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League reconstruction: Let's hear your view


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Thing is with League Reconstruction you want it to be relatively simple.

2 leagues of 16. Total 30 games. 3 up 3 down.

League cup 8 groups of 4 champions league style. Another guaranteed 6 games.

Total 36 games (18 home games for season tickets)

Keep Scottish Cup the same.

All teams below the top 2 leagues go into regional leagues.

Sorted!

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On ‎16‎/‎08‎/‎2019 at 12:35, ftk said:

Thing is with League Reconstruction you want it to be relatively simple.

2 leagues of 16. Total 30 games. 3 up 3 down.

League cup 8 groups of 4 champions league style. Another guaranteed 6 games.

Total 36 games (18 home games for season tickets)

Keep Scottish Cup the same.

All teams below the top 2 leagues go into regional leagues.

Sorted!

Thank f**k someone agrees.   no one outside of this hardly used thread on social media wants a highly convoluted format . f**k that.  

I am not overly conservative when it comes to football but I just don't like the idea of a team who has been mediocre all season ending up with 3 cup finals to win the league. or get into Europe or any other pish like that, I suspect that many who advocate such formats  simply want something to hamstring the old firm.  But they and they're dominance (mostly celtic these days)  is a symptom and not the cause of the issues in Scottish football and its going to take either a freak event like Leicster   or a bosman on steroids type ruling to change that.

2 leagues of 16.  2 up 2 down. play offs for the 3.4.5 & 14th for the final promotion / relagation  place.  bottom 10 sides GTF

8 groups of 4 for the league cup.  no bys for euro teams. group winners only progress to QF's   all teams seeded pots one to 4.  seeding based on previous seasons league position.  ie top 8  = pot 1 bottom = pot 2 etc.  gives mid table sides something to play for come the end of season.

 

Keep It Simple Stupid!

 

Edited by effeffsee_the2nd
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  • 2 weeks later...
On 16/08/2019 at 12:35, ftk said:

Thing is with League Reconstruction you want it to be relatively simple.

2 leagues of 16. Total 30 games. 3 up 3 down.

League cup 8 groups of 4 champions league style. Another guaranteed 6 games.

Total 36 games (18 home games for season tickets)

Keep Scottish Cup the same.

All teams below the top 2 leagues go into regional leagues.

Sorted!

 

 

On 19/08/2019 at 08:35, effeffsee_the2nd said:

Thank f**k someone agrees.   no one outside of this hardly used thread on social media wants a highly convoluted format . f**k that.  

I am not overly conservative when it comes to football but I just don't like the idea of a team who has been mediocre all season ending up with 3 cup finals to win the league. or get into Europe or any other pish like that, I suspect that many who advocate such formats  simply want something to hamstring the old firm.  But they and they're dominance (mostly celtic these days)  is a symptom and not the cause of the issues in Scottish football and its going to take either a freak event like Leicster   or a bosman on steroids type ruling to change that.

2 leagues of 16.  2 up 2 down. play offs for the 3.4.5 & 14th for the final promotion / relagation  place.  bottom 10 sides GTF

8 groups of 4 for the league cup.  no bys for euro teams. group winners only progress to QF's   all teams seeded pots one to 4.  seeding based on previous seasons league position.  ie top 8  = pot 1 bottom = pot 2 etc.  gives mid table sides something to play for come the end of season.

 

Keep It Simple Stupid!

 

 

Couple of things yes I agree and understand why asking for 2 x 16 leagues and the rest in local district.
I suppose after the two 16s leagues, (1st full time and 2nd division half maybe full time and rest part time), the rest of the teams in the other divisions would be more part time and long travel could make some teams struggle so leaving it local is a genuinely good idea.

The comment " But they and they're dominance (mostly celtic these days)  is a symptom and not the cause of the issues in Scottish football and its going to take either a freak event like Leicster   or a bosman on steroids type ruling to change that."
I've seen this quite regular on many forums about the Celtic, Rangers dominance that is harming and at least you say it isn't the full cause of the effect but what everyone forgets is that nearly every country has the same kind of Dominance with either 2 or 3 teams always winning everything.

Spain - Real Madrid, Bacelona,
Portugal - Porto, Benfica,
Holland - Ajax, Psv Eindhoven
Ukraine - Dynamo kyiv, Shakhtar Donesk
Norway - Rosenburg, Molde (recently)
Turkey - Galatasary, Fenerbache, Besiktas
France - Paris St Germain, Lyon
Germany - Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund

You get the idea as could go on and on, so to be honest that excuse from everyone is utter rubbish as every country is in the same boat, sorry most countries, large and small.

