Is the gap with us, them and rest as big as ever

Sorry, the idea that most of the makeweights in the SPFL don’t put anything like the same effort into games against them as they do us is just conspiratorial nonsense.

I’m not denying some Yahoo sympathising players or even managers may care less about losing to them, but this would be to suppose there’s considerably more of them in the SPFL than those of a blue persuasion and I’d need to see some hard facts and figures before I was ever buying into that.

McInnes is an ex Rangers man so by the same reasoning he should be busting a gut to try and take some points in games against that lot, instead his teams are almost always dreadful.

Sometimes they just win well.
Mcinness surrounds himself with a yahoo background staff , every diddy team in this league puts every rhabid tim into their team that is in that club and they play out of their skins against us, do you think potatoe face through one on one with hart would put it past the post if that was against us, do you think tony watt when it is easier to put the header in the net against them would put it past the post against us , naw would he %^*& the list is endless and do you think manipulating the winter shutdown last season when they were on their arses with injuries was a good idea , thats what we are up against and thats before i mention c unts like clancy these are facts not conspiracy
 
The standard of Scottish football out with us and them is terrible. Dundee United showed on Thursday and again today how bad the quality is in our league. The supposed fourth best team in the league from last season. No wonder nobody wants to put decent money up for the games they are terrible to watch.
 
Killie, Livi, Sheep, Hearts, Hibs, Dundee Utd - all tough places to go, imo.
They are tough places to go cause they set up exactly like they’ve said in the post. Maybe only exception would be hearts which has been relatively good away fixture for us recently.
 
The gap is huge and clubs don’t want to help themselves by giving us and them larger allocations. They’d rather empty seats in their home ends. Add to that the whole league is stuck in the dark ages. Their reluctance to remove the inept Neil Doncaster who constantly sells our game short tells you everything you need to know
 
Scottish football really hasn't moved on for these teams they are happy to win 1 in 3

Doesn't matter if its any good or not

Refs are a big part of the problem allowing the fouls the dives the time wasting doesn't encourage them to lpay football

But it's only part of the problem its the size of the league and the fear of going down that partly cause it.

A bigger league c would see some battering for teams but it would allow a bit more freedom for coaches to be more open.

Which brings us on to coaches there is no interest to play football is about keeping themselves in the top league... that then has a knock on effect of not paying younger players keeping standard journeymen players.
So let's add even worse teams to a league that is utter dross. That was why we had to start the premier league in the first place, the league was full of glorified friendlies.
 
It's the biggest it's ever been imo. We've just narrowly lost a Europa League Final and had an unbeaten league season the season before that. They won a *quadruple treble in the last few seasons. The standard of the league is shite. You can't deny it. It gets highlighted every time you see Scottish sides (bar us) playing in Europe.

Look at the squads and look at the wages we both pay and you can see why it's happened. Our bench/squad players with a mix of B team players would finish 3rd, quite comfortably and they could say the same. The gulf in quality is huge.

There's not a legitmate top 6 in Scotland. Hearts, Hibs and Dundee United have all had stints in the Championship of late, the latter two toiled for way longer than anticipated. Aberdeen completely failed to capitalise on our lengthy absence, were content with finishing runners up in the league and in the cups.
 
So let's add even worse teams to a league that is utter dross. That was why we had to start the premier league in the first place, the league was full of glorified friendlies.
Yes but the point is to encourage more youth like France did we have that rule but by incentives and rules we as a country would start to progress

We are in a country with to many teams over small areas so the money is so spread to thin from fan bases.

There is no easy solution to it but small league is an issue we should be moving to 14/16 with split half way through the season
 
The tragedy of the Scottish game is that the lesser clubs had a chance to develop their squads during our forced absence. None of them landed a glove on Celtic. They have regressed definitely
How was us being away a chance to develop their squads? They would have had less of a budget then as they wouldn't have had the blue pound
 
Yes but the point is to encourage more youth like France did we have that rule but by incentives and rules we as a country would start to progress

We are in a country with to many teams over small areas so the money is so spread to thin from fan bases.

There is no easy solution to it but small league is an issue we should be moving to 14/16 with split half way through the season
That seems reasonable, I thought you meant an 18 team league, which I see no point of.

The other teams seem to be losing a lot of fans too. I remember st mirren used to get not bad crowds, now they play in a 6,000 stadium which they rarely fill. Whilst us and them are having the best crowds consistently for many, many years, the rest seem to be going back the way.

I really don't know the answer to it.
 
It feels bigger than ever and of course if both us and that lot get UCL cash this year and beyond, the gulf will only increase. The trickle down is one thing but one would expect the pace of improvement for teams at the top to be greater than those further down the league, thus widening the gap further.
 
