Since the moment it became evident that the season would have to be brought to a premature end, clubs have been scrambling to use it to their advantage.
They have been aided by the club that is most unscrupulous of all, the one that plays out of Ibrox.
They have one intention only, to force through a null and void. They will not succeed.
Desperation makes for strange bedfellows. Hearts don’t want the season null and voided, because if it is they get no prize money, not even for finishing last.
Sevco has no interest in whether Hearts are saved or not, they want the null and void option. These guys aren’t playing on the same side, but the Tynecastle club has seized on Sevco’s statement about the unfairness of the proposals to end the campaign as is, and especially the part relating to relegation.
This little alliance will collapse the minute both sides realise they are being used by the other – in point of fact, they certainly realise it already. Hearts want to be saved. Sevco just wants to hurt Celtic. But there’s a way for Celtic to get what they want and for Hearts to save themselves, and what Sevco gets in that transaction is not at all clear … humiliation maybe.
Hearts would gladly give Celtic the title, if there was a scenario in which they suffered no consequences for their dire season. Dundee and others have withheld their own votes because they have things they want.
This handful of clubs are acting out of utter selfishness, and that they’ve clambered into bed together is only one manifestation of that.
They have nothing in common except that they see an opportunity to exploit a global catastrophe.
And it looks as if the Scottish game is ready to reward them for it.
Since this thing kicked off, I’ve been dead-set against league construction and I still am.
The only argument in favour of it would be if it gave us a shorter campaign next season, and allowed us some flexibility on the calendar in case we have to go through multiple versions of the shutdown, which I reckon is pretty much a certainty.
But that’s not the plan. The 14 team league proposals would cut the number of games by exactly two; there would be twenty-six games with each club playing the others home and away and then a split into a six and eight and in the top half another ten games for a total of thirty-six.
That’s rearranging the leagues to benefit a handful of sides only.
And it just so happens that these are the very sides holding the rest of us to ransom, all but Sevco who will scream and wail no matter the settlement because it will still end with us being crowned Scottish champions. We should not be rewarding those clubs for this.
They have failed on the pitch, and they deserve their fates, and Hearts in particular. They have been rank all season long, and their corporate leadership would be Scottish football’s premier shambles if the Ibrox club didn’t do dysfunction on a whole other level.
These clubs are not “negotiating.” They are waving guns at the rest of us.
That can’t hold. Others have made huge sacrifices, or at least they are prepared to make them. Their wants and needs are being thrown to the far winds in order to satisfy people who see only a way to scuttle out from under their own calamitous failures. Why are we indulging that?
I don’t believe that league reconstruction will even get off the ground. I think it’s a dead issue. I don’t believe there are anywhere near enough votes for it, not when it doesn’t deliver real change or real certainty for the next campaign. It is ludicrous that it’s even being pitched as a solution to this.
The league tables reflect the reality of the season we’ve just had … to end it on what’s on those tables is fair and based on merit.
There is no merit in a season without losers.
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