footnotes Posted yesterday at 11:28 Share Posted yesterday at 11:28 (edited) On 16/04/2024 at 16:45, Oldster said: That's really thorough. I can't agree with smaller divisions, though. I'd go for 3 divisions of 14 in the SPFL. It would be a 40 game season, starting the last July weekend and no winter break. Teams would play opponents x3 (fixtures to be reversed for the following season). And every season would begin with an additional round of fixtures, with 1st v 2nd, 3rd v 4th, 5th v 6th, etc from the previous season, as a showpiece opener. No advantage would be gained since everyone would be playing opponents at their own level. And it would give all the Old Firm games without the need for a split. Then maybe do what you said for the LL, HL. If they were having a 40 'match day' season, they might have to reduce the League Cup to a Saturday-Wednesday-Saturday competition, to free up a fixture date or two. Teams would have 3 games each, but maybe it would be like the new Champions League format with one overall league table, and the 40 teams would be drawn from 4 groups of seeds rather than 5. So the top 11 from the overall first round table would qualify for the Second Round, to meet the 5 teams who were playing in the European competitions. But if it was acceptable to have a "showpiece" additional, initial round of fixtures for the Premiership, then they could surely be doing that already, with teams then going on to play opponents x3, for 34 games each in total. No split, and 4 old firm games pretty much guaranteed. They could do it for the top 4 divisions of 12 teams per division, all national, and so open up automatic promotion and relegation to/from the Highland and Lowland leagues. But they'd probably need 2 teams to be automatically relegated from each SPFL division in order to keep it interesting. Edited yesterday at 11:30 by footnotes 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Newbornbairn Posted yesterday at 11:38 Share Posted yesterday at 11:38 10 team leagues are shite. Playing teams 4 times a season plus the cups is boring as f**k. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oldster Posted 36 minutes ago Share Posted 36 minutes ago (edited) On 24/04/2024 at 12:28, footnotes said: If they were having a 40 'match day' season, they might have to reduce the League Cup to a Saturday-Wednesday-Saturday competition, to free up a fixture date or two. Teams would have 3 games each, but maybe it would be like the new Champions League format with one overall league table, and the 40 teams would be drawn from 4 groups of seeds rather than 5. So the top 11 from the overall first round table would qualify for the Second Round, to meet the 5 teams who were playing in the European competitions. But if it was acceptable to have a "showpiece" additional, initial round of fixtures for the Premiership, then they could surely be doing that already, with teams then going on to play opponents x3, for 34 games each in total. No split, and 4 old firm games pretty much guaranteed. They could do it for the top 4 divisions of 12 teams per division, all national, and so open up automatic promotion and relegation to/from the Highland and Lowland leagues. But they'd probably need 2 teams to be automatically relegated from each SPFL division in order to keep it interesting. Yeah, maybe they would be doing it already. An improvement would be reducing meaningless games by dividing the Premiership after 33 games into 3. Top four play one another again for a 36 game season. 5th-8th play each other once more to see who will face 4th in a European play off (5th away to 4th). Bottom four play again to see who will be relegated and in the relegation play off. This would align the Premiership with the Championship in terms of 36 games per team, and so the play offs could take on the same format as the other divisions, where it's just 2 pairs of semis and then a final. Ideally, though, two would be automatically relegated from the Premiership, with 2nd-5th in promotion play offs in an expanded Championship - but once clubs are in the Premiership they seem to forget how difficult it is to return there if relegated, so it's not likely they vote for this. With the League Cup - I take it you mean that teams would be drawn into 10 groups of 4 for the fixtures, play opponents once, Sat-Wed-Sat, with the results being shown in a great big 40 team league table, and the top 11 qualifying for the second round? Sounds quite good! Edited 32 minutes ago by Oldster 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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