League Reconstruction 20/21 season

[Sergeant Wilson]

1 hour ago, ahemps said:

I agree with you but as you have just witnessed we have many fans in Scotland that love the old firm domination.

What amazes me is that quite a lot of non old firm fans won't even consider some changes that may make the league competitive.

Shut up.

1 hour ago, Bohemian said:

Is there any changes that would make a difference to the cheeks dominance? Not even two teams anymore, Celtics dominance..  they have buckets of cash no one else has.. 

Aye, rescind Rangers membership and make them apply for the West of Scotland League.

Then refuse their application.

[Gianfranco]

I reckon the footballers should risk their lives. f**k them.

[effeffsee_the2nd]

Under pre covid circumstances you might find a 30 game single round robin produces an occasional outside champion but still very much the exception to the rule. What happens in the small 4x leagues is the old firm win alot whilst the chasing packs often cut each other’s throats. Its not very often teams take more than 6 points of the old firm in a season but a win at home and a draw away is not to big an ask for a team playing well. They also won’t play teams around them as often meaning if they keep their form up they keep gathering points against bottom half sides whilst staying in the mix with the big boys. Theoretically.
What’s more likely to shake things up is if the corona shutdown rumbles on for much longer than anticipated. Things that were previously unthinkable could be on the cards -foldings, mergers , closed borders, large tv deals in wealthy leagues collapsing and the knock on effect forcing the break up of superclubs and their hoardes of quality players. Expect the unexpected

[Coventry Saint]

4 hours ago, invergowrie arab said:

I would just rather not take the old woman swallowing a fly approach to saving hearts from relegation 

"I know some supporters who watched their club die..."

[Arch Stanton]

1 hour ago, topcat(The most tip top) said:

When Dundee United won the league by a single point back in 1983 they only used 16 players in a 36 game season.

Not this myth agsin.

20 players started league games for DU that season..

[Bohemian]

2 hours ago, topcat(The most tip top) said:

You could make an, admittedly marginal, difference by reducing the number of games. 

 

It's possible for a less well resourced club to get a good squad together, hit a vein of form and ride their luck to outperform richer opponents.

We've often had "outsider" clubs near the top at Christmas but over a long season when injuries and loss of form kick in the law of large numbers dictates that the outcome will become more predictable.

When Dundee United won the league by a single point back in 1983 they only used 16 players in a 36 game season. It was remarkable then but it would have been unthinkable 5 years later when the season ran to 44 games.

 

I dont think shortening the season will stop a team with such a financial advantage would make any difference.. 

[Sparticus]

14 clubs in a league would be horrific and end up driving fans away.

All this just to save a team who were going down anyway.

Has to be the staus quo.No brainer.

[NorthBank]

14 clubs in a league would be horrific and end up driving fans away.
All this just to save a team who were going down anyway.
Has to be the staus quo.No brainer.

I am Spartacus (had to be done).

[CambieBud]

If they are serious about reconstruction then any change that has only one home and one away game against everybody else. Otherwise leave it alone

[Alan Stubbs]

Nobody is fooling anycunt with this two horse race chat. Not supporting the scrambled together, mostly shite, proposals on offer doesn't make you some Clyde Superscoreboard football da who likes the Old Firm dominating. Likewise, wanting league reconstruction doesn't make you some altruistic progressive who is dragging Scottish football into the 21st century.

Most of the people arguing for reconstruction seem to have landed on a way forward that exactly lines up with their team being in a higher league than if the season is called as is (Ayr United, 16 team top league ffs). Spare us the concern trolling about the state of the Scottish Premiership if your only motivation for reconstruction is getting your shite football club into it.

[bairney]

12 hours ago, The DA said:

I think we should shelve any restructuring until the pandemic had died down a bit.  We'll need to wait and see how many clubs are left before we start working out how big the leagues should be.

We might end up with a single division of 6 clubs, and that's assuming Aberdeen can settle their dispute with their insurers.

We're doomed.

Deep down, I think you are right DA.

[jaybeee]

12 hours ago, ftk said:

We could learn alot from American Sports.

Our current boring shambles of a league where only 2 teams can win is nothing to be proud of.

And?

[jaybeee]

6 hours ago, Sparticus said:

14 clubs in a league would be horrific and end up driving fans away.

All this just to save a team who were going down anyway.

Has to be the staus quo.No brainer.

Damned if I know the answer, I favour 16 or 18, play each other home and away, I can't see how 14 could work but irrespective of which (if any) is chosen as the new model it should not happen till the season after next as Heats need to be relegated, why should they be reprieved and not the lower teams............that is just immoral, but then what would you expect from Budge?

