League reconstruction . Is the answer staring us in the face

This for me.

Reinstate the Glasgow Cup (and have an Edinburgh Cup, Dundee Cup) as a two legged final and include it as part of the TV package to sweeten it for the broadcaster, guaranteeing them the 4 derbies.
Said this for years mate Glasgow cup or charity cup or egg cup still sell it out and keep the TV company's happy
 
The big change I would make is turning League 1 & 2 into North/South leagues. Dumbarton playing Peterhead in the lower leagues is insane to me.
 
Of course it matters. Years ago gate receipts were shared. Just because its mainly ST now doesnt mean we couldnt go back to the original method. We could also share other sources of income including european money, sponsorship cash etc etc. Of course we'd need a proper transition period and have to make allowances for overheads but there's no other way to make our league competitive.

In addition we'd need to introduce a sustainable and affordable salary scale for all players. This is NOT a salary cap. Its a salary scale enabling the "diddy" clubs to keep their best players and helping them build young exciting competitive teams.

Sport isnt worth watching without competition and our league is virtually competition free.

I cant be bothered explaining further.
Apologies I thought you meant tv revenue, not distributing season ticket money from the bigger clubs to smaller ones.

I cant imagine how any Rangers fan would be happy with the idea that a decent percentage of their season ticket money is going to fund opposition teams. In fact, I suspect the league would become more competitive as season ticket sales at the big clubs would plummet. Total non starter
 
Can you talk me through top flight football leagues that are regularly competitive and won be a wide variety of teams?

None exist. Not anywhere. Except maybe the US but that's due to how Americans structure their sports leagues.

Sure you'll maybe get the odd team having a decent 5/10 year period, but generally the best supported or richest clubs dominate the trophies.

Our biggest issue is our proximity to England. It's the same issue Irish football and Welsh football face. It's impossible to grow because we've got the biggest and most watched league on our doorstep.
 
I'm one of the few who preferred the 10 team top league, no split and play everyone 4 times.

There is really no difference in the quality of football between the 10 and 12 leagues, and Scotland doesn't have enough good teams to make the league bigger. No chance we will ever go back to 2 Old Firm games a season anyway.
 
That won't happen - too much lost income.

But the tweak would be a 14 team league

Home and away once = 26 games

Split into 2 groups of seven and home and away again = 12 games

Still 38 games and every team gets 2 game days off at the end of the season when injuries/tiredness etc are kicking in.
It would be better with a 6-8 split, less games for those more likely to be involved in cups/Europe, more games for the lower teams = more revenue for them.

36 league games for top 6
40 league games for the bottom 8
 
Can you talk me through top flight football leagues that are regularly competitive and won be a wide variety of teams?

No because they're all driven by greed and the last thing the greedy want is to share with others.

Did you know the tennis ball protest by Celtic fans was originally carried out in Spain by fans unhappy at the way Barcca and RM were syphoning off all the cash from their leagues? Not content with that they now want even more money by breaking away in a super league.

The people in charge know they're on to a good thing and they're milking it while they can. They dont give a shit about you or me or the clubs we dedicate our lives too.

Its a bit like politics. They dont care what happens in the long term they just want to stay on the gravy train as long as possible.

Meanwhile suckers like you and me keep paying up to watch players who have no interest in the teams that 'employ' them. Sure they want to win most of the time but that's probably due to bonuses. They play for the highest bidder.

Back to the point. Sport isnt worth watching without competition and Scottish football gets less and less competitive each year because of the uneven distribution of cash. No wonder no one wants to sponsor it.
 
No because they're all driven by greed and the last thing the greedy want is to share with others.

Did you know the tennis ball protest by Celtic fans was originally carried out in Spain by fans unhappy at the way Barcca and RM were syphoning off all the cash from their leagues? Not content with that they now want even more money by breaking away in a super league.

The people in charge know they're on to a good thing and they're milking it while they can. They dont give a shit about you or me or the clubs we dedicate our lives too.

Its a bit like politics. They dont care what happens in the long term they just want to stay on the gravy train as long as possible.

