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Scottish Football - what's the point?


MaltRam

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54 minutes ago, RadioactiveWaste said:

I think you're all taking this the wrong way. Instead of the old firm joining the English leagues, selected English teams could be entered into the SPFL.

I'd nominate Leeds, Millwall, forest, brum city, Carlisle and Sunderland.

What have Carlisle done to annoy you? Gibson's lot would be a better fit.

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1 hour ago, RadioactiveWaste said:

I think you're all taking this the wrong way. Instead of the old firm joining the English leagues, selected English teams could be entered into the SPFL.

I'd nominate Leeds, Millwall, forest, brum city, Carlisle and Sunderland.

Stoke, you forgot Stoke. Please take Stoke.....

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2 hours ago, RadioactiveWaste said:

I think you're all taking this the wrong way. Instead of the old firm joining the English leagues, selected English teams could be entered into the SPFL.

I'd nominate Leeds, Millwall, forest, brum city, Carlisle and Sunderland.

Yes please take Stoke and Leicester and Boro and Cardiff and Swansea and Wrexham and Grimsby Town, oh and while your at it, you can take Workington Town, Warrington and Hull FC to take out Scott Brown because let's face it, he's had it coming for at least 10 years or more!

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I don't really think anyone can argue that the Prem is more competitive than the SPL. West Ham were touted as one of the teams who might be able to break into the top 6 this year and they get beaten 5-0. We have the top 6 out on their own and in reality the only team that can maybe challenge Man City is Liverpool. So we have two teams with a realistic chance of winning the title - just like Scotland.

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18 minutes ago, GenBr said:

I don't really think anyone can argue that the Prem is more competitive than the SPL. West Ham were touted as one of the teams who might be able to break into the top 6 this year and they get beaten 5-0. We have the top 6 out on their own and in reality the only team that can maybe challenge Man City is Liverpool. So we have two teams with a realistic chance of winning the title - just like Scotland.

Pretty much most top leagues in Europe have 1 to 4 teams that can win it. Weird criticism people have of the SPL.

PSG have the league wrapped up for the next 10 years.

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26 minutes ago, David said:

Pretty much most top leagues in Europe have 1 to 4 teams that can win it. Weird criticism people have of the SPL.

PSG have the league wrapped up for the next 10 years.

I wouldnt say 1 to 4 teams. Spain most of the time is Real Madrid or Barcelona with Atletico occassionally competing. Bayern has won the Bundesliga 7 seasons in a row and only occassionally have Dortmund to compete with. PSG have no competition at all most of the time. Juventus have been champions 8 times in a row and most of the time nobody gets close to them. Celtic have only won 8 in a row, so same as Juventus with Bayern only 1 behind.

Its basically 1 team in Germany, France, Italy and Scotland with the Prem going the same way with Man City. 

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Just noticed Aberdeen have indeed gone out of Europe before the kids are back at school. Made me revisit the topic.

You've got to go back to 1984/5 and Alex Ferguson's Aberdeen to find anyone bar Rangers or Celtic winning the SPL. 45 years.

In that time, 9 clubs have won in England. Yes, only two teams (realistically, but with a couple of outside bets) can win in England this year, but over the course of a decade that will change. Fast forward to 2029, and it will still be Rangers and Celtic slugging it out against a diet of mediocrity. I guess on balance it isn't a so much a criticism of the rest of jock football, as it is an endorsement of the massive size of the old firm  compared to their league.

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7 hours ago, Needlesh said:

Just noticed Aberdeen have indeed gone out of Europe before the kids are back at school. Made me revisit the topic.

You've got to go back to 1984/5 and Alex Ferguson's Aberdeen to find anyone bar Rangers or Celtic winning the SPL. 45 years.

In that time, 9 clubs have won in England. Yes, only two teams (realistically, but with a couple of outside bets) can win in England this year, but over the course of a decade that will change. Fast forward to 2029, and it will still be Rangers and Celtic slugging it out against a diet of mediocrity. I guess on balance it isn't a so much a criticism of the rest of jock football, as it is an endorsement of the massive size of the old firm  compared to their league.

The cups are the opportunities. Theyve been shared around quite a bit over the last 10 years. 

As for Aberdeen, its dissapointing. It doesnt help that UEFA are running their competitions more and more favouring clubs from big countries. 

Burnley and Wolves have both been seeded since round 1, thus getting easier routes to the league stages. Why should they be seeded? Theyve no history in any European competition for what, 60 years minimum.

Again, all about the £.   

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1 hour ago, CWC1983 said:

The cups are the opportunities. Theyve been shared around quite a bit over the last 10 years. 

As for Aberdeen, its dissapointing. It doesnt help that UEFA are running their competitions more and more favouring clubs from big countries. 

Burnley and Wolves have both been seeded since round 1, thus getting easier routes to the league stages. Why should they be seeded? Theyve no history in any European competition for what, 60 years minimum.

