I know there is a topic on the go in the lower league forums but thought I'd see what the opinions are of the SPL fans about this looking like it might get the go ahead.

http://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/sport/displa...2372225.0.0.php

I'm not at all sure how this 'strengthens the case for an SPL2', it merely provides more money for the current SPL clubs. In the main these are clubs having difficult times, financially, and this double money is a quicker way out of their current predicament, why would they want to dilute their means of getting out of a tight corner?

Lex Gold is a penis.

My main post/rant has been made in the thread in the First Division sub-forum, but I'm against it in its current form. The SPL2 plans at this moment in time, are intended to stifle competition and damage smaller clubs. That is the last thing our professional football, or football in general, needs.

Sounds like a Bond baddie.

Im not sure if SPL 2 would stiffle competition. There are a few old SPL teams in SFL 1 and most would give the maj of the SPL teams a good game.



My concern would be for the teams left behind. It has been hard enough to find sponsorship or a tv deal, if the best clubs went to SPL2 the rest of the Scottish clubs would really struggle. I think you would need to look at regional leagues for the rest of the structure.

Thats my feelings, i think actually if this SPL2 pushes the creation of regional divisions (within a pyramid system) it would actually be a good thing.

Yes there are a right few 'old' SPL clubs in Div 1 - and they are there because they got relegated fair and square, and dinnae' like it.

St. Johnstone, Dundee, Dunfermline, Livingston...saw Falkirk, St. Mirren, Gretna and Hamilton replace them one by one by one....If they want back, earn it. Win the fcuking First Division.

That would apply to my own club, should relegation happen to us.

(- I'm not having a go at your post mate by the way.)

SPL 2 would be a good thing apart from the fact that the proposed structure (well the original proposed structure) is horrible. However I would not be against a two teir league of 20 clubs (why 22 it makes no sense) with two up two down, and a then a regional pyramid. They should also ditch the stupid 'stadium criteria' requirements, and divide the cash EVENLY, not just a token couple of million chucked to the diddy league.

I mean is it that fucking difficult to work out a fair structure in a football league, they've had the past 100 years to try and find one.

From a 1st Division mediocre diddy side point of view, if the TV deal stays solly with the top 12 clubs them promoted sides won't have a snowball's chance in Hell of staying up, barring Hearts/Gretna style financial implosions.
So from a selfish personal view it would make sense to at least cut the pie more evenly in order to get competition: the 1st will never get a credible TV deal/sponsorship with the top division getting so much money pumped into it IMO.

Haud on: it comes into play 2010-111 - just in time for our debut SPL season then.
Screw the b*****ds underneath us.

no offence taken. It is a very fair point you make. I do think that the SPL coiuld be bigger, and i do think a radical overhaul of the lower leagues is required.
Asking teams to travel the lenght of Scotland to play in front of 200 fans is not sustainable. but a regional structure would need full agrement from those involved, not imposed from above.

I've never understood how relegation from the SPL to a regional stucture would work. Say for instance QotS were bottom of SPL2 would that mean the promotion candidate would automatically be from SFL (South) or would there be a play-off between the two SFL Leagues to see who was to be promoted? Obviously QotS couldn't be put in the SFL (North) so would a team like Stirling (just my guess) float between SFL North & South Divisions depending on who was in the SPL?

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The changes I'd like to see in Scottish football would be

1) A playoff between the 2nd bottom of the SPL and 2nd team in SFL Division 1

2) Scrap the Challenge Cup and revamp the League Cup. Exempt the teams that qualify for Europe from playing in the League Cup - let's face it OF fans aren't interested until they get to the S/F (at least) and it'd give teams like Motherwell a better chance of progressing in Europe.
All of the remaining SPL sides and even teams currently in the SFL Division 1 could realistically aspire to winning this trophy.

In England the clubs in the regional divisions are moved for best fit, so if a North England team is relegated and a South England team promoted then the Southernmost team in the North league is transferred over to the South league to make room.

Scotland is bloody tiny as well so I really don't see why if would be necessary to have an arbitrary North/South split, you'd be as well dividing East/West since the bulk of the clubs are in the central belt.

I would go a bit further and split it into 4 regional leagues, Glasgow + West, Edinburgh + East, South and North. In each league the current top regional level should be incorporated (i.e. in the north the highland league is incorporated etc)

SPL 2 will happen eventually and good luck to it.