It’s a massive gap, but teams in europe with smaller budgets than some of the teams here seem to be able to play decent football, bodo for example, and even the Belgian team we just knocked out
 
Scottish football is a duopoly, and worse off for it.

I see people trying to argue that other leagues are equally dominated by a small number of teams, but that’s just not true.

Since Aberdeen won the league in 1985 - 38 years and counting - either Rangers or Celtic have won the league every single season. There haven’t even be that many near misses - the last time another team took the league to the last day of the season was 32 seasons ago.

In the same period, other leagues have seen the following different winners:
England 9
Germany 6
Italy 7
Spain 5
France 9
Portugal 4
Holland 5
Belgium 7
Greece 5

Scotland is unique (and not in a good way).

The solution is not, as some genuinely seem to think, to make the top two worse. Nor is it to try to force one of the two out of existence (!) Nor to chase the top two out of the country. We need the other teams to get better. It’s a national disgrace that our capital city has been incapable of producing league champions for 63 years.
 
I think the sheep and Hearts are OK sides. Goodwin and Neilson are better than the managers of the other shite and they have decent squads. Will be interesting to see how Hearts cope with European football.

Dundee Utd and Jack Ross are a complete joke.
 
Any points dropped by either could be crucial not counting the games between us.

Hearts look well placed with the Financial benefits they will pick up in the group stages , probably the Conference League because I cannot see them beating Zurich in the Europa League play off. They will probably be third but well behind second place.

The rest are much of a muchness, Aberdeen or Hibs are not strong enough.

It really is a two horse race with not much hope for the rest.
 
Hearts and hibs playing us is probably the equivalent financially of us playing Dortmund and Leipzig and we found a way
 
I think the quality of the league is as low as its been in recent memory when we've been back and strong - if you ignored 2012-2018/19 basically.
For me, tighter games due to more defensive opposition doesn't necessarily equate to less of a gap.
IIRC us and them both finished on 98 points in the 02/03 season, so the gap must have been pretty big then. I remember reading in Arthur Numans autobiography, he got the impression that when teams came to Ibrox they generally seemed happy to only lose by 3 or 4 goals
I get what you're saying here, but I think the gap in quality now is much bugger than it was even then - difference being, teams weren't coming and sitting on their own penalty spot for 90 mins every week home and away.
 
Agree the gap between us, the bheasts and the rest of the league is as big as I can recall. Hearts apart are the exception but I’m even giving them the benefit of the doubt. It’s so depressing watching our top league as the rest of the teams set their tactics out to stop us playing with 10 men behind. I grew up watching us play in the old 18 team first division back in the late 1960s and despite all the shortcomings it was far more entertaining for the average football supporter back then. Sure we had a lot of mismatches but at least the football entertainment factor was much higher and we produced a much higher technical player in that league back then. I would like a bigger top league even doing away with relegation if it meant teams opened up when they came to Ibrox. Possibly a franchise system as they have in the states is the way forward.
 
The tragedy of the Scottish game is that the lesser clubs had a chance to develop their squads during our forced absence. None of them landed a glove on Celtic. They have regressed definitely
They were all pretty much told by the media in 2012 not to bother with the league. That they were all playing for 2nd. They all accepted it - fans too. Hearts and Us apart, no other club care if they get 3 or 4 cuffings off that lot every season.

Theyve grown to accept it. Unfortunately the same attitude goes into cup games as well.
 
A massive difference between now and even a few seasons ago is that both us and Celtic are as good as we have ever been at playing out from the back. That means when a team goes a goal down, they're effectively chasing shadows trying to win the ball back. Both Rangers and Celtic have averaged over 70% possession in the league this season. That's ridiculously high.

Any team that concedes an early goal against either of us is highly unlikely to get anything. If they score first, they then need to hold on and weather a storm for the whole match. The biggest chance for the opposition is if they hold on to 0-0 for as long as possible then weather the bigger storm that comes from the 60 minute mark or so.
 
This season is going to come down to us and them as usual, but every team we face in league seems to be all about damage limitation much more than usual, we have all seen teams come to play us and put ten men behind the ball but more
Often than not, when they went a goal or two down, they would remove the shackles and at least try and change shape to get something back, the odd one or two would just try and stop more goals going in…but it seems that every single team now, against us and that lot, turn up with a game plan that consists of defend until the 90 minutes are up.

The gap in the later 90’s early 2000’s between us, them and the rest was big but i can’t remember team turning up and not at least trying to have a go, has the gap ever been bigger, has the gulf in class ever been wider in Scotland than it is now or is it just a case of shitebag managers crossing their fingers and hoping to get more points than other teams in the league and staying up?

