| Product: |
Scottish Premier League in General |
| Date: |
15/05/02 (73 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: More competitve competition, good for the national side
Disadvantages: Smaller clubs may well go under
Scottish football will be better off all round if the Old Firm pack up and play somewhere else. It'll be good for them and in the long run good for the Scottish game.
The Glasgow giants need competitive football all season long if they're ever going to make any great impact on the European Stage, and they certainly aren't getting that at the moment, with it being a two horse race for the SPL title.
Meanwhile the remaining clubs need to be released from their unrealistic attempts to keep pace with the Old Firm. It's never going to happen, the other 10 will never have the financial resources to match them. What Rangers and Celtic pay players for a signing on fee, most other clubs have to be content with as a transfer fee, there is that big a gulf.
Without the Old Firm, the SPL or whatever it becomes will be a far more competitive league. Crowds are likely to swell for every game (offsetting the missing crowds for Old Firm games). Why will crowds go up? simply because fans will know that their team has a realistic chance of winning silverware. You just have to look at Hibs a couple of seasons ago when they were in the First Division. They were actually getting bigger crowds than when they'd been in the Premier Divison, this continued to be the case. When they were promoted having won the league crowd sizes fell away again, despite a good season.
Obviously this won't happen overnight, there will no doubt be a "transition" period when quality drops, but without the resources to try and buy as many second rate foreign players clubs will be in a position where they will have to rely on their youth policies and bring Scottsih players up through the ranks. You only have to look at Hearts who have had a turbulent time in the past season or two. It became obvious some time ago that Hearts were paying too much to their players, outgoings were far exceeding income. What have they done? well they've trimm
ed the squad size and are bringing more and more youth players in to the first team squad.
This can only in turn help the Scottish national team. We need more players coming through the ranks if the national team is ever going to improve.If you take a look at recent Scottsih squads you can count the Old Firm players on one hand. Sure we have promising players, but as soon as they have a good season they are snapped up by Rangers or Celtic and are rarely seen again until they make a move to the English Nationwide league. Paul Ritchie and Kenny Miller both being good examples. Why do Rangers and Celtic do this, well wouldn't you take away your competitors best assets if you could??
Some clubs will go under, but is that necessarily a bad thing? Do we really need 42 teams in the Scottish leagues? It may be time for clubs to merge, Inverness Caley have shown it can work.
However it looks as if the FA have stopped the prospect of The Old Firm joinging the Nationwide league, so what does the future hold for the Scottish game? Is it back to the much talked about Atlantic League for the Old firm? They certainly need to go somewhere because if the other ten clubs in the SPL stick to their guns and resign from the league who will they play every week? Each other?
For the scottish game as a whole clubs need to invest in youth football, bring decent scottish players on instead of signing over priced foreign equivalents. Teams like Hearts, Aberdeen and Dundee Utd have all started to do this and are now begining to see the benefits.
One thing is for sure though, we cannot continue like this for much longer or the Scottish game does risk death.
Summary:
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Last comments:
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- 21/05/02 I'm not sure that I buy the part about Rangers and Celtic needing competition to progress on the European stage, given they've been citing this for years. Ajax won the European Cup in 1995 from a puny domestic league. Panathanaikos were a gnat's whisker away from the semis of this year's European Cup. And there is no reason to think that Dinamo Kiev shouldn't have won the thing in 1999 - they were 3 up on Bayern Munich.
Or, looking at it another way, what level can the Old Firm hope to reach, hamstrung as they are by the rest of us. That of PSV, just crowned UEFA Cup Champions? How about Athens, who gave Inter a run for their money in the same competition. All that would be achieved by parachuting Rangers and Celtic into a 'competitive' league would be to spare them the embarassment of underachieving in Europe. And, as Alex Smith trenchantly noted, we'll see how long their fans stand for that! |
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- 17/05/02 The gate revenue from Rangers and Celtic isn't as big as they'd like you to believe. I'm a Hearts fan - this season we played both teams twice at tynecastle. They get one stand which seats maybe 3 thousand people, so say 12 thousand tickets. Our average crowd for other games is around 10,500 - so the 4 games would give us revenue of just over 1 "normal" game. When you take into account the added security that's needed for an Old Firm game, you've not got a whole lot of extra revenue.... |
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- 15/05/02 I'm all for nationalism, but.....Scotland is only a part of a whole, by that I mean that until we get true nationalism we will be part of Britain and as such we should have the right to play in the nationwide league if invited. It will happen, uefa, sfa, efa can moan all they like, but if Celtic or Rangers were to challenge them in the European courts, on the grounds that they are a "British" team, then how can they be refused? |
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