14 Team Top Flight Being Mooted For Next Season

[LinwoodTON]

I think 14 is the way to go with 2 relegation places and play off meaning that there is a bigger turnover of teams every year to freshen things up.

 

To keep to the 36 games it could be an option to have the venue of the third game based on the aggregate winner of the previous two games.

 

I'd also consider going back to 2 points for a win. I know it was made 3 to try to encourage teams to go for the win but with it mostly going to be a two horse race this could help even things out a bit and make it a bit more exciting again.

 

So the pish teams would still be pish, but with less income.

 

Well thought out. 

[SpoonTon]

I think 14 is the way to go with 2 relegation places and play off meaning that there is a bigger turnover of teams every year to freshen things up.

 

To keep to the 36 games it could be an option to have the venue of the third game based on the aggregate winner of the previous two games.

 

I'd also consider going back to 2 points for a win. I know it was made 3 to try to encourage teams to go for the win but with it mostly going to be a two horse race this could help even things out a bit and make it a bit more exciting again.

 

I'm not sure what you mean by that. I thought I did, then I got confused again. Do you mean with some sort of split, or just playing every team 3 times (cause that would be 39)? 

 

There's nothing that can realistically be done to even it out. Changing it to 2 points might make it look closer, but it really wouldn't be. I'm sure if you go back to any previous season and change the points system back to 2 for a win the league winner would still be the same. 

[AyrshireTon]

Boring mid to lower league table battles don't seem to be an issue down south.

[irnbru]

I'm not sure what you mean by that. I thought I did, then I got confused again. Do you mean with some sort of split, or just playing every team 3 times (cause that would be 39)? 

 

There's nothing that can realistically be done to even it out. Changing it to 2 points might make it look closer, but it really wouldn't be. I'm sure if you go back to any previous season and change the points system back to 2 for a win the league winner would still be the same. 

 

Sorry you're right - not sure where I got the 36 from!

 

It's the only way I could really think of to increase the league size while keeping roughly the same amount of games and getting rid of the split which I don't think has much benefit.

[irnbru]

I'm not sure what you mean by that. I thought I did, then I got confused again. Do you mean with some sort of split, or just playing every team 3 times (cause that would be 39)? 

 

There's nothing that can realistically be done to even it out. Changing it to 2 points might make it look closer, but it really wouldn't be. I'm sure if you go back to any previous season and change the points system back to 2 for a win the league winner would still be the same. 

 

http://www.cafefutebol.net/2013/09/11/why-three-points-for-a-win-is-a-loss-for-football-a-closer-look-into-one-of-the-most-important-rules-in-football-history/ is quite interesting but it doesn't really factor in all the money that started to come in to the bigger clubs over the same time period but I still think it's something to consider.

 

It would need someone with time on their hands to work it out though and if it meant more teams still able to win the league at a later stage of the season then it's worth concsidering.

[TRVMP]

Why would we want a top flight of 18 which only 2 teams in the country can potentially win? Just because the main gripe is repetition doesn't mean that there's a better system out there. The main gripe in a league of 18 would be a boring mid table battle, and it would be as big a gripe as the repetition thing is now. In fact the real problem is repetition when there's nothing at stake. No-one complained about having to play Thistle 4 times in 12/13, and that's because they were the biggest and most important games of the season. Similarly, I'd rather 4 games against St Mirren than 2 against Hamilton and 2 against Airdrie. Repetition itself isn't a problem.

 

....

 

Leagues of 18 would be boring, and also damaging for clubs like Morton.

 

Agree with every word of this. I don't think repetition is really a big deal. It's only a big deal when we play the likes of Livingston and QoS in the cups. Fans whine about it, but fans whine about everything. Sitting 12th in an 18-team league (with no European play-off or anything to look forward to) is going to be a far worse experience.

 

The Portuguese top flight really isn't what we should be emulating here.

 

(I left out the bit about a league drop being financially damaging because I disagree with that but I already covered why.)

[SpoonTon]

http://www.cafefutebol.net/2013/09/11/why-three-points-for-a-win-is-a-loss-for-football-a-closer-look-into-one-of-the-most-important-rules-in-football-history/ is quite interesting but it doesn't really factor in all the money that started to come in to the bigger clubs over the same time period but I still think it's something to consider.

 

It would need someone with time on their hands to work it out though and if it meant more teams still able to win the league at a later stage of the season then it's worth concsidering.

 

It would obviously make a slight difference to most leagues. League One last season would have finished:

 

Morton 47

Stranraer 47

Forfar 46

Brechin 44

Airdrie 42

 

Differences in points, but no difference in position. Certainly looks closer, and there are possibilities of differences occurring, but I'm not sure if it would have had any change in approach and I'm not sure if it would be worth changing our system away from that which is recognised worldwide (could we even?). 

