Changes to Scottish football?

Seeing as it's the international break, might as well get some discussions going.

Was thinking after reading the tv deal thread, what changes could be made to positively benefit Scottish football/top flight?

Generally I'd advocate that Celtic get to * out of dodge, as I think we've outgrown this poxy league and the shambles of a set up that it is. Doesn't look like that's gonna happen, so hypothetically how can it be fixed? The SFA have had chance after chance to do it, but won't.

Right away, I'd be changing the top flight from a 12 team to a 16 team league.

Do away with the abysmal split. It's an embarrassment that you can finish BELOW teams when you have more points than them.

Keep the relegation play-offs.

How else can one make the league more exciting?

I'd do away with getting a point for a score-less draw. 0-0 Draw gets both teams zero points. Should encourage attacking within the game.

Offer incentive bonuses for amount of goals scored. Let's say for example, 0.5 points added on for goal(s) scored. Even if a team is beaten, they can still gain points for attacking bonuses. Possibly adding in extra percentage of points if a team in the bottom half scores a goal(s) against a team in the top half.

Equally, penalties accrued for lack of attacking in your opponents defensive areas.

Teams losing a point if they don't fill out 70% of their stadium on matchdays - make them drop ticket prices to get people in the door.

VAR. Obviously VAr-rules aren't solely applicable to Scotland, but I'd be doing away with a free-reign for VAR calls. Each team would get x3 VAR call allowances per game - only to be initiated by each team's captain. Tennis-like calls.

Probably mayhem, but just spitballing. Feel free to add in ideas.

Probably lots more to suggest, but typing on the phone whilst bored oot ma skull at work.

 

I actually think the size of the league and split works..

Gives everyone something to play for, before and after the split.. European places and extra revenue for getting in to the top 6 or fighting relegation in the bottom..

The league needs 4 games v the Huns too, to secure/generate any TV interest..

I remember before when there were so many meaningless games before the Premier League attendances were pish..

The main issue is there are far too many clubs per head if population.. one team from Fife, Highlands and Borders, even Dundee would be the only answer in the long-term.. but too much history and tradition wrapped around the current clubs.. fair enough..

Don't see anything changing anytime soon..

 

Without actually changing the rules of football we could atleast start by having our own domestic tv deal where all of the money gets invested back into the league.

I’ve said it before but i’d happily Pay £20 per month if the money went towards making Scottish football better. Between just our fanbase and the huns, i’d be willing to bet we could increase the revenue from what Sky give us.

It’s a domino effect, once the league starts getting better more people will watch it.

I’d then just keep my firestick for any other league i want to watch rather than pay towards that.

 

You banged your head recently mate ?

To be fair, some food for thought there with some ideas. No points for 0-0 is an interesting one although I think it would end up just being unfair to lesser teams. Ross County are 0-0 at parkhead with 5 mins to play and they’ve got to go all out for a winner? That’ll likely end up with a predictable ending.

You’ve mentioned some interesting ideas but it’s pie in the sky stuff as we’re not going to alter the rules of football and play a different sport to everyone else in the world.

I also like the 12 teams and split in our league. It’s also done in Belgium I believe? Probably a few other places too. A 16 team league would just flood it with poor teams and make it boring imo. Imagine a string of league fixtures for us being St Johnstone, Ayr, Ross County, Hamilton, Falkirk. * that. The bottom couple of teams in the 12 struggle to compete as it is.

Your point about having 3 VAR appeals per team per match I fully agree with. I’ve been banging that drum for months in my friend circle.

 

No refs, players just sort it out between themselves. If there's a difference of opinion then it gets settled with a bare knuckle boxing match between the managers.

Winner by knockout. If neither gets knocked out within 30 seconds then the fans can start chucking them weapons.

 

A team coming 6th has to have far harder games than the team coming 7th, which is why it's likely the team coming 7th will get more points. A split takes place in numerous countries, Belgium and Austria have it I think and a few others. I'm okay with it to be honest.

I do think the points system should change in football.
4 points for a win
2 points for a score draw
1 point for a goalless draw
1 bonus point for scoring 3 or more if you win or draw the game, 2 or more if you lose. So if a team is 2 or 3 down, damage limitation doesn't happen and a teams kind of have to go for it.