The standard is terrible and it is pretty crap to watch, not just for us but it must be brutal for the opposition fans (and players) as well.

Its only going to get bigger as us and them get more and more of the limited resources available. There is an obvious solution as Ive been pointing out for years.
 
That seems reasonable, I thought you meant an 18 team league, which I see no point of.

The other teams seem to be losing a lot of fans too. I remember st mirren used to get not bad crowds, now they play in a 6,000 stadium which they rarely fill. Whilst us and them are having the best crowds consistently for many, many years, the rest seem to be going back the way.

I really don't know the answer to it.

The answer is simple.

Share the cash more evenly.
 
The answer is simple.

Share the cash more evenly.
You cant share cash more evenly when we have 45k STs, the filth have say 50k. Yet Hearts have 14k, Aberdeen have 10k etc etc. The TV deal is a pittance so this argument is redundant

Norway, Greece, Belgium etc all see at least double what Sky are currently offering the SPFL for rights. No doubt it will.be accepted and Dumbcaster will pocket another bonus along with his £400k a year.
 
You cant share cash more evenly when we have 45k STs, the filth have say 50k. Yet Hearts have 14k, Aberdeen have 10k etc etc. The TV deal is a pittance so this argument is redundant

Norway, Greece, Belgium etc all see at least double what Sky are currently offering the SPFL for rights. No doubt it will.be accepted and Dumbcaster will pocket another bonus along with his £400k a year.
They are effectively guaranteeing their pay 4 more years. And little else.

Watch as his %age salary by the end of the deal is more than the %age rise for each club.
And that's before 50 games more.
 
You cant share cash more evenly when we have 45k STs, the filth have say 50k. Yet Hearts have 14k, Aberdeen have 10k etc etc. The TV deal is a pittance so this argument is redundant

Norway, Greece, Belgium etc all see at least double what Sky are currently offering the SPFL for rights. No doubt it will.be accepted and Dumbcaster will pocket another bonus along with his £400k a year.

Of course you can share the cash more evenly. That's the way it used to be with ALL gate money split between the two teams. It isnt just gate money though.

In leagues like the EPL, CL money isnt such a big percentage of overall income. In leagues like ours it is so significant it kills any chance of those not getting it being able to compete. Its beyond ridiculous. Imagine Aberdeen getting CL money for a few years. Of course we know that's never going to happen and so the gap gets wider and wider.
 
Is everyone forgetting that if it wasn't for the football gods we'd have dropped points 2 weeks ago? Sure the gap is massive and if us and them turn up for every game 100% switched on then their won't be many lost points. Their is no way our team and them will turn up for every game 100% on the ball and therefore points will be dropped. Let's just hope with the fresh faces we brought in, their won't be many slip ups on our end.
 
If not, bigger . . .
When they all put us down the game in Scotland went back 39 years the scum were quite happy to take the money from Europe and win everything at home. The rest of the premier league lost the blue dollar low and behold here we are. Now we are back the bead rattlers have to spend the cash, the rest are so far gone don’t think they will ever get back to decent level. Guess we upset the sheep or Hearts getting 2nd which is too good for any of them. I could rant on for hours not much point because Doncaster will bow to the puppet masters as long as he’s told.
 
Yip

It’s why I wasn’t (still not) entirely in on the whole Celtic got better thing etc about last season

We should have been rattling every fucker in site, they are all completely gash it will need a high points total to win the league
 
Last edited:
Sorry to disagree here but teams set up against us to defend and boot us off the park, they do not put the same effort in against timbo as proven today
I knew a Bear who played for a couple of premier league teams and he assures me both Bears and tims tried as hard against them as us.
 
The worst thing about the gap is that it kills football as entertainment.
Watching us trying to play against a ten man block every week is frustrating and maddening.
Hugh Keevins criticism of both us and them for having a ‘petted lip’ because teams play this way sums it up. Apparently, he says, it’s not the other 10 teams job to try to entertain!
Derek McInnes also alluded to this philosophy over the last two fixtures.
 
This season is going to come down to us and them as usual, but every team we face in league seems to be all about damage limitation much more than usual, we have all seen teams come to play us and put ten men behind the ball but more
Often than not, when they went a goal or two down, they would remove the shackles and at least try and change shape to get something back, the odd one or two would just try and stop more goals going in…but it seems that every single team now, against us and that lot, turn up with a game plan that consists of defend until the 90 minutes are up.

The gap in the later 90’s early 2000’s between us, them and the rest was big but i can’t remember team turning up and not at least trying to have a go, has the gap ever been bigger, has the gulf in class ever been wider in Scotland than it is now or is it just a case of shitebag managers crossing their fingers and hoping to get more points than other teams in the league and staying up?

