find themselves potentially playing Bayern away on a Tuesday, Ajax home the following week then off to Man City the week after, a home fixture against Kilmarnock and a trip to Dens Park in between those three become 'winnable' matches for the underdog. With distractions like that, you may even find the landscape of the game as a whole changing, with the likelihood of a succesful Hearts or Aberdeen sustaining enough of a challenge being increased. If we find that suddenly even just one more than two teams can win our league, the numbers in it won't be so important. A wee bit off centre i know, but a different persective and one with ambition and prosperity at its heart i believe.

[js92]

I think below the championship should be regionalised! it makes sense instead of Elgin going to berwick and Peterhead to Stranraer, I'm guessing it costs quite a bit of money for trips like them for little clubs

[RabidAl]

i think I will stay on the role of championing the second tier. I have seen someone post here that the current setup locks teams out of the top flight. I think when it was just 1 up 1 down then that had more resonance but clubs like Hamilton, Inverness and Ross County have made it up and been competitive in the top flight so I don't buy that argument and I think the top flight the last couple of years is a reflection of the top teams that have lived within their means and had some continuity in personnel.

In terms of the championship how can we best work it to encourage full time football. Maybe even smaller clubs that used to be part time might not see that much of a rise in costs if they are made up of younger players on a normal wage. More match days at this level might make sense so go to 44 games. This will give more opportunities particularly for younger players. Clearly some thought in fixtures so play through international breaks and try and concentrate more midweek games in autumn and Spring. Two going up to Premiership each year would be better for all.

Regardless of if the top league gets bigger or not the championship is in trouble once Hibs & Rangers go up and their away supports and tv money etc they will be back to really struggling day to day to sustain full time football. I just find it weird that if we want to consider this a predominately full time level we don't expect clubs of that level to play more games. I also think below 2nd tier that is where to look at playing a few less games and regionalise fully or in conferences

I'm not sure that having a full-time 2nd tier is a necessity, although it does seem desirable to have a pool of clubs in there that have the potential to go full-time if promoted to the top division. Even then, I don't think any of the top 20 teams at the moment would suffer routine pumpings in the a top division of 16, where they'd only be playing the really strong teams a few times a season. A very competitive second tier with a combination of the best part-timers and ambitious full-timers is as good as a full-time second tier.

Below that, I don't really see the need for Leagues One and Two to exist separately. In my view it's more of a recreational game at that level, and promotion to League One isn't all that desirable whereas variety of fixtures is. A larger bottom tier would also open the way for direct promotion and relegation to/from the Highland and Lowland Leagues, which would also mean relegation to these leagues isn't nearly such a catastrophe.

E.g.

Premiership Championship Conference Highland Lowland

1 CL 1 PR 1 PR 1 PR 1 PR

2 EL 2 PR 2 PR 2 PO 2 PO

3 PO_F 3 PO 3 PO 3 3

4 PO_SF 4 4 PO 4 4

5 PO_SF 5 5 PO 5 5

6 6 6 6 6

7 7 7 7 7

8 8 PO 8 8 8

9 9 RL 9 9 9

10 10 RL 10 10 10

11 11 11 11

12 12 12 12

13 13 13 13

14 PO 14 PO 14 PO 14 PO

15 RL 15 RL 15 RL 15 RL

16 RL 16 RL 16 RL 16 RL

In time the Conference might become regionalised, the Lowland League might divide into West and East of Scotland Leagues, the Highland region might merge with the juniors to form more divisions there.

[itzdrk]

42 team league, all playing eachother once