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Scottish football counterfactuals


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On 22/09/2016 at 10:06, CityDave said:

Imagine if Terry Butcher had put Pavels Mihadjuks after returning from injury back into his best position in the central defence instead of out at right back. Ross Tokley would have been not in that position to give away that penalty against Falkirk and we would have stayed up. Maybe had we done so Terry and Mo might not have had the freedom to clear out the dead wood and freshen up the squad resulting in their time in charge as maybe a complete shambles.

Dundee would have probably gone up the following season and not entered administration the following season after that, who knows?

Pedant alert but Tokely never gave away a penalty that day.

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4 hours ago, 7-2 said:

The greatest what if in Scottish football will always be...what if all the other club chairmen hadn't shat themselves after Rangers died and rightfully refused league entry to the new club?

I guess that whoever owned Ibrox would have taken the Livingston/Airdrie approach and bought out an existing member. This means they might not have needed to start in the 4th tier They might have got to the championship earlier and only had to overcome the relatively modest  challenge of the  2013/14 Dundee and Hamilton sides instead of the 2014/15 Hearts and Hibs sides. 

That would make this their 3rd season in the top flight.
 

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What if Geoff Brown hadn't got involved at Saints?

My opinion is we would've ended up similar to the Angus clubs, rattling around in an out of date club, paying part time wages and awaiting the return to top flight football with ever fading hope. 


Confirmed as Chairman 30 years ago today.
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What if Dundee had gone into administration in the summer of 2010 rather than October? They'd surely have got the Livingston treatment and been turfed down to the then Third Division, which obviously wasn't possible mid-season.

Would the fans have rallied round as they did and saw them win both the Second and Third divisions at the first time of asking, followed by immediately re-establishing themselves as a top half First Division side on their return, or would apathy have set in by the time they got back up and saw them become no more than a mid-table side at that level? Could they even have done a Morton/Dunfermline and failed to get out of Second Division until the trillionth attempt?

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One that I've thought of in the past centres on the fact that Raith Rovers won the league title the year we were both promoted in 1993.  With the league going from 12 teams to 10 for the 1994/95 season, there needed to be 3 teams relegated from the top division in the next season - and as runners up in the league below the year previously, I'd imagine we'd have be fairly heavy favourites for a few.

Anyway, we stayed up and they went down.  Despite this, Raith Rovers did fairly well in that period, winning the League Cup and the First Division (again) the year after being relegated but were never able to establish themselves in the top flight, and went down fairly soon afterwards - never as yet to return.  Kilmarnock on the other hand, have now been up for nearly 25 years, winning both cups into the bargain.

I do wonder what the fortunes of each club would have been had things turned out differently in 1994, and certainly in 1997 when they beat us 1-0 at Stark's to send us bottom of the table with about 10 games to go, only before being dragged back as we went on a mazy straight after appointing Bobby Williamson.

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 9/22/2016 at 00:45, Thistle_do_nicely said:

On the theme of Rangers death, and trying to adopt a thematic approach rather than one isolated event; what if their record in Europe hadn't been absolute shit in the years leading up to liquidation? Would it have been enough to save them?

If they hadn't fucked up against Kaunas, Malmo etc. in their CL and Europa League playoffs would the European money have been enough to see them merely go through administration, rather than liquidation? Suspect that they were always doomed once googly eyes got control off of David Murray no matter how much cash at hand and in the bank they had/debtors etc. but along the same lines, would Murray have done a runner had they managed to get through to the more lucrative stages of European competition rather than getting their arses handed to them by shit-tier sides/could they have found a buyer that wouldn't have shafted them over time and again?

What if George Burley had been left in charge after his massive winning streak at the start of that season with Hearts, rather than being punted and shortly thereafter Gordon etc. were sold?

Could Garry O'Connor have been a Scotland and Premiership regular had he not gone to Russia so young and ended up with so much cash at such a young age (think he was 22 when he left, old enough for some to know better but clearly not, with hindsight, oor Garry)?

On another Rangers theme, what would have happened if every club refused them entry into the SPFL/SFL (as it was at the time?) and they disappeared a la Third Lanark or had to form a Junior side?

Don't think so....

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On 23 September 2016 at 18:39, topcat(The most tip top) said:

I guess that whoever owned Ibrox would have taken the Livingston/Airdrie approach and bought out an existing member. This means they might not have needed to start in the 4th tier They might have got to the championship earlier and only had to overcome the relatively modest  challenge of the  2013/14 Dundee and Hamilton sides instead of the 2014/15 Hearts and Hibs sides. 

That would make this their 3rd season in the top flight.
 

Appalling.

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Just now, topcat(The most tip top) said:

 


I'll happily concede the first point but as for the second, I don't think you've quite got the point of this thread

 

I was joking, of course. You've done nothing wrong and the horrific scenario you outlined was a distinct possibility.

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Who would they have bought out, though?

Was pretty shocked listening to Off the Ball a few weeks ago and it had Stewart Gilmour on, confirming that someone at St Mirren (David something I think, one of the directors? Can't mind, was working at the time so didn't catch all the details) was in talks regarding Rangers buying out the membership and renaming St Mirren to Rangers etc. edit: was it Martin Bain who was trying to set that one up too? Sure he was involved in that deal somehow but then that's leaving me scratching my head since he ringfenced his cash and got the hell out of dodge before it all went tits up.

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