View From Gorgie

Hi folks.

I would love to tell you that I have been thinking long and hard about the current plight of Scottish football. I would love to have been able to go on foreign trips and interview people from clubs in Scotland in the way that Henry McLeish has been able to do in order to publish his first, grass roots, report on our game.

But I didn’t think long and hard and I haven’t been in the privileged position of former first minister McLeish.

What I HAVE done, is take, oh…half an hour? (give or take) out of my day to come up with a plan that can fix (the professional level at least) Scottish football. To my mind, we don’t NEED “think tanks”. We more than likely don’t need £500 million from the public sector put into the game either. Let the CLUBS put something back in to the game!

We constantly fail miserably in Europe, yet we place our dropping Euro co-efficient on the fact that sometimes a Gretna, a Raith or even a Falkirk can get Euro places. Why not stop blaming smaller clubs and make our “big teams” fight harder for Euro places….and, by a natural follow-on, drag THEIR European performances up to where they believe they should be?

So, here it is! Youngy’s blue-print for the future of Scottish football.

1. Take 42 clubs from the current 4 Scottish professional leagues.
2. Split those clubs into 2 leagues. One, we’ll call this Division 1 for the time being (PR people can think of their own super-duper fancy name once it’s ready to go), containing 20 teams. The other, we’ll call this one Division 2 for the time being (sneaky eh?), will contain 22 teams.
3. Teams in Division 1 will play each other twice a season and will, therefore, play 38 league games per season – so the same number as they currently do then.
4. Teams in Division 2 will also play each other twice a season and will, therefore play 42 league games per season. The “extra” games over their current league campaigns can be easily swallowed up by the scrapping of the Challenge Cup, which can go off to live in the Scottish football museum at Hampden.
5. The bottom 3 clubs in Division 1 will swap places with the top 3 clubs in Division 2 at the end of the league campaign.
6. If minimum spectator seating requirements are put in place in Division 1, then teams will be given time, whilst playing in the top tier, to bring their grounds up to that level. Initially a three year period will be agreed upon at the start of the new league structure. After the first three years of the new structure being in place, any club gaining promotion to Division 1 will be given a period of one year to bring their grounds up to standard. Failure to do so would see them drop back down to Division 2 and the team which finished 4th in that league would be invited to step up in that particular season.
7. BOTH national cup competitions will automatically earn a place in the following season’s European competition. If the winner of a cup competition earns a European spot through their league campaign, the European “cup” place will then go to the runner-up in that competition…EVERY SEASON. There will be no scrapping of a cup-earned European place simply because a “diddy” team managed to sneak through to the final. This will cause clubs to place as much importance on cup competitions as leagues and will, in turn, create better, more enjoyable cup matches which will, hopefully, entice supporters back into the game.
8. League qualification will be determined by a) league placing and b) how many Euro spots UEFA have awarded to Scotland as a nation (after the two cup places have been subtracted). If we, as a nation, want more European spots for our “league efforts” then our clubs are just going to have to get their collective fingers out and perform better on the European stage, which will have the effect of raising the country’s co-efficient (not to mention earning those clubs more money due to longer runs in Europe).
9. To save things from becoming stagnant in the lower reaches of Division 2, I propose a very simple system. There is simply no need for a complicated “pyramid” structure. All that will require to be done is a simple play-off competition at the end of the Scottish season. All of the teams which finished at the top of their particular amateur/junior/highland league systems will be invited to play in a cup-style competition against each other. The eventual winner of that contest will then be invited to take the place of the club which finishes in last place in Division 2. The bottom team in Division 2 will then be “demoted” into their local amateur/junior/highland league. This will avoid the scenario where teams, such as East Fife in the past, consistently finish at the bottom of the “pro” leagues, yet faced no penalty for doing so.
10. The SPL, as a governing body, will either be dissolved or incorporated back into the SFL. Preferably BOTH of these organisations would be forced to become departments of the SFA rather than separate entities.
11. Referees will become “professional” and refereeing performance will be monitored and poor displays censured by an independent body in order to raise the standards of officiating in Scotland.

See…..SIMPLE!!!

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