 

The comment of ''no bys for euro teams' is utter rubbish.
Why don't we just scrap the European ties then and not enter at all if your gonna try and shaft the teams who make anyways.

 

I will say the current regulation play off of the premier I hate and is more suited for the premier team, with the team who finishes 4th in the champion ship, plays the 3rd place team, then winners player the 2nd place team and then the winders of that plays the premier team. I keep thinking aby of those teams will be knackered or pick up injuries with the premier team all relaxed and ready for their turn.     I think it should be a straight two semi finals and a final for the play off, (Premier v 4th place and 3rd V 4th), like in the English league.

If you say district, its more like 'off the cuff remark' from yourself and others as you haven't given any view on the construction of the rest as if it aint that important but too many people it is important where they would go and now with the possibility of another 103 junior teams joining the seniors it has to be constructed right so that everything works well for years to come as there will be so many teams in the senior leagues.

 

but in general, I like some of the ideas 

 

Edited by Bestsinceslicebread
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  • 3 weeks later...

Following Chester Report (1968), a few of us predicted (very accurately) how Scottish football would decline in the absence of a `real pyramid` and `real competition` ... even blind people  can now see this to be the case. So ... making bigger leagues at the top is complete nonsense.  SFL re-acted to forecast decline in 1974 with 10-14-14 ... but now we don`t have 10 clubs who can compete in either of the top two divisions .. which is why they have to be reduced to eight... playing 4 times and once against each other for 36 games ..

Lower 26 clubs must go into `real` competition with Auchinleck, Formartine, Kelty, E.Kilbride, etc, etc ... and the overall number of clubs in Scotland has to be reduced to around 400 ... much bigger units ... who can earn more, have large memberships .... and COMPETE more ... but guess which clubs don`t want to face the real world ?

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20 hours ago, mick90 said:

Following Chester Report (1968), a few of us predicted (very accurately) how Scottish football would decline in the absence of a `real pyramid` and `real competition` ... even blind people  can now see this to be the case. So ... making bigger leagues at the top is complete nonsense.  SFL re-acted to forecast decline in 1974 with 10-14-14 ... but now we don`t have 10 clubs who can compete in either of the top two divisions .. which is why they have to be reduced to eight... playing 4 times and once against each other for 36 games ..

Lower 26 clubs must go into `real` competition with Auchinleck, Formartine, Kelty, E.Kilbride, etc, etc ... and the overall number of clubs in Scotland has to be reduced to around 400 ... much bigger units ... who can earn more, have large memberships .... and COMPETE more ... but guess which clubs don`t want to face the real world ?

The number of clubs in the top league has next to nothing to do with how competitive it is. "Competition" has been decreasing in most European top leagues for years now because financial and contractual rule changes have created a situation where the big and rich just get bigger and richer.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...
On ‎30‎/‎08‎/‎2019 at 22:05, Bestsinceslicebread said:

I will say the current regulation play off of the premier I hate and is more suited for the premier team, with the team who finishes 4th in the champion ship, plays the 3rd place team, then winners player the 2nd place team and then the winders of that plays the premier team. I keep thinking aby of those teams will be knackered or pick up injuries with the premier team all relaxed and ready for their turn.     I think it should be a straight two semi finals and a final for the play off, (Premier v 4th place and 3rd V 4th), like in the English league.

But there is a fairness to the current Premiership->Championship play-offs in that the Premiership team has played 38 league matches by the time they enter the play offs, whereas the Championship teams have only played 36.  So the team finishing second in the Championship, then playing home and away in the play off semis, also ends up having endured 38 'league' matches by the time of the play off final, which seems like fairness.  A one-off final at an appropriate-sized venue would be an improvement, though.  

The third- and fourth-placed teams, if they make it through, are at a disadvantage, but maybe they should be since they've not earned a better opportunity over the course of the season; it seems like the inclusion of 3rd & 4th is more about keeping the Championship interesting for supporters, without any great expectation of them being promoted.

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On ‎16‎/‎08‎/‎2019 at 12:35, ftk said:

Thing is with League Reconstruction you want it to be relatively simple.

2 leagues of 16. Total 30 games. 3 up 3 down.