Could be a bit complex as Rugby points system can be a bit convoluted and can change from competition to competition.

 

Assuming we don't leave Scottish football (I know that's not on the cards at this time nor would I advocate for it).

Then along with my TV streaming idea (in the other thread, basically go for a SPFL TV channel where all club TV channels are pulled in one location), I'd shake the league structure up quite a bit.

We are one of the best supported leagues in the world/Europe per head. But we have so many clubs that it's spread far too thin.

I'd make the 42 clubs in to a 2 league setup.
Top league of 20 and bottom league of 22.
3 up and 3 down. Can do your playoff for the 3rd spot and have two automatic up if you wish.
There would be minimum criteria to get entry to the top league, one of which would be to be a professional and show sustainable club.
Under soil heating.
Certainly safety criteria for supporters (segregation etc). I'd not put any limit on stadium size or anything, ideally clubs would slowly improve as finances increase anyway, it should be more natural than throwing in too many issues that would require long term development and hinder clubs from developing.

I'd scrap the league cup, it's somewhat meaningless beyond Celtic and Rangers (no laughing at the back) from claiming a treble now days.
I'd make the Scottish Cup more like the Copa del Rey in Spain. A two legged affair, start it in August/September and have every club enter it from round one.
If Celtic get paired with Spartans in the first round and we get put out, so be it.
Two legged all the way to the final, one off match to close the season around May 20th.

Open the following season with a "Alba Cup" type charity shield. League winners play the cup winners, or could even be league winner plays the championship winner that just got promoted. Gives the chance of a "treble" to remain on the table.
Played the week before the first league game.

If after a set number of seasons (example 5) not enough clubs can justify going professional and have a sustainable 22 league setup in the second tier, then we can slowly knock that league down to 29, 18 or 16 teams.
I'd hazard a guess, surely we can make 16 teams professional in the second tier of the game.
Clubs can take it upon themselves to merge if that helps.

Below the two main leagues, as you were for lowland/highland and regional leagues. Entry to the Professional leagues as normal.

Id bring back a reserve league of some form. I appreciate not every club of all 42 will manage that, but whatever clubs want to come in to it, open invite. Every season if that's 12 or 20 teams, so be it. Play in a basic home and away league setup.
If it got to the stage of more than 24 teams, make it two leagues with a reserve playoff final between the two league winners.

I'd bring back some fork of home grown policy. The European competitions means we need to have 4/8 for club/country grown, it could be as simple as following that model and making clubs need to have a registered squad count - England recently implemented it, also works in Germany (30 players?) and other leagues around Europe and the world at large.
If not that, then back to the old match day squad needs to have 5 homegrown or under 21 players called up.
A way that promotes and encourages clubs to develop younger talent and can't be ignored.

 

I'd like to hope, an increase in league size at the top, along with a much better and evenly already out TV deal would mean the list of clubs that would make up a perceived easy run of fixtures, would surely be able to then invest in better players as well.

It would be a slow process. Nothing here is ever gonna be an over night success and improve the game within one season, but 5-10 years of a good honest revamp, surely clubs would then be in a better position.

Imagine Falkirk, Ayr etc had 5-10m more a season than they do now.
Imagine Aberdeen and Hearts had 10-20m more than they do now.

The bigger clubs would make more in roads in Europe, helping the coefficient and becoming better overall. The "smaller" ones would also then be better than most Prem clubs currently are.

 

Don't think you would get away with half of them in a five aside league.

Also the 70% of stadium thing is farcical when in recent memory we had teams not getting promoted because they never had 10k stadium. Clubs like Gretna ground sharing ect trying to build a stadium that dwarfs the population of the town. Christ can fit Dingwall in County's stadiums.

 

I prefer the 12 teams with the split to be honest.

I’d rather play teams 4 times than play even more games against even more dross.

I think it’s made out as more of a problem than it actually is.

In my opinion, Scottish football is really close to be a quality smaller league. If you can get e.g. Aberdeen, Hibs and Hearts to sort their * out and be a bit competitive in Europe, the extra money there will start a snowball effect.