Edited May 7, 2020 by jaybeee
cant spell :)

[Guest JTS98]

23 hours ago, Dunning1874 said:

There's obviously a trade off to be made between fairness and an exciting league with meaningful games.

Football fans in general are hostage to a bizarre notion of 'fairness' and to a frankly ridiculous notion of sporting integrity.

There is nothing 'fair' about a round-robin competition where one club has an absolute f**k-tonne more money than any other club in the competition, and whose dominance gives them a virtuous cycle of hoovering up more money every year. It's a stretch to call that a sporting competition with integrity.

If Scottish football was fair, more than two clubs would have won the title in the living memory of a person in their mid-thirties.

We should not be shy from introducing changes that work on the basis of making football more exciting. It is already unfair. At the moment it is unfair in favour of clubs with huge budgets. Why are we prepared to accept that yet recoil in horror from any kind of format tweaks that add a bit of excitement?

22 hours ago, NorthBank said:

If it wasn't for the pandemic there wouldn't be any reconstruction. Keep as is.

That section of your sentence makes whatever comes next irrelevant.

17 hours ago, invergowrie arab said:

I would just rather not take the old woman swallowing a fly approach to saving hearts from relegation 

The idea that all of this is being done because Hearts are some kind of special case doesn't really fly. We were relegated just six years ago. It could be seen coming for a year and there was no move whatsoever to try to rearrange things to keep us up. So why now? Nobody tried to stop us and Hibs being relegated together in 2014. Or Hibs in 1998. So why now?

Likewise, there was no attempt or even suggestion of tweaking the system when Rangers and Hibs both missed out on promotion in 2015 or when Hibs missed out again in 2016.

The reason this is being discussed is because any club being relegated based on a season with almost 20% of games left to be played have a reasonable case for appealing that. And any club in Hearts' situation would.

16 hours ago, Bohemian said:

Is there any changes that would make a difference to the cheeks dominance? Not even two teams anymore, Celtics dominance..  they have buckets of cash no one else has.. 

As I mentioned above, we need to review what we consider to be fair.

I've long advocated deciding the champions based on a play-off system similar to that used in the NRL in Australia. It has a nice combination of an exciting finale which opens up a shot at being champions to plenty of teams all season while still heavily rewarding good performance in the regular season. The NRL has rich clubs and poor clubs too, yet it has only been retained once in almost 30 years.

I know play-offs are unpopular and almost nobody will agree with me on this. But I strongly feel that Scottish football would benefit hugely from using that approach.

https://www.nrl.com/news/2019/08/26/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-2019-nrl-finals/

Based on that format and last season's Scottish Premiership table, the play-offs would have looked something like this (I've used approximated scores based on the NRL play-off results from 2019 just to provide a walk-through example).

Step 1 (Losers of games between the top 4 get a second chance, losers of games between 5-8 are ooot)

Highest ranked team from the league is always at home. The away team in the final get a much bigger allocation of tickets than normal, depending on the practicalities of the stadium.

Celtic v Aberdeen 3-0

Rangers v Kilmarnock 1-2

Hibs v Motherwell 2-1

Hearts v St Johnstone 6-0

Step 2 (Losers are oooot)

Rangers v Hearts 4-0

Aberdeen v Hibs 2-1

Step 3

Kilmarnock v Aberdeen3-2

Celtic v Rangers 2-1

Step 4 - final

Celtic v Kilmarnock 2-1

 

So, Celtic still have the deck in their favour. They basically have to win three home games. But you introduce the chance that someone else might win. It could be very exciting and I fail to see how anyone could prefer the current set-up. Like I said though, I know almost nobody agrees.

Edited May 7, 2020 by JTS98

[Sparticus]

1 hour ago, JTS98 said:

The idea that all of this is being done because Hearts are some kind of special case doesn't really fly. We were relegated just six years ago. It could be seen coming for a year and there was no move whatsoever to try to rearrange things to keep us up. So why now? Nobody tried to stop us and Hibs being relegated together in 2014. Or Hibs in 1998. So why now?

Likewise, there was no attempt or even suggestion of tweaking the system when Rangers and Hibs both missed out on promotion in 2015 or when Hibs missed out again in 2016.

The reason this is being discussed is because any club being relegated based on a season with almost 20% of games left to be played have a reasonable case for appealing that. And any club in Hearts' situation would

The only reason its being discussed is because Hearts and their media helpers keep banging on about it.