 

More importantly though, it would be very little effect on the top flight. Celtic would still have won the league by 11 points last year, and 20 the year before (though Aberdeen would have snuck into second on goal difference). 

[SpoonTon]

Boring mid to lower league table battles don't seem to be an issue down south.

 

Midtable in the English Premier League is incredibly boring, but it's part of something bigger which generates interest. They're seeing some of the best players in the world visiting their ground even when they're stuck in midtable. And many fans do find it boring even at that.

 

But the most important aspect, as I said, is that only 2 clubs in Scotland have the potential to win the Premiership. Qualification for the Europa League is a decent prize, but it's not massive (considering the usual outcomes of that). There's very little to play for at the top of that league. Why wouldn't midtable get boring quickly?

[dunning1874]

I think people forget the flaws in the current system:

• 33 games and 3 fixtures against each team means you get 2 homes and 1 away or 1 home and 2 aways - depending on the way the fixtures work out could mean a big advantage or disadvantage vs a rival of a similar position.
• 5 games post split means 2 homes and 3 aways or 3 homes and 2 aways - again when coming to a relegation fight, having the extra home game could be the difference in staying up vs a team who has an extra away fixture.
• Combine the two examples and you get some examples of 3 home games and 1 away game vs teams.
• Similarly teams can have 20 home games and 18 away games while others have the reverse. 
• there is also the financial side to consider - Aberdeen have 2 home games and 1 away vs Celtic in the regular season. They might draw a home game vs Celtic after the split as well which gives them extra revenue and finally an advantage on the playing side with extra home games vs their rivals.
• The premiership continues for almost a month after the championship meaning big time gaps for the teams participating in the playoffs.
• The playoffs are also heavily weighted towards the Premiership team (probably partly because their season runs a lot longer than the championship).

I think any new league set up has to get back to basics which is an equal number of home and away fixtures.

 

The main gripe from supporters appears to be playing too many games against the same teams - Putting a split in the league does not help this.

 

Only playing teams twice needs a larger league. How large though? A league of 14 = 26 games; 16 teams = 30 games; 18 teams = 34 games.

 

Larger leagues removes the need for playoffs and also increases the threat of a huge gulf in resources between top and bottom teams - however Alloa vs Rangers is happening this season so do we really need to worry about that?

 

The introduction of the playoffs that is blinding people of the current flaws. Could you imagine the hysterics if Chelsea had to travel to Arsenal 3 times while only playing them once at home? There is not a chance our league set up would be accepted in England so therefore we shouldn't be accept it in Scotland either.

 

We need something new that is fair to the development of the sport and not about 4 games vs the Old Firm or about 4x Old Firm games either.

 

P.S. An article that highlights the failures of the current Premiership League format - https://gordonjohnston.wordpress.com/2013/04/03/things-get-silly-its-spl-split-time-again/

 

There are a lot of fair points in there about the flaws in the current split. From memory the 18 home games v 20 away games has only happened once, to Aberdeen, but the fact it can happen at all is unfair and is a big case against a split. Still, if you're going to have any kind of system with a split, either an unbalanced fixtures problem or the problem of having too many games is going to come up. However, I can't agree with your solutions.

 

I assume when you said larger leagues remove the need for playoffs, you meant they increase the need for playoffs? Also as SpoonTon said, the gulf between teams in the same division isn't the issue, it's the gulf between divisions. With leagues of 16-10 it might be okay, and it'll be fine with any top flight of 14 or smaller, but if you have a top flight of 18 you make full-time football impossible without outside investment in the second tier, and that makes relegation a huge problem.

 

Also while you do have a point about the flaws of the split, we need to stop comparing ourselves to England in everything we do if we're going to find solutions that work for Scotland. Just because something doesn't work in England doesn't mean it won't here, and just because something does work for England doesn't mean we should do it. England has a population over ten times the size of ours and the richest league in the world. In domestic football terms they are a superpower, we can never compare to them and there's nothing to be ashamed with that. We should compare ourselves to the likes of Croatia, Belgium, Norway & Denmark, and when you do so you see that we have a comparatively sensible and fairly well performing league.

 

Boring mid to lower league table battles don't seem to be an issue down south.

 

That's one place where I do think comparisons to England are fine, because the comparison fits with any larger leagues: people massively overstate the problem of meaningless games in big leagues. You hardly get any more meaningless games in a 12 team league playing 38 games than you do in a 20 team league playing 38 games. The number of points you're playing for are the same, the gaps between top, middle and bottom will be broadly the same. Instead of having two or three teams doing nothing in the middle of a 10, you have four or five doing nothing in the middle of an 18. In a 16 team league playing 30 games, you're playing for less points over the course of the season, making it easier to stay in touch with meaningful places. There is the aspect that you would have some of those mid-table teams challenging for a title instead if you had 12-10 rather than 16 or 18, but throughout the tiers you're just changing where the teams with meaningless games sit, essentially.

