Scottish Football Needs a Bigger Top League

St Mirren and Ross County have today ended hopes for the setting up of a 12-12-18 structure and a single governing body for Scottish football.

The ending of reconstruction hopes for the moment has been met with widespread dismay and it looks as though there could be a period of recriminations to follow, with Aberdeen and Hearts criticising St Mirren in particular, while Scotland’s newest club, Rangers, appear to be very happy with the day’s news.

Personally, I am glad that the particular structure proposed will not now be happening.

It involved a quite ridiculous split of the top two divisions into three groups of eight, and would have been a dog’s dinner of a set up.

The rationale behind it was to ensure “meaningful” games throughout the season, which it was hoped would attract more television money and interest to the Scottish game.

Fundamentally though, the problem with Scottish football is not that there are too many meaningless games, or that the league is not competitive enough.

The problem Scottish football faces is a chronic lack of quality. Jock Stein famously said that a 100m race between a group of pensioners would be competitive, but it would not be fast.

Reconstruction is badly needed, but the aim of that reconstruction should not be to make the game more competitive, or more meaningful, or attract more money.

The aim of reconstruction must be to improve the quality of Scottish football. That can only be done by improving the quality of player we produce.

The first thing that must happen is the removal of the split.

The league split supposedly leads to a more exciting end to the season, with the top teams playing off for the title and the bottom half fighting to avoid relegation.

This is not always achieved because frequently (as this year) there is very little doubt where the title is heading by the end of Matchday 33. Barring an incredible end of season collapse, it is only a matter of time before Celtic clinches the title. This year there will be an exciting race to decide which Scottish team will bomb out of the Champions League qualifiers in the first round in early July.

Whenever there is a close race for the title, the split makes the league fundamentally unfair, as the top two clubs do not play an identical set of fixtures and “the computer” can influence the outcome.

For example, in season 2008-09, the SPL was able to dictate that the now-defunct Rangers FC would play a third home fixture against Hearts. The principle behind this was that Hearts needed to play three away matches to balance their home and away quota and they apparently could not be expected to visit Easter Road for a third away match against Hibernian.

As a result, Rangers avoided a potentially very difficult second visit to Tynecastle in the run-in.

If I was a Hearts fan, looking at their records in matches at Easter Road and Ibrox, I would have welcomed a third visit to Easter Road .

I am certain a fan of the now-defunct Rangers FC could point to similar instances where Celtic were given a favourable fixture in a tight race in order to balance the home and away split of matches. It would merely serve to further highlight the unfairness inherent in a system involving splits and teams in the same league playing a different set of fixtures.

The split can also influence which teams finish in the top six. For example, Hearts and Dundee United are two fairly evenly matched sides, but if Hearts play 17 home matches before the split while United have 16, it would be cold comfort to United to have a third home match after the split if they were consigned to the bottom half by a defeat at Tynecastle.

What we need then, is a return to the type of league set-up almost every other league around the world uses, where everyone plays an identical set of fixtures.

So far so good, but that only addresses the principle of fairness lost in the present set-up. How do we improve the quality of the product through reconstruction?

Most clubs demand a minimum of 18-19 revenue-generating home matches per season, but it is accepted that in a 12 team league, 44 matches is too many. We can reduce the number of teams in the league, which restricts the “riches,” of the SPL to the detriment of too many SFL teams, or we can expand the league to a level where each side plays each other once home and away.

It is the received wisdom that there are not enough reasonably-sized clubs in Scotland to make this feasible.

That in my opinion is where we have gone wrong.

Of course in a top league of 16-18 clubs there will be uncompetitive matches, but that is the case in every league in the world. I would argue that we actually NEED uncompetitive matches in a season in order to develop a higher quality of player.

I would like to see a top league of 16 teams, who play each other once home and away, giving a league season of 30 matches.

This obviously produces a fixture short-fall and most clubs would be unhappy to be guaranteed only 15 home games a season.

To make this up, I would re-introduce the group stages of the League Cup, to be played early in the season, on Saturday afternoons. Groups of four teams, playing each other once home and away would give each side a guaranteed 18 home games per season and at least 36 games altogether.