Everyone else is quite happy with the structure the way it is.

[Guest JTS98]

1 minute ago, Sparticus said:

The only reason its being discussed is because Hearts and their media helpers keep banging on about it.

Everyone else is quite happy with the structure the way it is.

This has been done to death on here, but if Aberdeen were bottom of the league, then that post would be exactly the same but with 'Aberdeen' subbed in.

If St Mirren were bottom of the league, they'd be squealing about it and getting friendly journalists to fight their corner.

It would apply to any club in this position. And why not?

Can you think of any clubs who would just accept relegation without the season being finished? Also, if Hearts are some kind of special case, then why now? Why not in the past?

There was no talk of reconstruction when we were facing relegation in 1999 (which we avoided with a strong run in our last 8 fixtures). Or when we went down with about a year's notice in 2014. Why now?

[RandomGuy.]

1 hour ago, JTS98 said:

So, Celtic still have the deck in their favour. They basically have to win three home games. But you introduce the chance that someone else might win. It could be very exciting and I fail to see how anyone could prefer the current set-up. Like I said though, I know almost nobody agrees.

Celtic have lost 1 home league game against a team other than Rangers since December 2015.

And that was a dead rubber game against Aberdeen when im fairly sure Celtic played kids.

A set of play offs which inevitably sees Celtic rinsing every team at Celtic Park season after season sounds absolutely dreadful. The fact their budget is about 40x the size of the nearest club from outside Glasgow seems to have miraculously disappeared to your mind, and the only reason they stroll to trebles every season is because its 12 team league.

The set up has zero consequence on who wins the league, zero. You could argue that the best and most exciting set up would be everyone gets 38 games and the previous champions only get 19, and you see who gets the most points. Youd definitely get a different champion every year so it's clearly the best option.

If you disagree you're a OF sympathiser and only care about helping them win the league.

Edited May 7, 2020 by RandomGuy.

[Guest JTS98]

6 minutes ago, RandomGuy. said:

1) A set of play offs which inevitably sees Celtic rinsing every team at Celtic Park season after season sounds absolutely dreadful. 2) The fact their budget is about 40x the size of the nearest club from outside Glasgow seems to have miraculously disappeared to your mind, and the only reason they stroll to trebles every season is because its 12 team league.

1) Does it sound worse than a decade of knowing who the champions are before a ball is kicked?

2) No, it hasn't. However, there is absolutely no chance that they fail to win the title in the current format. Even if they did, the only beneficiaries would be the only other winners in the last three and a half decades. A play-off system means they would be a bad day away from someone else winning.

It's not a perfect suggestion at all, and there isn't going to be a suggestion that everyone fancies. But there's nothing we can do about Celtic's financial advantage, so we have to do something to mitigate for it and provide competition.

Got a better idea?

Edited May 7, 2020 by JTS98

[Sparticus]

16 minutes ago, JTS98 said:

There was no talk of reconstruction when we were facing relegation in 1999 (which we avoided with a strong run in our last 8 fixtures). Or when we went down with about a year's notice in 2014. Why now

Any reconstruction would be a step backwards.Its not happening.

It could have been worse.Imagine the league was cancelled the day before you played St Mirren?

You would have gone down but would have been eternal torture.At least now you know you lost the relegation battle fairly and can happily pop down to the championship knowing it's fully deserved.

[RandomGuy.]

10 minutes ago, JTS98 said:

1) Does it sound worse than a decade of knowing who the champions are before a ball is kicked?

2) No, it hasn't. However, there is absolutely no chance that they fail to win the title in the current format. Even if they did, the only beneficiaries would be the only other winners in the last three and a half decades. A play-off system means they would be a bad day away from someone else winning.

It's not a perfect suggestion at all, and there isn't going to be a suggestion that everyone fancies. But there's nothing we can do about Celtic's financial advantage, so we have to do something to mitigate for it and provide competition.

Got a better idea?

The best suggestion by far would be playing a 38 game season with 12 clubs, then randomly selecting two teams who didnt finish bottom to compete a play off to win the title.

Clearly this is the best plan and if you disagree you're an OF sympathiser.

FWIW the game was up the moment Champions League qualification started handing sides more money than the rest of the country was getting through the TV deal combined. Even a wage cap based on income would see Celtic light years ahead of would likely just hinder smaller clubs even more. Your entire argument is to change the league system based on the theory of every club having a "punchers chance" against a club who've lost 1 home game in 5 years and a budget that dwarfs the entire league combined.