No to B teams

[Clyde01]

6 hours ago, Skyline Drifter said:

League clubs won't vote to significantly dilute their money so they aren't going to vote for significant expansion of members unless it in some way comes with a massive sponsorship injection for the league as a whole. I'm not seeing the admission of Berwick, Cowdenbeath, Darvel, East Kilbride, Buckie, Brora, etc bringing with it several million pounds of extra sponsorship and tv money so that's not going to happen.

I'm really just not seeing this perceived massive reluctance to play youths if they are good enough. Lots of teams throw in younger kids.

The English Championship has 6 potential promotion places and 3 relegation ones so 9 of 24 get something at the end of the day and there's a fair chance most of the other 15 are playing for something into the last month. You're not likely to persuade the SPFL to offer 3 promotion places between divisions but even if you could, it's not really the 2nd tier that would be the issue, it's the top one. I'm assuming here you're proposing 2 leagues of 20-ish and not that a couple of leagues of 20 would sit below the Premier? If the top division is 20 or so teams, and we all know who the top two will be as we do every year, then you have 4 or 5 teams realistically competing for the other European slots and most likely half a dozen or so competing for your 2 or 3 relegation spots. That will leave 7 or 8 clubs in the middle twiddling their thumbs from Xmas. You also have Celtic and Rangers absolutely battering your Arbroath and Hamilton equivalents sitting at the bottom and complaining about lack of competitiveness in the top level. And most importantly, the ten other clubs currently in the top ten won't vote for a situation where they lose 1 or 2 OF visits for the money it generates.

If you're proposing a couple of bigger leagues below the existing Premier you're not going to get more than the one and a bit promotion spots you currently get so the 2nd tier will indeed have a lot of meaningless games.

Looking at the game time by young Scottish players in the top flight this season I have to disagree that plenty teams are throwing youths in.

Leagues of 20 are too big, but three leagues of 16 is definitely workable. If you populate this using this years rankings it looks good in a lot of ways. First of all it’s very unlikely you’d have full time clubs playing below tier 2. The premier league has no Arbroath or hamilton whipping boys as you suggest. And the 6 extra places for new SPFL clubs could surely come from the rangers and Celtic cut as we know developing the game is their primary interest (snigger).

Three leagues of 16 could then have two up, two down automatically. And a playoff system either involving third bottom or having them auto relegated and playoffs from 3-6 in the league below. I include the bottom of tier 3 in that too, two or three relegation spots and highland and lowland champions straight up with a playoffs for potentially a third side.

In the premier league you could have an end of season playoffs with teams in 5-8 to claim the last European spot.

Edited June 8, 2023 by Clyde01

[ScottishLoon]

Maybe unpopular post but in the short term before any potential huge change in division size in the spfl, I'd like to see the championship league 1 & 2 go to the same 12 team format as the premiership yes you're still playing eachother 3 times, but it freshens up the season with extra clubs and a more interesting end to the season.

Just don't see the benefit yet of wholesale changes just for the sake of it, also potentiallty pushes 6 more of the upward thinking clubs from below Highland and lowland league i.e Clydebank, auchinleck and etc. 

[Skyline Drifter]

31 minutes ago, Clyde01 said:

Looking at the game time by young Scottish players in the top flight this season I have to disagree that plenty teams are throwing youths in.

Leagues of 20 are too big, but three leagues of 16 is definitely workable. If you populate this using this years rankings it looks good in a lot of ways. First of all it’s very unlikely you’d have full time clubs playing below tier 2. The premier league has no Arbroath or hamilton whipping boys as you suggest. And the 6 extra places for new SPFL clubs could surely come from the rangers and Celtic cut as we know developing the game is their primary interest (snigger).

Three leagues of 16 could then have two up, two down automatically. And a playoff system either involving third bottom or having them auto relegated and playoffs from 3-6 in the league below. I include the bottom of tier 3 in that too, two or three relegation spots and highland and lowland champions straight up with a playoffs for potentially a third side.

In the premier league you could have an end of season playoffs with teams in 5-8 to claim the last European spot.

So your 3 leagues of 16 are going to play how many games in a season? 30 isn't anywhere near enough and the top division sides under no circumstances will accept a reduction to 2 OF visits a season. 45 is too many and also brings the challenge of an imbalanced Home / Away split. I suppose there's the prospect of playing 30 games then having a split the way the SPFL does now and adding 7 more games for a 37 game season. It's still a game less for the top division sides. It also opens up the prospect of a team at matchday 30 being out of the playoffs in a lower division on goal difference but ending up in the bottom half and therefore unable to challenge over the last 7 games. That could happen now in the top division with respect to European places of course, and has.