They do well in Europe, -> bit more money, better players -> better player sales -> perform better in Europe -> coefficient goes up, Europa league, more money -> start competing for second place, champions league money.

There’s no reason the likes of Aberdeen shouldn’t be competitive with many European teams they’re regularly pumped by. A bit extra cash can give them the edge to earn even more cash.

I wouldn’t be diluting anything down.

 

Yeah, to be honest they should be qualifying for ECL at least and get 9-12 points. Hibs should be embarrassed about how * they are and always have been.

 

The 0.5 point incentive for goals scored should not include any penalty scored.

 

Belgium has a play off I think to see who wins the league a top four play off would be nuts here


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Sky has been the worst thing for Scottish football. Relentlessly promoting the English leagues and paying them megabucks. Downplaying Scottish football and paying us a comparative pittance.

Means it's extremely difficult for Scottish teams to hang on to talented players, coaches and other club staff. When down the road they can earn a lot more.

With their relentless promotion of the leagues down south, they also caught the attention of so many Scots, and got them watching English games and supporting English teams. Sky have been sucking the lifeblood out of Scottish football for years.

They have directly caused the decline in quality of Scottish football. And that reduced quality of opposition has hurt our European aspirations as much as anything else. Our players have to go from playing weak opponents to the best teams in the world in the space of 3 or 4 days.

 

6.7b the epl is getting over the next four seasons for their TV deal. To show 270 matches across the two broadcasters, meaning all games outside of the Draconian 1960 rule of no televised games between 3-5 , will be on TV.

If we take the easy 8% population ratio for Scotland to England, that would mean we should be about 134m a season about 4 times more than they pay us currently.

Could you imagine what approx 100m more to this league would mean?!?

As for games shown, it would be 2 games a week as a minimum, as opposed to 1 a week or 2 if they can wangle it.

See if the to even just gave us a proper 5-10min an hour segment on their sky TV coverage, on SSN or 10min an hour on things like TalkSport to ACTUALLY talk about our product in a positive light, more folk would know what's going on and take an interest.
Of course doesn't mean suddenly a Hibs midfielder is good enough to play for Spurs or Chelsea, but the interest generated could earn them eyes from other clubs down south and abroad.
The positive spins and attention would slowly generate interest and better sponsors etc.


If only they'd pay us a fair crack.

 

If we returned to splitting gate receipts, the rest of the league would be much better off financially.

It does irritate me that Dundee United will sell 20,000 tickets for a cup final, and then 14,000 of them will go missing for their next home game. But somehow, Tannadice being half-empty every other week is the fault of a busload of Celtic fans from Lochee. However, we need to look at ways of spreading some of the wealth for the good of our game.

If we continue to win title after title for years to come, we will lose the next generation of Scottish fans, and the game here will become increasingly farcical.

I'm in favour of the above post that suggested ditching SKY and doing our own thing with TV.

We also need to get back to Scottish kids playing football and being free to express themselves without all that potential being drilled out of them in Primary 1. (Obviously, we need proper facilities, coaching, promotion of the game, but encourage a bit of individuality too.)

 

I'd be interested in exploring ideas around splitting money more evenly.
How that would work fully I'm not too sure.
I'd perhaps be more incline for a TV deal that is split evenly.
Even though we would clearly be the biggest pull at first, a more fair/even split of TV money could surely benefit the league as a whole and in tune us in the longer term.

 

Nah Belgium has 16 teams all play each other twice. Then splits into 3 leagues, Championship 6 teams, Europe play offs 6 teams and relegation 4 teams. You play each team in your league another 2 times. Winner of Europe play offs plays 4th in Championship for a spot in Europe. Stupidly your points are split in halved and rounded up at the split.

 

Jail corrupt officials.

Sell half bottles of Buckfast and Buckfast pies to enhance the match day experience.

Have wee safe rooms where people can safely take their drugs like cocaine and cannabis.

Get rid of wifi in the stadium shouldn’t even be looking at your phone when we’re playing.

Wee petting zoo thing for the weans in concourse of family section.

 

Ayr are going to get 5-10 million more a season than they do now? By making it a 16 teams league? That would never happen mate.