How do you solve a problem like the Scottish Premiership?

[kennie makevin]

47 minutes ago, BoJack said:

Big Ange to me, pal. 

 

I'm sensing a lot of pent up anger, calm down. 

Don't take up psychiatry if that's what you sense.  Mr Postegoclu is sitting with me right now and , just as I am not your pal, neither is he. A wee bit of decorum and respect, kind sir. It's what Big Ceaser and Wee Patsy would have wanted. Not to mention Willie Maley or 'Oor Chuckles ' , as I affectionately called him. 

[gannonball]

4 minutes ago, Sherrif John Bunnell said:

Lol at the prospect of Celtic going to the Bernabau and "having a go" at Madrid.

Benzema would score about 10 in the first half alone.

Well guess what we did exactly at at PSG  that  and scored in the first minute 

 

Spoiler

Then lost 7-1

 

[lubo_blaha]

Re the part in bold; what?! 

They certainly were laughable when United missed four penalties against St Mirren.

[Nowhereman]

19 hours ago, Dave Barton said:

American sports is more about the game than the team - "let's watch the ball game" could almost be any two teams in either foot/base/basket - ball - and doesn't have the fierce geographical/cultural/historical allegiances we have in Scottish football, nor does it have the anomaly of several teams in a limited population catchment area (there is only The Dallas Cowoys, The Denver Broncos.)

 

You might argue that the Bosman ruling has had a bigger impact on our game than economics.

 

I remember a time when transfer money funded Dumbarton - the McAdam bros., Ian Wallace, Murdo McLeod, Graeme Sharpe - and the team was a healthy mixture of old pros on the way down (Charlie Gallacher, Willie Wallace, Davie Wilson) and youngsters (see above) on the way up.

 

On basis of size The Old Firm rightly belong in a British league, but then the Edinburgh clubs, maybe Aberdeen, would assume the dominant roles and hoover up the the bulk of the tv and sponsorship money.

 

It's no' fair, right enough.

Yip and we paid £25,000 for Willie Wallace back then. Which is the equivalent of over £350,000 today. Astonishing

[Nowhereman]

3 hours ago, DUFC_ said:

Salary cap is a non-starter anyway, what would it even look like? Rangers and Celtic capped a 20k p/w? the rest pay 10 players with that money, more. 

Restructure is the only option now. The league is boring AF, long, overly complicated, rigged. The guy running it appears useless, how long did we not even have a sponsor in place, complete incompetence. Belgium population around the same size as ours, slightly bigger but similar structure in the two bigger teams, absolutely light years ahead of our game, 18 club top tier, no financial meltdown, loads of interest, loads of investment.

Too many big clubs left to rot so that a few outside the OF can achieve mediocrity. Relegation playoffs are laughable. 

 

You think our league is overly complicated and then suggest the Belgian league as something to aim for?

[Monkey Tennis]

6 hours ago, DUFC_ said:

Salary cap is a non-starter anyway, what would it even look like? Rangers and Celtic capped a 20k p/w? the rest pay 10 players with that money, more. 

Restructure is the only option now. The league is boring AF, long, overly complicated, rigged. The guy running it appears useless, how long did we not even have a sponsor in place, complete incompetence. Belgium population around the same size as ours, slightly bigger but similar structure in the two bigger teams, absolutely light years ahead of our game, 18 club top tier, no financial meltdown, loads of interest, loads of investment.

Too many big clubs left to rot so that a few outside the OF can achieve mediocrity. Relegation playoffs are laughable. 

 

Well this is pish in a slightly different way.

[Monkey Tennis]

7 hours ago, HailHailHayley said:

I understand that you want to create a fake competitiveness in the league at the expense of any hope of quality. Only in Scotland would the solution be to drag the top down & make everyone shite, instead of wanting ways for the bottom to improve & get closer to the top. 

Your plan would be the death of any kind of ambition, and I'm not just talking from a Celtic point of view.

Yes, this is just silly isn't it?

There would be nothing fake about attempts to ensure a more egalitarian and therefore competitive landscape.  It might however, dent your club's massive advantages and you therefore don't want it.

There's very little for us to discuss.  Massive injustice suits you and you want to keep it.  It's entirely that simple.  I find it genuinely baffling that you've apparently little regard for Tories.  The views you express on here would place you on the right wing, even of that crowd.

Your use of terms like "ambition" is laughable.

[DUFC_]

23 minutes ago, Monkey Tennis said:

Well this is pish in a slightly different way.

To be more clear I am not suggesting copying the Belgian league directly, much more that its an example of a larger league format that appears to allow growth outside of the big two. In regard to playoffs I should have specified, between divisions.

[Monkey Tennis]

11 minutes ago, DUFC_ said:

To be more clear I am not suggesting copying the Belgian league directly, much more that its an example of a larger league format that appears to allow growth outside of the big two. In regard to playoffs I should have specified, between divisions.

A bigger league isn't key to any radical change in the gross imbalance which disfigures our game.

I still don't know what you're objecting to in the play-offs.

[gannonball]

I don’t believe coming 4th out of 10 should allow you pop at promotion but the playoffs have almost certainly been the best thing out of the re-organisation. Tbh they should have been in years before they were.

Edited September 2, 2022 by gannonball

[VincentGuerin]

Play-offs are great. We should have more of them.

