Scottish Plight Looms

Could the SPL’s new proposal kill Scottish Football for good?

I’m 21 years old, I’ve been heavily interested in football from the age of about 7, so I’ve been following the game a good 14 years and have experienced a massive variety of debates. One of which that I remember, and always stood out to me was the Old Firm/English Premier League debate. It may be hard to believe now but there was a day when Rangers and Celtic were constantly linked to a permanent move to the English Premier League.

If you have a brief look back to the 1998-99 season, it’s easy to see why. First of all, Rangers boasted a team with the likes of Lorenzo Amoruso, Arthur Numan, Andrei Kanchelskis, Gio Van Bronckhorst, Rino Gattuso, Colin Hendry and Rod Wallace. All of them with excellent records at both club level and on the international stage, they were recognised worldwide.

Celtic weren’t far behind that either, Jonathan Gould was a great goalkeeper, Alan Stubbs was operating at the heart of the defence, George Burley, Paul Lambert and Jackie McNamara were superb in midfield, and with a strike force which, at the time, most top European clubs would have been happy with, Mark Viduka and Henrik Larsson.

Any mention of this subject now would get swiftly knocked back by the majority of football fans. It’s a sad state of affairs but since the Scottish Premier League boosted the top tier of Scottish Football from 10 teams to a 12 team league, Scottish Football has done nothing but suffer. I’m not sure what the SPL’s actual goal was, but if you were to ask them what they’ve achieved, what positive things they’ve done for Scottish Football, they’d struggle to find an answer. At the end of it all, if Celtic or Rangers were to compete in the English Premier League now, I’d fully expect them to be in the bottom eight teams in the league, and judging by former Rangers striker Kris Boyd’s form in the Championship for Middlesbrough, it wouldn’t surprise me if they got relegated.

In the year 2000 the league was increased in size, a 12 team league was introduced with one team getting relegated per season, this was in hope that by having more teams in the league, more teams would have the opportunity to compete in the top league, thus making more, stronger teams in the SPL so there would be increased competition, well that’s not happened. If you have a look at the league this season, and then have a look at the season where they introduced the 12 team league, you may notice that ten of the teams that were in it ten years ago are still in the league at the moment. So in ten years, only two teams have managed to break through into the SPL, if Dunfermline get promoted next season, that will change to one team breaking through in eleven years.

My belief is that the SPL was formed with no interest in the teams in the lower leagues. Some of the Scottish teams looked at how well English Football had done since the introduction of the Premier League in 1992, and were hoping that Scottish Football could follow the example the English game had set. As a result of this apparent greed, the Scottish game has suffered. There’s still no evidence that the Old Firm dominance is any closer to being broken, and from the above statistic, it appears teams from the First Division are struggling to catch up to the teams in the SPL. Before the SPL was formed the league sponsorship was split proportionally between the four divisions, once the SPL had formed this was no longer the case, this resulted in a progressive growth in the difference in finances for the clubs in the top league and the lower tiers, making it harder for newly promoted teams from Division 1 to compete in the transfer market with the already established clubs in the SPL.

You’re probably wondering why I’ve gone on a random rant about Scottish Football. Well the reason is that the SPL has come up with a new proposal; they plan to change the structure of Scottish Football. They want to introduce a two tier SPL. This would mean that the top ten teams would compete in one league with the second league being made up of twelve teams. This could be considered good news for Division One teams as it will give them more financial support, giving them a chance to close the gap between them and the teams in the current SPL. At first glance I suppose this may sound like a pretty good idea, but what the SPL hasn’t mentioned is that this will pretty much be the end of the Scottish 2^nd and 3^rd divisions.

It has been suggested that the leagues should disband and set up a pyramid like system, which is confusing at the best of times. The proposal is that the leagues get split up into three different regions in Scotland, so kind of like the Conference North and Conference South of England. This would be disastrous for Scottish Football. The quality of the football would become so poor the revenue for games has the potential to drop dramatically and the teams of the two lower tier leagues will fall so far away from the quality of the new SPL, they will never be able to catch up. This could also have a negative effect on the Scottish national team.

Teams like Clyde FC, who were formed in 1877, will be in danger of ceasing to exist, they may not be the best team competitively, but when the Scottish League was forming in the early 20^th century they were one of the top teams, finishing in the top two three times in consecutive seasons. Clyde FC were a team who helped form the Scottish League and they are at risk of being forgotten by the new plans being brought in by the SPL.

I believe these plans will further drag down the quality of Scottish Football, (I’m using the word ‘Quality’ very loosely here) a demise in quality over the years which has seen a reduction in European Competition places for the teams in the SPL.  The SPL would have no chance of attracting players like Henrik Larsson, Mark Viduka and Giovanni Van Brockhorst. Celtic’s front line now boasts Anthony Stokes and Gary Hooper, two players that wouldn’t be worthy of lacing up Henrik Larsson’s boots.

I hope I’m completely wrong, I hope these plans revamp Scottish Football and they manage to start attracting world class players to their country once again, I remember a day when I used to love watching Rangers. To me it seemed like 10-12 years ago Scottish Football was in a great place, something that didn’t need tampering with, I think the damage that has been done cannot be undone due to the difference in the financial side of the game ten years on. But like I said let’s hope I’m wrong, maybe this proposal will be a great success and in ten years time the Old Firm dominance will have been broken in the Scottish Premier League.... it won’t, but we can dream.