League cup 8 groups of 4 champions league style. Another guaranteed 6 games.

Total 36 games (18 home games for season tickets)

Keep Scottish Cup the same.

All teams below the top 2 leagues go into regional leagues.

Sorted!

Sounds fine, but I'd worry about the league cup being too dull: I've always found the Champions' League group format to be too tedious with playing everyone both at home and away; seemingly our league cup used to be like that too; I much prefer the current league cup where teams just play each other once, yet with an even number of home and away matches to give fairness that way. 

Not sure if you could do it with a 32-team league cup though, so there may have to be invites from the regional leagues, such as the top team from each of the three regions (north, west, east), to make it up to 35 teams and 7 groups of 5.

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On ‎30‎/‎08‎/‎2019 at 22:05, Bestsinceslicebread said:

I will say the current regulation play off of the premier I hate and is more suited for the premier team, with the team who finishes 4th in the champion ship, plays the 3rd place team, then winners player the 2nd place team and then the winders of that plays the premier team. I keep thinking aby of those teams will be knackered or pick up injuries with the premier team all relaxed and ready for their turn.     I think it should be a straight two semi finals and a final for the play off, (Premier v 4th place and 3rd V 4th), like in the English league.

The other thing about promotion to our Premiership is that 4 out of 10, or 40%, of our Championship clubs have a chance at promotion or are promoted each season; if 40% of the English second tier were similarly involved, that'd be the top 9 or 10 teams with a chance at promotion/in their play offs. 

The question, then, is whether you think it'd be appropriate for 9th in a league of 24 (the English tier 2) to have the same chance at promotion at the team finishing in 3rd?  Probably not. 

So, whilst it's fine to have 4th in our Championship involved in the promotion issues, I wouldn't like to see them have a similar opportunity at promotion as the team finishing 2nd.

 

In terms of your comments about most top leagues being dominated by a couple of clubs, the idea in Scotland would be to increase the chances of a club outwith those that dominate; to me, one way to do so is to expand the top league in order that the best challengers face each other as little as possible.  

Since at least one of the challengers facing each other in a head-to-head match must drop points, the more head-to-heads between challengers you have, the more they drop points and fall behind the Old Firm.  So our current format, playing each challenger x4, actually precludes any non-Old Firm winner.

Would Leicester have won the English title if they'd had to play each of their rivals four times rather than two?   Would Atletico have won in Spain; would Dortmund ever have overcome Bayern? 

On ‎19‎/‎08‎/‎2019 at 08:35, effeffsee_the2nd said:

Thank f**k someone agrees.   no one outside of this hardly used thread on social media wants a highly convoluted format . f**k that.  

I am not overly conservative when it comes to football but I just don't like the idea of a team who has been mediocre all season ending up with 3 cup finals to win the league. or get into Europe or any other pish like that, I suspect that many who advocate such formats  simply want something to hamstring the old firm.  But they and they're dominance (mostly celtic these days)  is a symptom and not the cause of the issues in Scottish football and its going to take either a freak event like Leicster   or a bosman on steroids type ruling to change that.

2 leagues of 16.  2 up 2 down. play offs for the 3.4.5 & 14th for the final promotion / relagation  place.  bottom 10 sides GTF

8 groups of 4 for the league cup.  no bys for euro teams. group winners only progress to QF's   all teams seeded pots one to 4.  seeding based on previous seasons league position.  ie top 8  = pot 1 bottom = pot 2 etc.  gives mid table sides something to play for come the end of season.

Keep It Simple Stupid!

Nicely put.  Ahem.

The reason for 'convoluted' formats (such as the current Premiership format) is to accommodate 4x Old Firm matches for commercial revenues, yet have a slightly larger league, and yet keep the number of fixtures to a reasonable level (below 40, probably).

Your 'keep it simple' approach sounds fine to me, except the league cup would be dull and the league wouldn't give the requisite number of Old Firm matches/matches v the OF.

The game survived okay for a few years without the OF matches (other clubs' administrations were happening anyway) and I'd rather not have them, or would like to minimise them, but that doesn't seem to be the thinking at the top.  Simple options would be:

10 teams, playing x4 = 36 games each.

14 teams, playing x3 = 39 games each.

18 teams, playing x2 = 34 games each.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Regarding the pyramid...