[Monkey Tennis]

48 minutes ago, gannonball said:

I don’t believe coming 4th out of 10 should allow you pop at promotion but the playoffs have almost certainly been the best thing out of the re-organisation. Tbh they should have been in years before they were.

They have rejuvenated things, but I basically agree.  Finishing 4th of 10 is essentially mid-table.  It probably shouldn't carry such a potential reward.  

I don't think there was too much wrong with 2 up; 2 down, but of course the SPL never even had that.

[Uncle Psychosis]

The current model is always going to end up with "the big boys" at the top. Thats what pyramid based systems do. Its what they're designed to do. The best teams end up at the top: and in professional sports the best funded teams will, on average, always end up beating the teams with less funds. 

Its happened everywhere now. Last season Man City's league record was better than Celtic's. Most leagues everywhere are dominated by the same old faces. Tinkering with league structures won't fix that: if it did then the same shit wouldn't be happening everywhere. 

The only way to fix it and have true competition would be a radical overhaul. Wage caps, draft systems, squad limits, etc . But I'd wager that 90% of "football people" would absolutely hate it, because thats not how football has traditionally worked. We basically want a purple unicorn: we want to maintain our traditional setups but somehow make them competitive top-to-bottom in a professional context. Those two aims seem to be contradictory to me. 

[gannonball]

17 minutes ago, Monkey Tennis said:

They have rejuvenated things, but I basically agree.  Finishing 4th of 10 is essentially mid-table.  It probably shouldn't carry such a potential reward.  

I don't think there was too much wrong with 2 up; 2 down, but of course the SPL never even had that.

Possibly contradicting myself by suggesting less games but I would have 2nd  v 3rd (one game with 2nd placed team having home advantage) then have winner versus 2nd bottom over 2 legs.

[Monkey Tennis]

8 hours ago, stu92 said:

Beyond trying harder and signing better (more expensive) players etc, how do we improve the bottom?

We just do, alright.

Where's your ambition, Man? 

[Granny Danger]

53 minutes ago, Monkey Tennis said:

They have rejuvenated things, but I basically agree.  Finishing 4th of 10 is essentially mid-table.  It probably shouldn't carry such a potential reward.  

I don't think there was too much wrong with 2 up; 2 down, but of course the SPL never even had that.

The play offs as presently constructed are a farce.  One up, one down, then second bottom versus second top in a one-off game at a neutral venue is the fairest option and one that doesn’t offer an advantage to the upper league team.

[HailHailHayley]

2 hours ago, Monkey Tennis said:

Yes, this is just silly isn't it?

There would be nothing fake about attempts to ensure a more egalitarian and therefore competitive landscape.  It might however, dent your club's massive advantages and you therefore don't want it.

There's very little for us to discuss.  Massive injustice suits you and you want to keep it.  It's entirely that simple.  I find it genuinely baffling that you've apparently little regard for Tories.  The views you express on here would place you on the right wing, even of that crowd.

Your use of terms like "ambition" is laughable.

Might take you more seriously if you weren't having a pop at Elgin on a different thread for their way of trying to get more fans in. Basically you want to live in a utopia where everyone does exactly what you want them to do & the outcome is exactly how you want it to be. Weird af tbh wi ye & you're acting like you're some kind of moral authority. GIFUY you deluded p***k.

And aye, entirely fake. You're idea of making things competitive is by telling Anthony Joshua to never use his right hand. Or Finn Russell to never kick. 

You should be embarrassed. Imagine your mindset being that the only way to compete is by restricting how good others can be. What a joke - tragic.

[Monkey Tennis]

1 hour ago, HailHailHayley said:

Might take you more seriously if you weren't having a pop at Elgin on a different thread for their way of trying to get more fans in. Basically you want to live in a utopia where everyone does exactly what you want them to do & the outcome is exactly how you want it to be. Weird af tbh wi ye & you're acting like you're some kind of moral authority. GIFUY you deluded p***k.

And aye, entirely fake. You're idea of making things competitive is by telling Anthony Joshua to never use his right hand. Or Finn Russell to never kick. 

You should be embarrassed. Imagine your mindset being that the only way to compete is by restricting how good others can be. What a joke - tragic.

Goodness me.

Some remarkable drivel in there, even by the standards you've already set.  Why do you keep comparing individual sports, where money doesn't purchase success to a team one where it demonstrably does?

I did enjoy the irony of you swearing at me about how I wish to dictate outcomes, when I'm in fact pressing for outcomes to be open and unpredictable, the exact opposite of your stance.

Why would wishing for things to be fairer than they are currently, as they were for most of football's history, equate to wanting only a utopia and being a deluded p***k?  

What an odd take.

Extraordinary stuff.

[VincentGuerin]

Mr Murray unlikely to be hired by The Daily Record or Sportsound any time soon.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/sep/02/celtic-rangers-old-firm-intrigue-cant-mask-troubling-broader-picture-scotland-premiership

[Monkey Tennis]

8 minutes ago, VincentGuerin said:

Mr Murray unlikely to be hired by The Daily Record or Sportsound any time soon.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/sep/02/celtic-rangers-old-firm-intrigue-cant-mask-troubling-broader-picture-scotland-premiership

A pretty good piece.

The deluded p***k!