The remaining SFL clubs should go regional but won't.

We'd be as well getting to the stage where entry to the league is through invitation- You've got a pish fanbase, you're not getting in! Just a stupid idea. As if TV companies are going to think "oooohh it's called SPL2, that sounds much more exciting for broadcasting Clyde v Ross County".

The likes of Dundee, Dunfermline & Livingston were happy to keep all the TV cash to themselves when they were in the SPL and went ahead and overspent huge sums of cash in order to gain an advantage on the pitch. They couldn't have given a toss about the likes of St. Mirren.

Now the boot is on the other foot I hope we tell them all to get tae fuck. I want to see the SPL clubs keep the cash all to themselves and for the SPL clubs to get richer and richer while the First Division clubs get poorer and poorer and get into bigger debt. They deserve it.

I love how everyone says 'great, this will finally force the part-time teams into regional leagues'.

Has anyone considered that maybe they don't want or need regional leagues? That we have had regional leagues at tier 3 since the 1920s? That amateur rugby has 6 nationwide divisions? Etc.?

who cares what the part timers need, this is about survival of the fittest.

Good I hope so. The teams down the bottom of the SFL have done f**k all and are happy to continue to do so, as well as kill competition by not introducing a pyramid why should the teams up the ladder give a f**k about them? If anything it will do these wasters good by giving them a wake up call that they won't be able to fund themselves on Sponsorship money created by the few teams who have a support in the SFL.

Which is exactly why the full-timers should not be allowed to make the decision on their own. There are about 80 clubs in the SFA (which controls all football in Scotland - including the SPL - if they have to balls to do it). The full-timers must be PREVENTED from destroying everyone else.

I would actually agree with you - as regards the need for the SFL to introduce a pyramid, and open up the game in Scotland. But SPL2 is diametrically opposite to opening up the game, IMO.

Most of the 1st Division clubs should return to part-time status. They can't sustain full time football on gate receipts and sponsorship and should start living within their means.

This isn't a dig. When I first started supporting Falkirk in the 80's all of the first division teams were part time and we were still part time when we played our first season in the Premier League in the 86/87 season.

Yep. There was a rush to go full time at some point during the late eighties by most of the first division clubs. Part time players can be every bit as good as full timers. Big Doug Somner was part time with us as he scored for fun in the premier league. It wasn't sneered at nearly as much back then and it would probably make sense for a number of clubs to do it.

I know the boy Stevenson at Ayr is earning pretty good money at both his normal job and his wage at Ayr. I doubt he could afford the wage cut to go to a club like St.Mirren or Falkirk or the like if he went full time again.

What really needs to happen is the SPL and SFL to become one again, save admin costs at the very least and opens the forum for all member clubs to see the best way forward.

Regionalism would help teams financially in a small way but would definitely help fans.

A REAL shake up is required - that also includes the cups. All we have had for 30 years is half assed attempts to make things a bit funkier, the SPL is trying to ensure it's survival with this new move - it would call the death knell for the SFL.

Doomsayer ye say? Ach well, I had to put a wee twist at the end. All good stories have them.

Funny you should say that as a fellow saint whom you know claimed 2 months ago that Stevenson to Saints was a done deal.

I can't remember a single exclusive of his coming true. That's over a quarter of a centurys worth of minging gossip.

......Wasn't me...

No,not this time

I promise to redeem myself with some cast iron exclusives...

Waiting..........................

I would doubt there are any clubs in the SFL whos main source of income is the sponsorship money created by the bigger clubs. Its not very much money atall when you look at it. Even then, Iron Bru didnt come in to the SFL just because of a few of the bigger clubs. They get their name in the public eye on a Saturday afternoon when all three league results are read out and I would say thats the main reason for their sponsorship rather than anything else.

That really is the problem - the SFL is not a marketable product, I guess thats why this SPL2 has been suggested but imo it wont change things much.

Typical SPL attitude on here. "All youse should change, we're arite". If you want change, include yourselves in there as it's the SPL that is causing the big mess.

I assume you didn't read my post then?

If the SPL is so great, why not take all 42 clubs and have an SPL3 and SPL4 as well? Answer that.