Meanwhile suckers like you and me keep paying up to watch players who have no interest in the teams that 'employ' them. Sure they want to win most of the time but that's probably due to bonuses. They play for the highest bidder.

Back to the point. Sport isnt worth watching without competition and Scottish football gets less and less competitive each year because of the uneven distribution of cash. No wonder no one wants to sponsor it.

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Best idea I saw was the 2 x leagues of 12.
Each play home and away.

1) Top 8 play (points carried) for title and European places (home and away) = 36 game season.

2) Bottom 4 of Premier and Top 4 of Championship play (home and away).
Top 4 start in SPL next year. Bottom 4 in Championship.

3) Bottom 8 of Championship (home and away). Bottom 4 go into playoffs for Div1.

Means we’d see more decent teams with good stadiums like Raith, Dunfermline (even Airdrie) getting a shot of the SPL

No meaningless games for Top 8 either
 
I'm one of the few who preferred the 10 team top league, no split and play everyone 4 times.

There is really no difference in the quality of football between the 10 and 12 leagues, and Scotland doesn't have enough good teams to make the league bigger. No chance we will ever go back to 2 Old Firm games a season anyway.

It will be interesting to hear the outcome of the study being carried out by the 5 "diddy" teams into Scottish football. Maybe they'll go radical and break away to form a new league with the other "diddy" clubs.
 
No amount of restructuring will solve the problem of lack of competition. Our top league is embarrassing. Its one of the least competitive in the world and its all down to the way the money is distributed.

Agree about financial distribution, but that’s a real tough nut to crack as I don’t ever want to see us subsidising the likes of HIVs, sheep and Dundee Utd.

Another issue, however, is playing the OF four times each season. It virtually guarantees between a 24 to 32 point deficit on the top of the table before a ball is even kicked.

If the likes of HIVs, Hearts, etc only had to come to Ibrox and the piggery once each season, it could actually help them hang on close to us longer and attract more of their own fans to their own stadia With them not being out of the title race from 25% of the way through the season.
 
I always found the MLS hybrid style to be just crazy enough for Scottish football. It’s also more games which means more money.

A 16 team top division - 30 game regular season for “supporters shield” and 1st European place.

The league then goes into a 3-way split where points are reset, with teams playing an 10 additional games, home and away.

Top 6 - League Champions playoff for Cup and all but the last European place.

Middle 6 - Playing for the last European place.

Bottom 4 - Relegation playoff where bottom 4 teams are joined by the top 2 from Championship, bottom 2 finishing teams are relegated.
 
I get it. You dont seem able to grasp the enormity of the problem. That's fine. Business as usual. No need for change.

Not a huge amount of change no, Scottish Football has been at a pretty consistent level during most of the time I have followed it TBH.

Last few years have probably been as competitive as it has been for as many years as I can remember.

Far more respect for those who make the effort to grow organically than need hands out and for others to be dragged down to claim some kind of false dragging up personally.
 
Agree about financial distribution, but that’s a real tough nut to crack as I don’t ever want to see us subsidising the likes of HIVs, sheep and Dundee Utd.

Another issue, however, is playing the OF four times each season. It virtually guarantees between a 24 to 32 point deficit on the top of the table before a ball is even kicked.

If the likes of HIVs, Hearts, etc only had to come to Ibrox and the piggery once each season, it could actually help them hang on close to us longer and attract more of their own fans to their own stadia With them not being out of the title race from 25% of the way through the season.

Agreed but you can see from some of the responses on here that there's plenty of people that dont get it.

With regards subsidising other teams. That's one way to look at it but another way is to see it as improving the games we watch week in and week out. Despite the claim that we're "only here to see the Rangers", we're actually here to see two teams play each other.

One rather odd situation that's occured recently is the "diddy" clubs preferring empty seats rather than giving tickets to away fans. Its getting silly now as they attempt to keep their ever dwindling fan base happy. We're all losing out.
 
Not a huge amount of change no, Scottish Football has been at a pretty consistent level during most of the time I have followed it TBH.

Last few years have probably been as competitive as it has been for as many years as I can remember.