Again, all about the £.   

I don't disagree that the competitions are run in favour of the bigger clubs, but it would never make sense to base seeding on previous European competitions. Whilst half the teams in the Prem League qualify for Europe these days they would still be seeded much higher than any team that qualified from Scotland based on the league they qualify from and the position they finished. And judging by their performance so far it seems more than fair - are Rangers the only ones still in a competition?

As I've said before we haven't qualified for Europe in almost 50 years and we have played the same amount of games as Aberdeen has in the European cup - we've won more of them as well.

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10 hours ago, Needlesh said:

Just noticed Aberdeen have indeed gone out of Europe before the kids are back at school. Made me revisit the topic.

You've got to go back to 1984/5 and Alex Ferguson's Aberdeen to find anyone bar Rangers or Celtic winning the SPL. 45 years.

In that time, 9 clubs have won in England. Yes, only two teams (realistically, but with a couple of outside bets) can win in England this year, but over the course of a decade that will change. Fast forward to 2029, and it will still be Rangers and Celtic slugging it out against a diet of mediocrity. I guess on balance it isn't a so much a criticism of the rest of jock football, as it is an endorsement of the massive size of the old firm  compared to their league.

Its a valid point that the SPL has been dominated by the Old Firm for too long and makes the competition a little dull. But the cumulative sizes of those two clubs in comparison with the rest of the league is so disproportionate that it is likely to always be thus. The support bases that the Glasgow clubs have compared to that of even the next 3 biggest clubs (Aberdeen, Hibs and Hearts) is extraordinary. Even the Edinburgh clubs struggle to attract more than 15-20,000 fans per game whereas Celtic have 60,000 most weeks and Rangers pushing 50,000. In a league with little resource, that really does make a huge difference.

The game, in all countries and all divisions is dominated by money now. It is just a case of it being to a varying degree of how much money we're talking about. But it makes it nigh on impossible for "lesser" smaller clubs to compete with the larger, more financially cash rich clubs. When Aberdeen last won the league it was a much more level playing field - but the same was also true in England in those days - the English top flight was much more readily shared around in the 70s and 80s. We are just as much a victim of this as Scotland - the top 6 pretty much have a monopoly on the title making it virtually impossible for other clubs to compete. We have a once in a blue moon story like Leicester that has bucked the trend - but ordinarily this is not the case. When you look at the clubs who have won the English top flight since 1984/85, it has pretty much been either: the biggest clubs in the country (Man Utd, Liverpool, Arsenal, Leeds, Everton) or the clubs with the most money at that time (Blackburn, Chelsea, Man City) and many of those clubs overlap both categories.

When saying that since 1984/85 we've had 9 winners compared to the SPL's 2 - its not a fair comparison. I think that we've been just as limited in how its been shared around - the only difference is that there is far more money in England than there is in Scotland thereby meaning that a higher percentage of clubs have access to large budgets. I'd say that in our system, with the number of teams we've got and the % difference in monetary terms between the English top flight and the SPL, their having two winners and us having had nine in a 35 year period in fairly even. Espeically when you consider that many of those teams have only won it once or twice (Everton x2, Liverpool x2, Leeds x1, Blackburn x1 - all over 20 years ago - and Leicester x1) and the league title has actually only ever been dominated by 4 teams (Man Utd, Arsenal, Chelsea and Man City) in that period.

Additionally, compared to a number of other major leagues in Europe, the SPL is probably no more top 2 heavy than many others. Spain is pretty much dominated by the Classico sides and has been (with a couple of exceptions) for decades. Juventus have cleaned up Serie A for the last decade, the big 3 dominate just as much in Holland (Ajax, PSV, Feyenoord barely giving anybody else a look in) with the same in Portugal (Porto, Benfica, Sporting). Meanwhile, the Bundesliga is not exactly a level playing field when you consider Bayern, and to a lesser extent, Dortmund's dominance.

In that regard, the SPL, whilst being probably the most unbalanced of those leagues and having had the longest 2 team stranglehold, does not actually compare all that badly. Modern football lends itself to a small percentage of teams at the top dominating and the rest scrabbling around to be the 'best of the rest'. Jeremy Corbyn's 'for the many, not the few' slogan would have a field day.

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Scottish league is like most leagues in the world., stepping stone for bigger leagues and teams.

Morelos is good example. Jump from Finnish league to PL might be too much to ask, but year or two in Scotland should get him ready. If I remember right, Hooiveld had same path, slowly rising through from bottom tiers to tier 1, in this case PL.

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11 hours ago, CWC1983 said:

Burnley and Wolves have both been seeded since round 1, thus getting easier routes to the league stages. Why should they be seeded? Theyve no history in any European competition for what, 60 years minimum.

They're seeded, because they're just better teams than most of the dross coming from the smaller leagues of Europe. 

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