To encourage youth development, I would introduce a rule that there must be a minimum number of U21 players on the pitch in League Cup matches, possibly as many as four. Clubs would need at least seven U21 players in their League Cup squads in order to ensure they could meet this rule.

Clubs would keep the home gate receipts for League Cup matches, and share the gate in the knock-out rounds.

A league of 16 would mean clubs in the middle of the league would be relatively safe from relegation and could therefore take time to develop young players free from the cut-throat pressures inherent in a 10 or 12 club league.

With only two matches against Celtic (and maybe one day a strong Sevco Franchise team), a club such as Motherwell would be more likely to challenge for the title.

Motherwell are perfectly capable of beating Celtic on their own ground on any given day, but over the course of a season, they can realistically expect to take only 3-4 points out of 12 from Celtic, while dropping 7-9 points over the four matches.

If a strong Sevco Franchise team is added to this equation, Motherwell might expect to take 4-6 points from a possible 24 in the current set-up, whilst dropping up to 18.

Now if Motherwell only had to play Celtic once home and away, they might realistically expect to take 1 or 3 points from 6, which could deny Celtic 2-3 points.

In the current set-up, Celtic has four chances to kill off a title challenge from anyone else. With only two chances, and fewer points to take away from them, I would argue that a Motherwell , Dundee United or Hearts team that put together a winning run would pose far more of a challenge to Celtic than they currently do.

The other problem in my opinion is an uncontroversial one – Scotland has too many professional teams.

The population of Scotland is roughly a tenth that of England, yet we have only just less than half the number of clubs in their league set-up.

More controversial would be the suggestion that there needs to be club mergers in order to create bigger clubs (assuming the fans of each club transfer their support to the new clubs).

I realise that this would involve fierce local rivals joining forces, and may be extremely unpopular for some, but it has already been successfully done in Inverness.

Inverness Thistle and Inverness Caledonian successfully merged in the 1990’s and the newly-formed Inverness Caledonian Thistle has gone from the Highland League to the top 6 of the SPL in little more than a decade.

The only clubs I would definitely consider “big enough” to stand on their own are Celtic, Hibernian, Hearts, Aberdeen and, assuming they last that long, the Sevco Franchise. A case might be made for the two Dundee clubs as well.

It would be a mistake to merge too many clubs to the point where there were only a dozen or so clubs in the whole country, but ideally, Scottish football should aim to have a maximum of 34 clubs (achieved through mergers) in the senior set up, with two leagues of 16 and 18.

I would also advocate opening up the trapdoor on Division 2 and providing the opportunity for a Junior club to enter the senior ranks every season.

As I started off by saying, improving the quality of the game in Scotland is far more important than chasing money from the TV companies.

There is no pot of gold within reach for Scottish clubs to buy in high quality players. We need to produce our own.

To do that much more is needed than a re-shuffle of the league set-up. There are deep-seated problems in Scottish society which prevent the production of the next Jimmy Johnstone or Kenny Dalglish. These problems cannot be dealt with by the SFA alone.

But we can make the senior league set-up a place more conducive to the development of young players. That means an environment where managers can blood youngsters knowing that it won’t necessarily cost them their job if it all goes wrong.

It means an environment where not every club is in a relegation dogfight and can develop young players in a relatively pressure-free setting.

It means a league where there are uncompetitive matches throughout the season, because competitive does not necessarily equal high quality.

Athletics fans would not turn out in numbers to watch a race between eight sprinters who will all finish within 1/10^th of a second of each other, if it will take all of them 12 seconds.

But add in one Usain Bolt and fans will turn out in large numbers to see that one sprinter finish the race in 9.5 seconds.

To continue the analogy, football fans will not turn out in large numbers to watch a league of 12 teams who will finish the season with just 10 points separating top from bottom and the top 3 separated by just two points if the football is rubbish.

But they WOULD turn out in large numbers to watch a league of 16 if it contains four or five excellent teams, even if the top two finish 20 points ahead of everyone else.

I am not naïve enough to think that my idea will be adopted by the governing bodies any time soon, but I despair at the deckchair shuffling they continually advocate in the misguided pursuit of money and competitiveness.