SPFL Review

[craigkillie]

What the f**k are we paying him circa £400k for then?

To be a professional punching bag so that people like you blame him rather than their own club when something unpopular happens.

[Dons_1988]

2 minutes ago, craigkillie said:

57 minutes ago, Alert Mongoose said:

What the f**k are we paying him circa £400k for then?

To be a professional punching bag so that people like you blame him rather than their own club when something unpopular happens.

Aye, like in 2012 when clubs wanted us to believe it was just him that desperately wanted to keep rangers in the league. 

[Alert Mongoose]

38 minutes ago, craigkillie said:

1 hour ago, Alert Mongoose said:

What the f**k are we paying him circa £400k for then?

To be a professional punching bag so that people like you blame him rather than their own club when something unpopular happens.

Where have I blamed him for anything?  I think you could recruit someone to fill the role of scapegoat for half that.

[Lex]

Change the name back to the SPL. At least then we will be saved the smug tedium of pundits/players/coaches being corrected when they call it the wrong thing. The SPFL Premiership just isn’t as catchy.

[Les Cabbage]

1 hour ago, Monkey Tennis said:

Less - Fewer - Fewer

 

 

This is why fans deserve no voice.

Absolutely shocked to see a poster such as yourself getting furious over nothing

[capt_oats]

3 hours ago, Alert Mongoose said:

What the f**k are we paying him circa £400k for then?

I'm not suggesting he's value for money but it seems clear to me that his role is to administer the game per the rules and articles of association along with whatever is mandated by the members (the clubs) while negotiating whatever commercial deals he's able to as best he can and also acting as the punchbag that @craigkillie and @Dons_1988 describe.

If you look at that £400k in context, the Barclays were paying their chief exec more than double that (before bonuses/incentives) in 1999.

If the clubs want someone whose job it is to attract investment and/or develop and grow the "brand" then it's on the clubs as stakeholders to make that clear and look to either create a role that prioritises commercial activity or make it a priority for the chief executive.

Ultimately that requires investment since the way the SPFL is set up redistributes cash back to the members. As I said though, part of the problem is that you have a complete disconnect between wants/needs through the league from top to bottom.

Other than potentially generating more cash for the league as a whole will any of the concerns of Aberdeen, Dundee, Hibs, Hearts or United be relevant to Albion Rovers, Cowdenbeath or East Fife? I'd guess...probably not.

As I say, I'm pretty cynical about the motivation behind these specific 5 clubs pushing for a review however that's not to say a review isn't needed.

It's a question of what they're actually trying to achieve with it though.

Edited September 17, 2021 by capt_oats

[Theyellowbox]

3 hours ago, craigkillie said:

4 hours ago, Alert Mongoose said:

What the f**k are we paying him circa £400k for then?

To be a professional punching bag so that people like you blame him rather than their own club when something unpopular happens.

The thing is, these guys who are employed to be the professional punchng bag tend to only last a few years for that very reason. Combination of their fed upness of being one and the need for fresh faces usually means that.

In Doncasters case, he doesn't either seem to understand that or the clubs seem quite happy to keep him there to continue to deflect from them.

For Doncaster, because has been there for so long, he now had baggage. When he does go, many will blame a lot of things on him, rightly in some cases and probably unfair on others, but a guy in his position will be well aware that will be the case.

 

[craigkillie]

He probably likes football, likes the game up here and is happy to keep being paid well to be involved in it (with the associated perks) even if he knows a load of folk hate his guts.

[Guest Flash]

4 hours ago, Monkey Tennis said:

Less - Fewer - Fewer

This is why fans deserve no voice.

There was an article by a language expert in the Times a couple of years back that said there is nothing wrong with saying less when talking about countable nouns. He said if you can say more of something, like more fans, you can also say less fans.
This article in wiki suggests the “rule” was made in 1770 by George Baker but from his writing it appeared to be a suggestion and a personal preference rather than a rule. I think the Times article referred to the same guy and suggested he wasn’t qualified to make rules about language anyway, whether he intended to or not. However, I can’t remember the detail of the Times article, just that it was making the point that it is ok to use less when counting things.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fewer_versus_less

There is another wee article about Baker’s invention of the rule here.

https://www.arrantpedantry.com/2008/12/23/less-and-fewer/

[Aim Here]

5 hours ago, Monkey Tennis said:

Less - Fewer - Fewer

 

 

This is why fans deserve no voice.

No. That less/fewer rule is not any kind of grammatical rule in English as any linguist understands it. Like the rule about splitting infinitives, it's an arbitrary construction imposed on language by half-educated twerps because it makes them feel they're clever to 'know' something surprising that they can then inflict on other people.