...would I be right in thinking that the term 'regions' refers to fixed boundaries, as per the current junior (east/west/north) and senior (lowland/highland) divides;

...whereas the term 'conferences' refers to no fixed boundaries, as per the League Cup groups, so that whichever teams were at a given level/tier of the game in a given season would simply be divided according to who are the most north-easterly / south westerly x number of teams at that time;

...the point being that, just below the top couple of national divisions, there could easily be parallel (flexible) conferences rather than (fixed) regions in order to better accommodate the transition from regional to national leagues and vice versa.

My starting point for restructuring would be to expand to 3 national leagues of 14, with the bottom 14 giving way (and expanding) after 5 years or so to two conferences of 12 - one for the south-west, one for the north-east. 

In the conferences, the 24 teams would newly divided into 2 parallel divisions of12 each and every season, playing each of the other 24 teams once so that no cross-boundary derbies would be lost entirely, with teams subsequently playing those others in their own conference for a second time (34 games each, overall).  Teams would effectively being playing at a national level for some of the season, so there would be good preparation for the transition to the national leagues for promoted teams, but the majority of games would be within their own region and so would keep travel costs down and gate receipts (from more local away supports) up.

 

As an aside, I think pyramid play offs rather than direct promotion seem to provide an automatic stabiliser, in terms of balancing the opportunities given to the differing depth of quality in regional leagues; for example, it may seem unfair that a weaker Highland League has the same promotion opportunities each season as a stronger Lowland League, but I think that the play offs ensure that more teams from the stronger league will come through over the years, yet allow for the occasional Cove to make it through from the weaker region.

For this reason, I wouldn't mind seeing the junior west and east regions simply being given immediate access to the Lowland League play offs: over the years, the best teams from the strongest leagues will come through the play offs regardless of which league they actually enter the play offs from; now that Bonnyrigg have set the precedent of achieving everything they need to do on the pitch before being licenced, I see no barrier to the junior sides in the west and east winning their respective leagues, entering and winning the play offs, then gaining their licence, and so being promoted to the Lowland League.  

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4 hours ago, anonanist said:

Regarding the pyramid...

...would I be right in thinking that the term 'regions' refers to fixed boundaries, as per the current junior (east/west/north) and senior (lowland/highland) divides;

...whereas the term 'conferences' refers to no fixed boundaries, as per the League Cup groups, so that whichever teams were at a given level/tier of the game in a given season would simply be divided according to who are the most north-easterly / south westerly x number of teams at that time;

...the point being that, just below the top couple of national divisions, there could easily be parallel (flexible) conferences rather than (fixed) regions in order to better accommodate the transition from regional to national leagues and vice versa.

My starting point for restructuring would be to expand to 3 national leagues of 14, with the bottom 14 giving way (and expanding) after 5 years or so to two conferences of 12 - one for the south-west, one for the north-east. 

In the conferences, the 24 teams would newly divided into 2 parallel divisions of12 each and every season, playing each of the other 24 teams once so that no cross-boundary derbies would be lost entirely, with teams subsequently playing those others in their own conference for a second time (34 games each, overall).  Teams would effectively being playing at a national level for some of the season, so there would be good preparation for the transition to the national leagues for promoted teams, but the majority of games would be within their own region and so would keep travel costs down and gate receipts (from more local away supports) up.

Sounds terrible tbh

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15 hours ago, anonanist said:

Regarding the pyramid...

...would I be right in thinking that the term 'regions' refers to fixed boundaries, as per the current junior (east/west/north) and senior (lowland/highland) divides;

...whereas the term 'conferences' refers to no fixed boundaries, as per the League Cup groups, so that whichever teams were at a given level/tier of the game in a given season would simply be divided according to who are the most north-easterly / south westerly x number of teams at that time;

...the point being that, just below the top couple of national divisions, there could easily be parallel (flexible) conferences rather than (fixed) regions in order to better accommodate the transition from regional to national leagues and vice versa.

My starting point for restructuring would be to expand to 3 national leagues of 14, with the bottom 14 giving way (and expanding) after 5 years or so to two conferences of 12 - one for the south-west, one for the north-east. 

In the conferences, the 24 teams would newly divided into 2 parallel divisions of12 each and every season, playing each of the other 24 teams once so that no cross-boundary derbies would be lost entirely, with teams subsequently playing those others in their own conference for a second time (34 games each, overall).  Teams would effectively being playing at a national level for some of the season, so there would be good preparation for the transition to the national leagues for promoted teams, but the majority of games would be within their own region and so would keep travel costs down and gate receipts (from more local away supports) up.