Do you have a source for the suggestion that game time by young Scottish players in the top flight is lacking? And why are we limiting it to the top flight anyway? The Conference proposal was to let young players play in Tier 5. I'm seeing plenty of young players getting game time in Tiers 2 to 4 now.

[Skyline Drifter]

17 minutes ago, ScottishLoon said:

Maybe unpopular post but in the short term before any potential huge change in division size in the spfl, I'd like to see the championship league 1 & 2 go to the same 12 team format as the premiership yes you're still playing eachother 3 times, but it freshens up the season with extra clubs and a more interesting end to the season.

Just don't see the benefit yet of wholesale changes just for the sake of it, also potentiallty pushes 6 more of the upward thinking clubs from below Highland and lowland league i.e Clydebank, auchinleck and etc. 

Again though the issue is that bringing 6 extra teams in needs funded from somewhere and in reality that's only coming out of everyone else's share of the pot. The pot isn't going to get bigger by that change. 6 extra teams will likely need circa £300k of funding.

[welshbairn]

Beginning to think that the only point of the conference proposal, most likely unintentional, was to stop the whinging and accept the status quo, a bit like throwing a dead cat on the table. Most SPFL fans seem to like the intensity of 10 or 12 team leagues, and not sure about the LL but every HL fan I know is happy with 18. Just have to make demotion less scary and promotion a bit easier throughout the pyramid. 

[Clyde01]

49 minutes ago, Skyline Drifter said:

So your 3 leagues of 16 are going to play how many games in a season? 30 isn't anywhere near enough and the top division sides under no circumstances will accept a reduction to 2 OF visits a season. 45 is too many and also brings the challenge of an imbalanced Home / Away split. I suppose there's the prospect of playing 30 games then having a split the way the SPFL does now and adding 7 more games for a 37 game season. It's still a game less for the top division sides. It also opens up the prospect of a team at matchday 30 being out of the playoffs in a lower division on goal difference but ending up in the bottom half and therefore unable to challenge over the last 7 games. That could happen now in the top division with respect to European places of course, and has.

Do you have a source for the suggestion that game time by young Scottish players in the top flight is lacking? And why are we limiting it to the top flight anyway? The Conference proposal was to let young players play in Tier 5. I'm seeing plenty of young players getting game time in Tiers 2 to 4 now.

A few top flight clubs have been reducing the capacity given to old firm recently, who’s to say they wouldn’t vote to play the old firm less? It would make the league more competitive and allow the stronger teams to perhaps close the gap by not having to play the old firm as often. Of course the fact we have a tv deal with a company only interested in four old firm games per season is an obstacle but the system shouldn’t be set up for two teams benefit.

Would prefer to ditch splits altogether but if it MUST stay for a 37 game season as you suggest perhaps a playoff spot (or pre-playoff qualifier vs 6th) could go to the ‘winner’ of the bottom half to keep that interesting?

[Skyline Drifter]

6 minutes ago, Clyde01 said:

A few top flight clubs have been reducing the capacity given to old firm recently, who’s to say they wouldn’t vote to play the old firm less? It would make the league more competitive and allow the stronger teams to perhaps close the gap by not having to play the old firm as often. Of course the fact we have a tv deal with a company only interested in four old firm games per season is an obstacle but the system shouldn’t be set up for two teams benefit.

Would prefer to ditch splits altogether but if it MUST stay for a 37 game season as you suggest perhaps a playoff spot (or pre-playoff qualifier vs 6th) could go to the ‘winner’ of the bottom half to keep that interesting?

Now you're just getting daft. The side that finishes 9th gets a playoff spot!

If you don't want a split what was it you were suggesting, a 30 game season or a 45 game one? The latter is physically impossible at top level, there simply aren't enough dates in the calendar. The former cuts gate income by 4 games a season on average, including at least one OF game. I just can't see anyone voting for that. The ones who have cut OF allocations (St Mirren are one, who else has? ) did so under pressure from their own fans and able to offset the loss with increased uptake from home fans.

I hadn't even considered the tv deal but you make a good point there against your own proposal. We don't have 4 OF games then the TV deal value will be slashed. Which impacts on everyone. It's not happening.

[ScottishLoon]

59 minutes ago, Skyline Drifter said:

Again though the issue is that bringing 6 extra teams in needs funded from somewhere and in reality that's only coming out of everyone else's share of the pot. The pot isn't going to get bigger by that change. 6 extra teams will likely need circa £300k of funding.