Far more respect for those who make the effort to grow organically than need hands out and for others to be dragged down to claim some kind of false dragging up personally.

How can clubs "grow organically" when the OF scoop up all the cash, buy their best players off of them thus weakening them, win most of the trophies and get millions from europe? Its just not possible.

We are now a european diddy team and there's absolutely no chance we will ever be able to compete again so instead of taking all the money out of Scottish football and giving out bumper contracts to some why not concentrate on making our league more competitive.

I believe other leagues would follow us and we'd be held in high esteem as the country that led the way. I would of course get an MBE like Dr Rashford.
 
Best idea I saw was the 2 x leagues of 12.
Each play home and away.

1) Top 8 play (points carried) for title and European places (home and away) = 36 game season.

2) Bottom 4 of Premier and Top 4 of Championship play (home and away).
Top 4 start in SPL next year. Bottom 4 in Championship.

3) Bottom 8 of Championship (home and away). Bottom 4 go into playoffs for Div1.

Means we’d see more decent teams with good stadiums like Raith, Dunfermline (even Airdrie) getting a shot of the SPL

No meaningless games for Top 8 either

I agree, everyone plays same amount of games, everyone plays each other home and away the same amount.

Middle league I would guarantee that one of top 4 in div 2 is promoted and crowned champions and one of bottom 4 in div 1 is relegated.
 
Ultimately the way you grow support for the smaller teams is by making them more competitive, and end the OF duopoly.

In order to do so, I think the league needs to redistribute matchday ticket income. This in turn would significantly hamper our income and that's a major stumbling block.
Given the way our club was treated 9 years ago, I can't see many of us having any appetite at all for giving our money to clubs who tried to kill us off.

As "The magnificent bastard" said on Friday night, everyone hates us because they want to be us.
 
How can clubs "grow organically" when the OF scoop up all the cash, buy their best players off of them thus weakening them, win most of the trophies and get millions from europe? Its just not possible.

We are now a european diddy team and there's absolutely no chance we will ever be able to compete again so instead of taking all the money out of Scottish football and giving out bumper contracts to some why not concentrate on making our league more competitive.

I believe other leagues would follow us and we'd be held in high esteem as the country that led the way. I would of course get an MBE like Dr Rashford.

Rangers and Celtic haven't been winning most of the trophies recently TBH, other than Celtics recent run the trophies have been pretty wide spread with a variety of teams winning cups and making finals,

Rangers aren't even close to being a European diddy team, that is a beyond ridiculous comment to make, our performance in Europe recently have been as competitive for a period of time now as they have been at any stage in the last 20 years

Clubs can put more effort into growing organically by coaching their players to a standard which sees them move to England rather than us, as has happened often in recent years with the like of Aberdeen and Hibs who are far more inclined to be sell to that market for greater fees than they have been to either Rangers or Celtic, we wouldn't be able to get the likes of Nisbett and Porteous out of Hibs for instance, and Aberdeen have sold the likes of McKenna and Cosgrove to England for reasonable fees.

You are all over the place here.
 
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No amount of league reconstruction is going to change the massive financial disparity between the two Glasgow sides and the rest of the league.

We are too small a country to support a 18/20 team top flight. Look around you at similar sized nations across Europe and they all have 10/12/14 league setups.

A 18/20 top flight would result in a high amount of meaningless fixtures for teams throughout the league. It's already a bit of an issue with the current setup. Don't buy the argument that it'll lead to a better generation of Scottish players coming through either.

There is no perfect solution to this.
 
We hardly have enough decent teams to form a good top 6 in Scotland and this split carry on is an idea thought up by eejits.

The simplest way forward is to accept the situation and either have a bigger Premiership playing all v all twice or a smaller one playing each other four times.

I’d go for a 16 team league and 30 games. But there is no chance.
 
I get the idea of not wanting to subsidize the rest, but if it means we can negotiate things like the B team being in the structure it would be worth it imo.
 
