Yesterday Brendan Rodgers sat in front of the media and became the latest person to call for a larger Scottish Premier League.
His comments weren’t as brain-dead, moronic and stupid as Neil McCann’s the other day, when he proposed a 14-team league without actually knowing how that would work. But I still think the suggestion of a bigger league is very hard to understand.
People who are pushing this line need to have a serious think about what it is they’re actually asking for, because what they’re asking for doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. How does bringing half the Championship into the top flight improve the Premier League?
That’s the first question that needs to be asked.
How does it make things better? How do we raise standards by elevating a boatload of teams who can’t hack it in the top flight?
Because this is the argument—that more teams means a higher standard.
I don’t think that’s true. I see no evidence whatsoever that it is, and when people start talking about the English Premier League as a model, I just shake my head.
What? Is that a realistic comparison?
The English Premier League?
Do our clubs have the money those sides have? Do we have the attendances? Does the idea of a 20-team SPFL top flight really appeal to anyone?
That’s comparing apples and bowling balls. And it’s not the only part of this argument that doesn’t make any sense. How is the overall standard of football going to improve with a bigger league? You’ll still have one team at the top—that’ll be Celtic. You’ll have one team in second place, miles behind Celtic but miles ahead of everyone else—that’ll be the club across town.
Then you’ll have three or four clubs vying for the remaining European places, and after that? A big lot of nothing between them and the relegation fight.
Who in their right mind wants to watch Raith Rovers vs Motherwell in a game that’s utterly meaningless and doesn’t affect the title race, the European race, or the relegation battle in any way, shape or form? You won’t even get the Raith Rovers and Motherwell fans turning out in large numbers for that game, far less anyone else being interested in watching it.
This is Scottish football. And Scottish football has its own unique set of problems. Because in order for any league reconstruction to work, the TV companies—who have us by the balls—are going to insist on four Glasgow derbies a season.
So, any expanded league where we play every other side twice is automatically off the table. That means we’re stuck with a system that splits at some stage in the campaign, and the split, in my opinion, is the worst thing that has ever been created in the history of Scottish football.
It makes us look like a banana republic. It makes us look like some backwards, shit-heel of a league. And it’s done nothing at all to create drama. It exists because no club in this country wants to play 44 league games in a season. The whole reason we’re having these discussions in the first place is to try to reduce the number of games. Whether people like it or not, a 10-team league actually does that whilst eliminating all the filler.
In a 10-team league, the gap between the bottom and the top is not as big.
You’ll still have those two clubs doing their own thing—and one club in particular running away with the title every year, while the other blunders along trying to stay relevant. But it’s the eight other teams who are interesting, because the gap between the team in third and the team struggling to avoid relegation might not be that big. So more games matter. More games are important.
The bigger the league, the more irrelevant games you get. And with more irrelevant games, you have a tougher time squeezing money out of the TV companies—who already don’t want to give us money in the first place. Part of that is because they know that the 12-team league and the SPL split is a farce that never should have been introduced.
I’m against anything that makes this league look even more backward and ludicrous than it already does. Some expansion that just creates a whole other set of problems isn’t going to work, and no one’s going to vote for it anyway.
The 14-team league proposal I put forward the other day—where each team plays each other twice and then we split into two groups of seven—is ridiculous in principle but works in theory. Except that, in order to get something like that through, teams would need to vote for it overwhelmingly.
And I wonder how many actually would.
Knowing how things work in this country, it would get voted through without a single club voting against it. We just have no idea here. No clue how to make things better. No clue how to improve standards overall. We’re certainly not going to get fewer games out of this.
That’s a done deal. The clubs will do everything they can to play the same number of matches, and the excuse will be that most of them aren’t qualifying for Europe anyway, so they don’t care that the clubs who do qualify have even more to cram into the calendar. It’s just idiotic.
According to The Record—and I don’t even know how much we should believe them—they say that Celtic are known to be in favour of a 10-team league. And for the first time, I find myself agreeing with them and not with the manager, if that’s the case. Because expanding the league doesn’t make sense.
The 10-team option is the only one that results in fewer games. It’s the only one that results in fewer meaningless games across the season. It’s the only version you can realistically pitch to a TV company as being some kind of enhancement to the product.
I know fans are sick and tired of playing the same teams four times a season. I know that. And I know that a 10-team league locks us into that cycle, probably forever. But as long as the TV contract stipulates that we have to play that club across the city four times a year, we’re stuck with some version of this.
It’s depressing knowing how this is going to turn out.
Either no changes will be made, or a change will be made that’s so absurd it sets the game back years instead. Like the Hampden ticket fiasco. This is what we do here. We are very creative when it comes to finding ways to shoot ourselves in the foot.
With a 14 team league you don’t split into two groups of 7 as an odd number of teams means one team in each half of the split would be unable to play in each round of fixtures. You would split into a top group of 6 and a bottom group of 8, and you would do it after the second round of fixtures. So you play 13 games home and away, then 5 games home and away – that’s 36 games, two fewer than now. Teams in the bottom 8 would play 40. One of the problems with our league is short-termism – because most teams have a realistic chance of relegation every season. They need more stability to allow long-term investment. Almost every team in the league has spent time in the division below over the past 20 years. So called “meaningless” games are the sort of games where youngsters can get a chance to play first team football – we need more “meaningless” games not fewer.
The league was originally shrunk in number for the reasons you say, to avoid lots of meaningless games and avoid too many ridiculous scores. When it was 10 teams you could play a bottom half team 6 times potentially including cups which was also ridiculous and find yourself playing the same team 3 times in 5 weeks. So the current setup was devised with the split, despite being inherently unfair, it was deemed a more exciting way to end the campaign.