 

As an aside, I think pyramid play offs rather than direct promotion seem to provide an automatic stabiliser, in terms of balancing the opportunities given to the differing depth of quality in regional leagues; for example, it may seem unfair that a weaker Highland League has the same promotion opportunities each season as a stronger Lowland League, but I think that the play offs ensure that more teams from the stronger league will come through over the years, yet allow for the occasional Cove to make it through from the weaker region.

For this reason, I wouldn't mind seeing the junior west and east regions simply being given immediate access to the Lowland League play offs: over the years, the best teams from the strongest leagues will come through the play offs regardless of which league they actually enter the play offs from; now that Bonnyrigg have set the precedent of achieving everything they need to do on the pitch before being licenced, I see no barrier to the junior sides in the west and east winning their respective leagues, entering and winning the play offs, then gaining their licence, and so being promoted to the Lowland League.  

I like it, but I the supporters from the Championship to League 2 teams seem to be happy with the current setup of 10 teams playing 4 times per season... don’t understand it myself.

I’d maybe go for 2 top leagues of 12 with a split like the current Premiership with tier 3 being 2 conference’s of 12 played out like you say with a 34 game season, followed by regions with 14/16 team top leagues playing 26/30 games finishing earlier and major playoffs to determine promotion/relegation between the regions and national conferences...

Time to reinstall that Excel app I had... :whistle

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On 02/11/2019 at 02:07, Spyro said:

I like it, but I the supporters from the Championship to League 2 teams seem to be happy with the current setup of 10 teams playing 4 times per season... don’t understand it myself.

I’d maybe go for 2 top leagues of 12 with a split like the current Premiership with tier 3 being 2 conference’s of 12 played out like you say with a 34 game season, followed by regions with 14/16 team top leagues playing 26/30 games finishing earlier and major playoffs to determine promotion/relegation between the regions and national conferences...

Time to reinstall that Excel app I had... :whistle

I don't think there's a consensus of support for 10 team leagues.

I think people are generally against regionalisation within the current SPFL. And I'm pretty sure people would not be up for conference style leagues.

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On 09/11/2019 at 10:44, Snafu said:

I wouldn't touch the current league set up in the SPFL but below may I suggest a 5th tier of three divisions, taking a leaf out of the Juniors set up. 5th tier would have the Highland League (North), split the Lowland league at the traditional Juniors boundary to create a Lowland West and a Lowland East, this might address a potential bottleneck of clubs in the Lowland League in future years as the stronger ex Juniors work their way to under the 4th tier and mix with the stronger current Lowland League clubs. There's going to be a large overlap between clubs at the top of the Lowland League and the Scottish League 2 clubs.

Of course this would depend on in the first few years that there are enough clubs to compete in the Lowland West as any new entries to the pyramid would naturally have to earn their place. It would be a good incentive for clubs currently in the West Juniors to join and have a fair shot at reaching their potential. The current boundary between the Highland and Lowland League would be moved north and clubs from Perthshire and Angus could compete in the Lowland East League setup.

To decide who goes up to the SPFL there would be playoffs with winners of the three 5 tier leagues and the bottom team from the SPFL compete in a two legged knockout semi final with a two legged final. Who plays who in the semi final would be drawn.

This isn't a set up for right now but in years to come it might be an option.

Eventually I would like to see a larger 4th tier (16 clubs) with automatic promotion and relegation between Scottish League 2 and the Regionals, but that's for another time.

For me, that's the ideal set up for tier 5. As you say, until an automatic spot is opened up, 4 team play-offs work. It's not ideal for an automatic relegation scenario but that's a bridge that could be crossed.

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  • 3 months later...
On 28/06/2018 at 11:54, Shugs said:

Premier League - 12 teams

Championship - 10 teams

League 1 (North) - 10 teams 

League 2 (South) - 10 teams 

*Last placed teams in League 1 North & South playoff against each other then against the team who won the Lowland/Highland League playoff. 

Jeez,at last someone agrees with me  !

Except ....make the Championship bigger to allow for two leagues promoting into it .

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On 25/09/2019 at 17:47, Funky Nosejob said:

French FA decide to scrap their League Cup competition from next year. 

http://www.insideworldfootball.com/2019/09/19/french-drop-league-cup-ease-pressure-calendar/

If Scotland did likewise, would this offer better options for league reconstruction?