For all the different ideas for league reconstruction I don’t believe I’ve heard this one mentioned . It even reduces the league games which in todays Calendar likely helps

12 team league
Play each other home and away - 22 games
Split at that point top 6 bottom 6
Play each other home and away again - 10 games
32 total

Means every team plays the exact same teams in battle of title/Europe/relegation . No 2 away games at Livingston then they finish bottom 6 so that lot don’t play them a 2nd time etc .
Agree that the split needs to be changed so that everyone in the top group plays each other home and away.
 
The problem with Scottish football was the same problem English football had before Wenger!
Arsenal like most teams were big strong lads who could dish it out, but once Wenger arrived, he started moaning about his flair players being kicked up and down the pitch, he demanded they were protected by the REFEREE. Slowly the message got through, and now the EPL is the most watched league in Europe.
Until our refs protect the flair players and stop ignoring the dangerous assaults allowed at the moment, the game won’t progress to anywhere near the standards the rest of Europe holds.
Rangers are quite unique in this situation, as we get reffed to a much higher level of intolerance to hard tackles. This is one of the key reasons I rate Ryan Jack, when he played for the sheep he could charge in on anyone and be warned, then he signed for us and it was card after card, now he is composed because he knows he will be carded if he jumps in. So we already play to a higher discipline, but it should be an even hand across the board.
Once we focus on players football ability instead of height, we might start to see an improvement!
 
League of 18, play each other twice is what I would do.

However, clubs really need to take a look at themselves. They do absolutely nothing to try and improve their position.
 
An 18-team top division. Our visits to Tynecastle & Easter Road become even bigger occasions, as do the games against the yahoos.

Move the League Cup to weekends.

The tv deals aren’t big enough to allow them to dictate the league format.

The League should look for an overall sponsor such as the MLS/adidas - the monies from this could be more evenly split.
 
They used to share gate money. It didn't make a difference. There is nothing can be done about the financial gulf between the top two and the rest.
 
Won't be long till league reconstruction talks are in the news as Aberdeen sink into relegation zone.
 
League of 18, play each other twice is what I would do.

However, clubs really need to take a look at themselves. They do absolutely nothing to try and improve their position.
So instead of 10 teams playing for a draw against us we now have 16 teams.No no no.
 
The problem with Scottish football was the same problem English football had before Wenger!
Arsenal like most teams were big strong lads who could dish it out, but once Wenger arrived, he started moaning about his flair players being kicked up and down the pitch, he demanded they were protected by the REFEREE. Slowly the message got through, and now the EPL is the most watched league in Europe.

Advocaat was doing that 20 years ago TBF
 
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summer fitba could improve crowds - and if the SFA/SPFL weren't run by dunces there's a chance it could bring in more TV money
 
Amalgamate a lot of teams, sell the grounds and build one stadium.
From Dundee to Aberdeen theres 4 teams,
Forfar, Brechin, Montrose and Arbroath.
The population of the 4 towns must be around say 50k ( the population of Cumbernauld with only Clyde there).
Have one team .
No doubt there will be the diehards but these clubs will be out of business in 50 years .
 
So instead of 10 teams playing for a draw against us we now have 16 teams.No no no.
Playing some teams at least four times a season is so boring though. Something needs to be done to shake it up a bit. As a country we have far too many teams, so there is no reason for such a small top flight.
 
There are only so many ways you can polish a turd and that's all that the Scottish leagues will ever be.

Too many wee teams and not enough people to make it a financial success.
 
'Splits' are fundamentally mental, 7th placed team potentially ending the season with more points than the 6th placed team is stupid
Only because after the split they'd have played bottom 6 dross whilst the other played all top 6 teams. Why do folk still come out with this shite.
But I do agree that the split thing is a load of rubbish and should be scrapped.
 
It would be better with a 6-8 split, less games for those more likely to be involved in cups/Europe, more games for the lower teams = more revenue for them.

36 league games for top 6
40 league games for the bottom 8
Strangely, I think most leagues with 14 teams have a split after 26 fixtures, 36 games for the top half of the split and 33 for the bottom half.

Seems weird to me.
 