The standard is terrible and it is pretty crap to watch, not just for us but it must be brutal for the opposition fans (and players) as well.

Teams try harder against us than they do against them.
 
Killie, Livi, Sheep, Hearts, Hibs, Dundee Utd - all tough places to go, imo.

The sheep put 5 past Killie today and the Sheep / spoon burners are weaker than ever atm. We will drop points but if we play well we win comfortably at all these grounds.
 
It'
Yes look at the state of Dundee Utd & Motherwell in Europe

Most SPFL sides would struggle in English League 1. The standard is horrific
Dundee United beat AZ Alkmaar; I didn't see their second leg, but it wouldn't surprise if that game ran away from them once they lost the second goal. Nothing takes away the fact, though, that they beat a Dutch side who came 5th last season their League, and are currently joint top.
 
Killie, Livi, Sheep, Hearts, Hibs, Dundee Utd - all tough places to go, imo.
Tough places only because they play for a draw straight from kick off. Spoiling tactics, time wasting, fouling, trying to hit us with long balls. With the exception of tynecastle where we sometimes see an actual game of football with both teams trying to win.

The league is an abomination and it has been for quite some time. And look what happens to our alleged 4th best team when they step outwith our league- utterly horsed 7-0 by an average Dutch team. Because they aren’t used to having to play football , to actually attacking, making chances and scoring or at least threatening other teams. It’s like a different sport, an alien concept.
 
I was hopeful Aberdeen might offer something different this season but they seem to be reverting to type. I do wonder if a 20 team league would be better as I am sick of seeing the same diddy's up to 7 times a season.
We should’ve expanded the top flight years ago. We should have two divisions of 18 clubs in Scotland. Play each other once home and once away. Three up three down. We are not the EPL far from it but copy their system as much as we can.

Instead we play the same Fcking teams 5/6 times every season, same turgid football, outwith the old firm the rest of the teams content to just be in the division. How bad is that?

Spare me the “ but sky want 4 old firm games” Sky will still pay the tv deal regardless.

Our league in its current incarnation is done, is a dead horse.
 
Last edited:
We should’ve expanded the top flight years ago. We should have two divisions of 18 clubs in Scotland. Play each other once home and once away. Three hours three down. We are not the EPL far from it but copy their system as much as we can.

Instead we play the same Fcking teams 5/6 times every season, same turgid football, outwith the old firm the rest of the teams content to just be in the division. How bad is that?

Spare me the “ but sky want 4 old firm games” Sky will still pay the tv deal regardless.

Our league in its current incarnation is done, is a dead horse.
Stop sectarianism but lets build a league around something that allows it to manifest.

The bigger leagues means teams will be more attacking in all fixtures rather than writing off 24 points a season like they od currently
 
It’s going to come down to having the better record in Old Form games and minimising the damage from all the other games.

We need to be absolutely thumping teams home & away, which is why Rangers turning the screw on Saturday and getting the 3rd & 4th goals was important.

Overall, the quality of the rest of the league is poor, & inconsistent.
 
Even with Hearts the standard is pretty poor. Look at last season's SCF, we'd just come off the back of Seville and ET a few days before (as well as other ET games in the weeks preceding) and they couldn't lay a glove on us, their best chance was on 2 mins with Simms and then they did nothing.

Aside from Gordon they don't have a single player that you could even argue would make it into ours or their squad and yet they're still streets ahead of the rest.

It astonishes me that some people think Hearts will get past Zurich into the Europa league.

The Swiss team will beat them with something to spare id expect
 
I was hopeful Aberdeen might offer something different this season but they seem to be reverting to type. I do wonder if a 20 team league would be better as I am sick of seeing the same diddy's up to 7 times a season.
I think an expanded league is a must. Less repetitive fixtures, more away days and probably higher crowds.
 
We should’ve expanded the top flight years ago. We should have two divisions of 18 clubs in Scotland. Play each other once home and once away. Three up three down. We are not the EPL far from it but copy their system as much as we can.

Instead we play the same Fcking teams 5/6 times every season, same turgid football, outwith the old firm the rest of the teams content to just be in the division. How bad is that?

Spare me the “ but sky want 4 old firm games” Sky will still pay the tv deal regardless.

Our league in its current incarnation is done, is a dead horse.
A Hibs fan posted an idea for a 16 team league on twitter a couple of years back that still guaranteed 4 games between us and them a season.

Has to happen. Need a refresh in Scotland.
 
A Hibs fan posted an idea for a 16 team league on twitter a couple of years back that still guaranteed 4 games between us and them a season.

Has to happen. Need a refresh in Scotland.
Let’s see it mate I’d consider that if it looked like it was workable. Agree some kind of refresh is badly needed
 
Back
Top