Yes,get rid of the League. Cup.

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10 hours ago, Doonhamer1969 said:

Jeez,at last someone agrees with me  !

Except ....make the Championship bigger to allow for two leagues promoting into it .

Why on earth does merging The bottom two leagues and regionalising them make sense? All the clubs have shown they can easily play nationally. Most of our clubs exist in a narrow belt, at most a couple of hours apart, you're not going to save much in the way of travel time over a season. I see no advantage to regionalising at this level in this country, other than to satisfy some weird spreadsheet fantasy.

10 hours ago, Doonhamer1969 said:

Yes,get rid of the League. Cup.

Why? It's another national cup to win. You can argue about its structure and I was dubious about the groups initially, but the games are far better attended than friendlies at that time of the season.

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Jeez,at last someone agrees with me  !
Except ....make the Championship bigger to allow for two leagues promoting into it .
How would that help? If you look at the current two divisions, there are 6 clubs you would definitely say are "North" - Cove, Peterhead, Elgin, Forfar, Brechin and Montrose. There are 2 clubs you would say are definitely "South" - Annan and Stranraer. The other 12 clubs are spread across the Central Belt in two distinct clusters, 5 in the Glasgow and old Strathclyde area - Dumbarton, Queen's Park, Airdrie, Albion Rovers and Clyde - and 7 in the Forth Valley/Fife area - Edinburgh City, East Fife, Cowdenbeath, Raith Rovers, Falkirk, Stenhousemuir and Stirling Albion. So for whichever teams gets moved to the North League, their travelling is going to go up and you run the risk of actually not having local derbies rather than having more of them. You will also have by nature unbalanced Leagues (you could have Raith, Falkirk, Montrose and East Fife for instance in the North League, which is the top 4 in the current League One, with only really Airdrie and maybe Dumbarton in a South League who would be good additions to the league above). If you have one up automatically from each league it isn't very fair due to this but if you have a play off between champions it doesn't seem right that a champion club can win a league and not get promoted. On top of all that, if you ask fans and committees of lower League clubs, most of them will say that they are happy playing in a national league. So why change?
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7 hours ago, Cyclizine said:

Why on earth does merging The bottom two leagues and regionalising them make sense? All the clubs have shown they can easily play nationally. Most of our clubs exist in a narrow belt, at most a couple of hours apart, you're not going to save much in the way of travel time over a season. I see no advantage to regionalising at this level in this country, other than to satisfy some weird spreadsheet fantasy.

Why? It's another national cup to win. You can argue about its structure and I was dubious about the groups initially, but the games are far better attended than friendlies at that time of the season.

England...100+ full time teams, 5 national leagues.

Scotland 22 full time clubs, 4 national leagues.

Doesn't make sense.

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5 hours ago, Salvo Montalbano said:
17 hours ago, Doonhamer1969 said:
Jeez,at last someone agrees with me  !
Except ....make the Championship bigger to allow for two leagues promoting into it .

How would that help? If you look at the current two divisions, there are 6 clubs you would definitely say are "North" - Cove, Peterhead, Elgin, Forfar, Brechin and Montrose. There are 2 clubs you would say are definitely "South" - Annan and Stranraer. The other 12 clubs are spread across the Central Belt in two distinct clusters, 5 in the Glasgow and old Strathclyde area - Dumbarton, Queen's Park, Airdrie, Albion Rovers and Clyde - and 7 in the Forth Valley/Fife area - Edinburgh City, East Fife, Cowdenbeath, Raith Rovers, Falkirk, Stenhousemuir and Stirling Albion. So for whichever teams gets moved to the North League, their travelling is going to go up and you run the risk of actually not having local derbies rather than having more of them. You will also have by nature unbalanced Leagues (you could have Raith, Falkirk, Montrose and East Fife for instance in the North League, which is the top 4 in the current League One, with only really Airdrie and maybe Dumbarton in a South League who would be good additions to the league above). If you have one up automatically from each league it isn't very fair due to this but if you have a play off between champions it doesn't seem right that a champion club can win a league and not get promoted. On top of all that, if you ask fans and committees of lower League clubs, most of them will say that they are happy playing in a national league. So why change?

Scotland isnt a big enough country ,, not enough population, not enough full time teams for 4 national leagues.

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