Playing some teams at least four times a season is so boring though. Something needs to be done to shake it up a bit. As a country we have far too many teams, so there is no reason

Playing some teams at least four times a season is so boring though. Something needs to be done to shake it up a bit. As a country we have far too many teams, so there is no reason for such a small top flight.
It was changed to the premier league because there were too many smaller clubs with no chance in hell of winning the league.Nothing has changed and never will.Teams in a top league should be of a similar stature.Introducing more smaller clubs achieves nothing.
 
Ultimately the way you grow support for the smaller teams is by making them more competitive, and end the OF duopoly.

In order to do so, I think the league needs to redistribute matchday ticket income. This in turn would significantly hamper our income and that's a major stumbling block.
And frankly I see no reason why we should. TV money I don’t mind splitting fairly, but not match day income. Us at home v say Ross County, even if you gave them the option of as many tickets as they wanted, they’d never bring more than a couple of thousand. So they’d bring absolute tops 4% of the attendees but get 50% of the gate money. Not for me ever.
 
No amount of restructuring will solve the problem of lack of competition. Our top league is embarrassing. Its one of the least competitive in the world and its all down to the way the money is distributed.
Not really, it's down to the fact that other teams dont have a large support and a crap tv deal. We make most our money from season tickets, Europa and match day revenue.

Winning the league gets you 3.35 million, coming last gets you 1.15 million, not a huge difference.

If other teams could get large support, they could complete with us. We've already made more money in Europe than winning the league

If you look at the EPL, the vast majority of the money comes from tv deal. Every club gets 31 million for just being in the league.

Look at Norwich, last place money from 2020! 94 million!!

20. Norwich City
Actual league position: 20th
Equal share: £31.8m
Facility fees: £11.3m
Merit payment: £1.8m
Overseas TV income: £44.6m
Commercial revenue: £5m
Total: £94.5m
 
It was changed to the premier league because there were too many smaller clubs with no chance in hell of winning the league.Nothing has changed and never will.Teams in a top league should be of a similar stature.Introducing more smaller clubs achieves nothing.
No top league in the world has clubs of a similar stature all the way through though? There are plenty of clubs in Serie A, Bundesliga and Ligue 1 that are relatively poor and are always going to be fighting relegation rather than trying to challenge for a title.
 
Not really, it's down to the fact that other teams dont have a large support and a crap tv deal. We make most our money from season tickets, Europa and match day revenue.

Winning the league gets you 3.35 million, coming last gets you 1.15 million, not a huge difference.

If other teams could get large support, they could complete with us. We've already made more money in Europe than winning the league

If you look at the EPL, the vast majority of the money comes from tv deal. Every club gets 31 million for just being in the league.

Look at Norwich, last place money from 2020! 94 million!!

20. Norwich City
Actual league position: 20th
Equal share: £31.8m
Facility fees: £11.3m
Merit payment: £1.8m
Overseas TV income: £44.6m
Commercial revenue: £5m
Total: £94.5m
Other clubs don't help themselves at all though. Look at Killie cutting our allocations while the rest of the ground is empty.
 
No top league in the world has clubs of a similar stature all the way through though? There are plenty of clubs in Serie A, Bundesliga and Ligue 1 that are relatively poor and are always going to be fighting relegation rather than trying to challenge for a title.
Yes obviously but you have to draw a line somewhere.Basically our league should consist of two teams but that would be silly.Bigger isn't better.
 
Yes obviously but you have to draw a line somewhere.Basically our league should consist of two teams but that would be silly.Bigger isn't better.
Sometimes less is more though. Playing the scum four times a season dilutes the importance. Not to the fans obviously but to people that might watch it if it meant more. Imagine the atmosphere if it was one trip to Easter Road or Pittodrie per year? Fans would be absolutely buzzing for it coming up.
 
No way they will only have 32 league games.A 14 team league splitting into 6 (top) and 8 (bottom) at the halfway point would mean 36 games.
I think this is the only reasonable compromise.

Teams can't afford less than 36 games, this gives top 6 teams 2 home games with us and "them" , those in bottom 8 get 2 extra home games to make up some of the lost revenue.

The fact that some in bottom 8 will finish with higher points than some in top 6 is, in my opinion, irrelevant as they are essentially in a different league following the split.
 
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