 

Obviously 18 or 20 is too big for Scotland because we'd then have a wholly full-time top tier and wholly part-time second tier, while we only have three European places to play for through the league compared to five or six in the countries with 20 team leagues, but in terms of creating a multitude of mid-table games, nah, that's always wildly exaggerated.

[vikingTON]

I'm in favour of an 18 team top tier with play-offs for all available European spots bar the title winners, with similar play offs for two of the three relegation spots (17th goes straight into the play-offs with the lower tier sides, perhaps 15th and 16th play a one-off or two-leg match to avoid being dragged into the tournament as well). The Dutch system is probably more complex than one that should be implemented in Scotland (and has one more European place to currently distribute anyway), but there's no credible shortage of competitive matches, in a system where anyone from 7th place up has a shot at Europe, and anyone from 15th or even 16th down is in trouble. Have an 18 league second tier and finally punt the Montroses of the world into the regional feeder leagues. 

 

I'm simply not convinced that the mid-table of a twice a season league will feature the yawning gaps and parades of so-called 'meaningless fixtures' breathlessly anticipated by some of the small league enthusiasts. That's not how it works in England, where a much larger league delivers for the majority of its clubs either a chance of promotion or relegation concerns well into April.

[vikingTON]

Obviously 18 or 20 is too big for Scotland because we'd then have a wholly full-time top tier and wholly part-time second tier, while we only have three European places to play for through the league compared to five or six in the countries with 20 team leagues, but in terms of creating a multitude of mid-table games, nah, that's always wildly exaggerated.

The sides in the lower tier with realistic expectations of promotion wouldn't necessarily remain part-time. There are around 19 or 20 full-time sides now, and no reason why even jumped-up pub teams like Ayr couldn't sustain full-time football, if they were playing in the actual top tier semi-regularly. Or they could use their revenue for other projects - full-time football is of course superior, but it shouldn't be the defining criteria for setting up a league system. 

[Ed de Ball]

Think that any consideration of this has to take into account population centres, state of current stadia, the current financial position of clubs and how prize money is to be distributed. In my opinion merger of some clubs needs to be considered particularly if acceptance of franchise operations such as Ross County are to be tolerated.

 

I would anticipate that the clubs with European aspirations would not be content to see TV money go to another 6 clubs thus diminishing their own European competitiveness.

[capitanus]

What about 3 leagues of 16, each team playing each other twice, 30 league games per season.

 

Bottom team automatically relegated.

 

Team who wins the league are automatically promoted, 2nd and 3rd place team go into promotion play-off round robin tourney with 2nd and 3rd bottom; with top two teams promoted.

 

No real need for complicated splits, and a more amicable playoff system that doesn't favour the team from the league above.

 

We always seem to be discussing league reconstruction, yet we have the perfect set up next door - the English league. We should be looking to do something very similar, albeit on a smaller scale, with a few subtle differences.

[capitanus]

Think that any consideration of this has to take into account population centres, state of current stadia, the current financial position of clubs and how prize money is to be distributed. In my opinion merger of some clubs needs to be considered particularly if acceptance of franchise operations such as Ross County are to be tolerated.

I would anticipate that the clubs with European aspirations would not be content to see TV money go to another 6 clubs thus diminishing their own European competitiveness.

Which clubs should be merged?

[dunning1874]

What about 3 leagues of 16, each team playing each other twice, 30 league games per season.

 

Bottom team automatically relegated.

 

Team who wins the league are automatically promoted, 2nd and 3rd place team go into promotion play-off round robin tourney with 2nd and 3rd bottom; with top two teams promoted.

 

Far better to just promote second and third automatically while relegating 14th & 15th automatically: you're rewarding failure by giving them a chance to escape.

[Toby]

Far better to just promote second and third automatically while relegating 14th & 15th automatically: you're rewarding failure by giving them a chance to escape.

 

Yeah but play offs sell TV packages, and, like them or not, they're here to stay.

[capitanus]

Far better to just promote second and third automatically while relegating 14th & 15th automatically: you're rewarding failure by giving them a chance to escape.

Possibly, but gives a wee bit of end-of-season entertainment. At least it's straightforward enough to understand unlike all these 'splits' which seem to be on the table.

 

You never hear them talking about reconstruction in the English leagues, they've got a great set-up.

[Ed de Ball]

Which clubs should be merged?

 

Possibly;

 

Brechin/Forfar/Montrose

 

Albion/Airdrie

 

Everyone in Fife

 

Elgin

 

Rangers and Celtic

[LinwoodTON]

Ed de Ball should merge with all his other aliases and collectively f*ck off.

 

Just sayin' like. 

[capitanus]

Possibly;

Brechin/Forfar/Montrose

Albion/Airdrie

Everyone in Fife

Elgin

Rangers and Celtic

Why should any of these clubs be merged?