The fact that you're using this fake grammatical distinction to cast aspersions on football fans in general does give credence that this is just you using this stupid fake 'rule' to assert your own supposed superiority on others. Whatever makes you feel better about yourself, I suppose.

Language operates by consensus, not diktat by authority. Grammatical rules occur naturally between groups of speakers and the main linguistic test of whether a rule exists in a given spoken language or dialect is to feed sample utterances to one or more native speakers and ask them if it sounds right, or natural or understandable. Basically, if you ever find yourself 'correcting' a native speaker on their own language and informing them of rules that they never knew existed, you're going to be dead wrong. (Written language in standard English has cohered around a more rigid set of spelling conventions but that's not really relevant to the word choice issue we're talking about).

And in this particular case, etymology confirms it. 'Less' has apparently been a perfectly good synonym for 'fewer' since old English -  long before people were speaking and writing English in a form that you and I would understand it, and it's even considered a synonym in the proto-English Germanic languages that gave birth to English.

Edited September 17, 2021 by Aim Here

[DiegoDiego]

Basically, if you ever find yourself 'correcting' a native speaker on their own language and informing them of rules that they never knew existed, you're going to be dead wrong.

Completely disagree with this. The majority of folk have no idea about most of the rules of English. They barely understand the nomenclature. Our understanding of the language we use is pathetic.

[Aim Here]

14 minutes ago, DiegoDiego said:

Completely disagree with this. The majority of folk have no idea about most of the rules of English. They barely understand the nomenclature. Our understanding of the language we use is pathetic.

The majority of people couldn't tell you what the rules are, sure - which is what allows grammarians to get away with the shit they do.

Once people are past learning the language as children, they do instinctively know and abide by the grammar of their native language, though, and it's an effort of will to break the rules. If you're 'correcting' them, you're either inflicting your own language or dialect on someone who isn't speaking it, or, worse, inflicting arbitrary restrictions that don't even correspond to your own language (as is the case here).

Edited September 17, 2021 by Aim Here

[DiegoDiego]

"Inflicting". You do realise that correcting people can actually be a good thing and many folk ask for it? There's an entire industry around it.

[Aim Here]

8 minutes ago, DiegoDiego said:

"Inflicting". You do realise that correcting people can actually be a good thing and many folk ask for it? There's an entire industry around it.

There's no such thing as 'correcting' the grammar of native speakers in their own dialect. Either you're talking about people choosing to learn some other variant of the language, such as the prestige dialect, through the likes of elocution lessons, or the 'correcting' you're talking about is very much inflicting your choice of dialect, or nonsensical grammatical restrictions, on someone else.

Edited September 17, 2021 by Aim Here

[Sergeant Wilson]

6 hours ago, Alert Mongoose said:

What the f**k are we paying him circa £400k for then?

To take the flack.

[Insert Amusing Pseudonym]

18 minutes ago, Aim Here said:

There's no such thing as 'correcting' the grammar of native speakers in their own dialect. Either you're talking about people choosing to learn some other variant of the language, such as the prestige dialect, through the likes of elocution lessons, or the 'correcting' you're talking about is very much inflicting your choice of dialect, or nonsensical grammatical restrictions, on someone else.

I'm still allowed to punch people for using should of though

[DiegoDiego]

There's no such thing as 'correcting' the grammar of native speakers in their own dialect. Either you're talking about people choosing to learn some other variant of the language, such as the prestige dialect, through the likes of elocution lessons, or the 'correcting' you're talking about is very much inflicting your choice of dialect, or nonsensical grammatical restrictions, on someone else.

You weren't taking about dialect though, you were on about English when I disagreed with you. Then you weasled your way out of it by shifting the goalposts.

It's very important for a large number of people to communicate clearly, that's why English is taught at school. According to your viewpoint as I understand it, everyone in Scotland is at least bilingual and correcting them on their use of one of those languages is somehow "inflicting" upon them rather than helping them.

At my work we often communicate with those who have learnt English as adults. My boss has on occasion had to correct our grammar or word use. I don't see how that's in any way worse than a site manager correcting a calculation on a blueprint. He's certainly not inflicting anything upon us by helping us with our job.

[Dons_1988]

As the masses realise nothing will come of this for 6 months, attention turns to linguistic intricacies and nuances. 

[ropy]

15 minutes ago, Insert Amusing Pseudonym said:

I'm still allowed to punch people for using should of though

Goes without saying 

[Dons_1988]

25 minutes ago, Insert Amusing Pseudonym said:

I'm still allowed to punch people for using should of though

If you want to punch Michael Stewart just do it