The Belgian league is similar and they try things to spice it up, they have 16 teams, play each other twice, then the league splits, point totals are halved and the top 6 play each other twice more and two groups of 5 below that. There’s is a complicated system but they tweak it every year to try and find a good way.
I’d say either leave it, or try something we haven’t done before because we changed from the old systems for good reason.
I think we do need a bigger league, but by “we” I mean Celtic. The sooner we can get out of the SP-Hell the better it will be for all concerned. Celtic have outgrown Scotland, it’s that simple.
Once upon a time I used to argue with all my mates down here that without Celtic and Rangers, Scottish football could be a whole lot more interesting as there were several clubs – probably 5 – that could regularly challenge for the honours every season with the Old Firm sweeping them up every year.
Of course, now Rangers are dead to be replaced by the basket case now occupying Skull Mountain, that argument is kind of invalid. It leaves the picture slightly different in the sense if Celtic were to leave, the huns aren’t big enough to follow (although without doubt they’d argue that point until the oceans dry up) and they’d end up staying – but they probably wouldn’t mind that cos they might have a chance of winning the League again and take their “rightful place” as Scotland’s number one. Which of course they’d be welcome to.
Scottish football could is a mess – I can’t see any way improvement it. We’d be far better off buying a League 1 club and work our way up the English structure.
*without
*way of improving it
James Forrest and Paul Brennan unite in call for 10 team SPL.
Plus Neil Doncaster and Gary Keown!
There is no easy answer to the problems Scottish Football finds itself in, in my opinion it’s a 10 team Premier League or the status quo. The 16 or 18 team League a lot of people are proposing just wouldn’t work for lots of reasons, the biggest being too many meaningless games. Football whether we like it or not is a cut throat business, sentiment doesn’t come into it. In Scotland we have a particular problem, England has around 11 times our population, and with the richest League in the World not only next door to us, we share the same media coverage and the money they distribute.
The share of that pot of money is so unequal that Scottish Football just cannot grow and prosper, although the lack of ambition, imagination and cronyism by the SFA and SPFL doesn’t help matters.
As I’ve said there are no easy answers, my only hope for Celtic is that the new European format will lead to some sort of European Leagues sometime in the future. Probably too late for me but hopefully for future generations of Celtic fans to enjoy
I believe the split is a necessary evil brought in to reconcile the conflicting demands of the SFA, who want to keep the number of games down in line with UEFA guidelines, and the ‘smaller’ clubs, who want as many teams in the top flight as possible to give more of them a few lucrative games with Celtic and The Rangers each season.
I did a few quick calculations regarding an enlarged league with a split after two rounds of fixtures. The best arrangement seemed to be a 14 team league. If the split was 7/7 then everyone plays 38 games as at present but, post-split, one team in each half would have no game each week. Alternatively, a 6/8 split would give the top teams 36 games while the lower teams would play 40 giving them a few more games to compensate for missing out on further games with Celtic and The Rangers.
Strange, that in the days when we had too many meaningless games in an 18 team league that Celtic got to two European Cup Finals and four semi-finals. Changed days indeed?
Correct Johnny, that set-up, together with the reserve league, also allowed the Quality Street Kids to break into the first team. In addition we also had Kilmarnock, Hibs, Dundee and Rangers reaching European Semis and finals, with 100% Scottish players, who mostly came through their youth systems.
Regardless of what they do the top league in Scotland will eternally be the laughing stock of the world, the globe, the universe, the stratosphere – Call it what you fuckin want but a laughing stock it will be…
41 years since the title left Glasgow is testimony to that for sure !
Presenting opinion as fact is a sad indictment in Scotland press, media and blogs. We the customers are not stupid.
There is potential for improving the skill base in the SPL and for the inclusion of more talented youngsters particularly given they currently don’t have a realistic platform to do that under the current system and leave at the first opportunity because they’re not included. Our club is a contributor to this problem. Maybe they’d leave but sign for a smaller club in the SPL and in size to get a game. I’m not saying that’s a level playing field to say what an ECL can offer them to play in their reserves but it is a playing field.
In what world does a 14 or even a 16 team SPL constitute half the championship joining the SPL. Deary me
I’m with you on this – you get a 14 team top league by not relegating the bottom two clubs this season and promoting top two in the Championship. 14 then 6/8 split worth trying. As noted elsewhere Belgium not shy at mixing things up and look at their performances at international and club level in Europe.
Add – our youngsters could leave on loan to gain SPL match experience with some of the smaller SPL clubs.
Scottish football needs something. Everything is predictable & I can’t be the only one who gets fed up seeing us playing the same teams over & over.
I don’t want to see us playing the ibrox club 4 times. I couldn’t care.
For me I’d say a 16 team league. No split, home & away – 32 games. 6 games less than now. This is what Celtic should want. This would greatly reduce the fixture congestion for us in the first half of the season also & offer more flexibility in fixture rearrangements.
Everything is catered around us playing ibrox 4 times a season. We know that we will play them early in the season. (can be home or away & the reverse fixture will be the split), then we will go to Ibrox at New Year. Then we will play them at home around March.
The fact the fixture draw isn’t totally random just shows what Scottish football is. Would it be a good thing for us to end up at Ibrox around St. Patricks day or them at us around the date of the ibrox disaster obviously no. But to actively ensure the games are set for those dates is just a joke.
We are a small nation so why try & fixate on the 38 games a season. Bundesliga is an 18 team league & some of the teams at the bottom of that are woeful but the format still works. It’s the league most similar to ours in that there is a dominant team & then some ankle biters below who occasionally muster a challenge.
Yes the level overall is less but it proves that a larger league can be more interesting.
If the SPFL goes to a 10 team league again I honestly don’t know that I would care to watch Celtic domestically anymore & would just enjoy our European nights. I want variety in opposition not just playing the same teams at the same grounds over & over.