Yeah that may be true however surely it's the most logical next step for now, it would also be a pretty exciting season in terms of getting promoted before heading into the first season of the introduction as you'd have effectively 3 automatic promotions from lowland and Highland league plus the extra guaranteed promotion from league 1 and 2.

[Fuctifano]

14 minutes ago, Skyline Drifter said:

Now you're just getting daft. The side that finishes 9th gets a playoff spot!

If you don't want a split what was it you were suggesting, a 30 game season or a 45 game one? The latter is physically impossible at top level, there simply aren't enough dates in the calendar. The former cuts gate income by 4 games a season on average, including at least one OF game. I just can't see anyone voting for that. The ones who have cut OF allocations (St Mirren are one, who else has? ) did so under pressure from their own fans and able to offset the loss with increased uptake from home fans.

I hadn't even considered the tv deal but you make a good point there against your own proposal. We don't have 4 OF games then the TV deal value will be slashed. Which impacts on everyone. It's not happening.

It won't happen here for many reasons but there were 4 top flights in Europe this season that had 16 teams and a split after 30 games

Serbia had an 8/8 split and played once more for 37 games with no Euro playoffs. The others are a bit more "out there".

Bulgaria and Czechia both split into 3 sections, 1-6, 7-10 and 11-16. They played another 2 rounds with 7th playing off against the highest placed team in the top section who didn't qualify for Europe for the last Conference league spot.

Romania had a 6/10 split with the top half subsequently playing each other twice and the bottom half once. 7 and 8 then play off over 1 leg to again play the highest placed top 6 team who didn't qualify for Europe over 1 leg (higher finisher has home advantage) for the last Conference league place.

That's probably the closest model Scotland could adopt for a league of 16 as it would continue the 4 OF games but 39 or 40 league games a season is probably pushing it considering we have 2 domestic cups. Also European playoffs have to be the last game of the season as a Euro place will go to the cup winner which affects who is in the playoffs.

 

Edited June 8, 2023 by Fuctifano

[Clyde01]

2 hours ago, Skyline Drifter said:

Now you're just getting daft. The side that finishes 9th gets a playoff spot!

If you don't want a split what was it you were suggesting, a 30 game season or a 45 game one? The latter is physically impossible at top level, there simply aren't enough dates in the calendar. The former cuts gate income by 4 games a season on average, including at least one OF game. I just can't see anyone voting for that. The ones who have cut OF allocations (St Mirren are one, who else has? ) did so under pressure from their own fans and able to offset the loss with increased uptake from home fans.

I hadn't even considered the tv deal but you make a good point there against your own proposal. We don't have 4 OF games then the TV deal value will be slashed. Which impacts on everyone. It's not happening.

It would be 30, a 45 game season is too long and imbalanced.

A 16 team league could potentially split into 4 mini leagues of 4 after 30 matches with a little thought needed to what’s at stake in each mini-league  but that could work and would give a 36 game season. Would also still give us 4 old firm games .

Rather than dissecting the minor details my over arching point was that bigger leagues can work and don’t need to be ‘boring’ with a little thought.

I think this is a much more worthy solution to explore than dropping in b-teams anywhere in the pyramid. 

 

[ScottishLoon]

Well that's rangers B fucked off then 

[SLClyde]

Toys out the pram from rangers

[George Parr]

Oh ya fucker, terrific development. Get fucked Rangers 

[Hammerafc]

I see they kept mentioning that the conference was a stepping stone to getting B teams into the main leagues. Ultimately as everyone knew the block on B teams getting promoted would only have been there for a short while before allowing them forward progress probaby upto the championship.

 

In the sea where it belongs. 

[ScottishLoon]

Sounded like Maxwell wrote their statement.

[parsforlife]

2 minutes ago, ScottishLoon said:

Sounded like Maxwell wrote their statement.

More likely they have been writing Maxwell’s

[Greenmachine]

4 minutes ago, parsforlife said:

More likely they have been writing Maxwell’s

Looks like they’re still working on another cunning plan though  …..

Edited June 14, 2023 by Greenmachine

[GNU_Linux]

That Park's Motor Group sponsorship looking awfa fragile now

[C'mon_the_Sons]

Great news the others can piss off as well.

[O'Kelly Isley III]

I've just read that pompous statement from Rangers and it's about as bitter as 90% of their support.  Interesting too to note the none-too-subtle attempt to blackmail the SFA that something had better be done or else....

And this on the day that another continental no-mark who has been passed around European clubs like a jazz mag flies in to sign on the dotted line at Ibrox.