Because for the most part the remaining clubs are not sizable enough to "merit" an SPL, pure and simple.
Same way that the play-offs were partially created to stop teams like Thistle being relegated from the 1st. (and help us to get promoted)
Try and see if we can make a "VIP list" of SFL clubs "big" enough to make it at this moment:
All First division (although Clyde only grudgingly accepted), Raith, Ayr.
Enough "big" teams there for a promotion-relegation, barring stadium criteria.
Teams like East Fife etc may well continue to strengthen and win entry, but without doubt there are some teams (ie Stranraer) who are most certainly not welcome in any "SPL2" and never will be.

take the 8 best clubs in the first and the two worst in the SPL and there's your new division, the cartel and it's mini-me.

Only nobody wants to go back to a boring 10 team league.

The SPL 2 should have 12-16 clubs.

I would go for 12 myself, regardless of it's critics.

24 clubs that are serious about what they are doing, not play acting at being a national league club.

I'm with a couple of posters on this thread who say that the main instigators of this SPL2 idea are those teams who in the last five or so years have been relegated to the first and now cannot get back up through their own footballing means and have consigned themselves to languishing in the first in front of dwindling gates but want somebody else to pay for them to survive.
It's comparable to the lesser skilled golf pro's on the european tour who will never win anything but just make up the weekly numbers, but are demanding less money for the winners and a bigger spread of prizemoney so that can benefit personally but cannot provide the entertanmaint to the public.

I said a while back that there weren't many calls for re-organisation when the SPL did indeed look like a real old pals closed shop. Round about the time there wasn't relegation or promotion due to Falkirk's stadium issues, or whatever. Then, one x one Livvy, Dundee, Dunfermline fell out, and couldnae' get back - and were replaced by Falkirk, Saints, Gretna - now Accies. I said to my mates that if enough 'loudmouth' owners find themselves stuck in Division 1, burdened by debts (of their own making), then all of a sudden you'd hear a hell of a lot from these clubs, while you heard nothing when they were safely esconsed in the gentleman's SPL club.

When Livvy were finishing third, winning cups, and playing in Europe - where was their concern for the state of Scottish lower league football? When Dundee were signing big name diddy foreigners? Not a peep. Yorkeston at Dunfermline? Cannae' remember him giving a fcuk for what went on below SPL level.

Only St. Johnstone from the previous SPL 'mainstays' who tumbled down and couldnae' get back seem to have kept their mouth zipped and got on with concentrating on trying to build a decent team and fight their way back.

Just my opinion, but if any calls for league reconstruction eminate from the gobs of Pearse Flynn, John Yorkeston, or any other former SPL Big Time Charlie.....treat with extreme caution. I'm not saying we shouldn't have reconstruction, I'm just extremely sceptical about some of the motives behind it.

100% agree with you there Pozbaird.

Agree - only thing I would say is that as far as I'm aware, Yorkston hasn't said anything about the resurrected idea yet? Not to say that his track record in keeping his mouth shut is particularly good, but so far we haven't got involved in this discussion from what I've seen.

He must be on holiday.

Nah, maybe he's just passed up on his role as a bleating Division 1 gobshite, leaving Dave McKinnon at Dundee to take a wee turn while Pearse was out of the country hawking his Livvy mutton to Italian 'consortiums'.

The league structure at the moment is fine the only differences that should be made to the leagues are a play-off between 11th in the SPL and 2nd in SFL1; also a relegation spot in SFL3 which will see teams from the Highland League, EOS League and SOS League play eachother for a place in the SFL. Also the SPL finds sponsership reletivaly easily, why don't the SPL and SFL join together so that if someone wants to put money into the SPL part of it goes to the SFL, the same with television deals. This is all easier said than done, imo nothing will happen for a long time yet.

Though is that not pretty much the reason that the SPL broke away in the first place, so that the top clubs who attract the sponsorship and tv deals could keep it all for themselves and not spread the wealth with those less fortunate.

How can you have a Scottish Premier League 2? It's like saying Crawley Town are in the English Premier League 5.

As far as I'm aware part of the original agreement when the SPL came into existence was an annual payment to the SFL, so this already exists its just that some first division clubs don't want to share it with teams in the lower leagues.

League names lost their meaning when division 1 was no longer the top division..

Look at England, the 3rd division is called the 1st division