The season's first competitive game for a Scottish side last night.
And a 3-0 win for Celtic in their Champion's League qualifier against Cliftonville, a fine start to their three round route to the Champion's League proper.
Tonight Hibs and St Johnstone face away games to Malmo and Rosenborg as they look to buck the SPL's recent travails in Europa League qualifying woes.
Motherwell join the fray in the next round of Europa qualifying - and the bookies suggest that both Hibs and St Johnstone will be upsetting the odds to join them.
The return of competitive football means that a new domestic season is dawning.
A new season under the auspices of the Scottish Professional Football League, the brave new organisational structure that doesn't seem to have quite got round to deciding on names for its various leagues.
If the new governance model has yet to convince that it offers anything other than more of the same, what does top flight football have in store for us?
After years of the SPL being a two-horse race, the loss of Rangers left Celtic to race to winners' enclosure alone.
The scored more goals, had a more miserly defence and won more games than the opposition to finish 16 points clear.
So far, so predictable. But Celtic actually dropped 14 more points than they had the season before, wholly dominant but never invincible.
Motherwell, finishing second for the second year in a row, finished on just one point more than they had the previous year.
In a Rangers free season the other clubs couldn't fill the gap, Motherwell's 63 points in second place mirroring the sort of total that previously carried a team to third (Aberdeen in 2006/07 were the last side outside Celtic or Rangers to top 63 points, finishing on 65 in third place.)
In 2011/12 31 points separated Motherwell in third and Hibs in 11th. Last season just 22 points separated Motherwell in second and St Mirren in 11th.
Celtic could afford more off days because everyone else was still beating everyone else, with less and less predictability.
An accumulator win on SPL results was a rare joy last season, a more hard fought challenge than becoming lady captain at Muirfield.
What of the season ahead? More of the same. Celtic the favourites by a massive distance, beneath them Motherwell, Aberdeen, Dundee United and Hibs are tipped in best of the rest race to second.
Always difficult to have much confidence in predictions at this juncture, of course.
The revolving door at most clubs makes each summer a period of rebuilding rather than consolidation.
Motherwell will be reworked, Aberdeen rebuilt by Derek McInnes, United setting out on Jackie McNamara's first full SPL season as manager and the departures of Leigh Griffiths and Eoin Doyle have seen Hibs shorn of almost two-thirds of their league goals tally.
Celtic will win the SPL, whether it's a romp or a canter is pretty much up to them.
Elsewhere we should again see a certain unpredictability, the challenge for those eleven clubs is to raise the standard of that unpredictability.
Showing posts with label SPL. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SPL. Show all posts
Thursday, July 18, 2013
Saturday, June 22, 2013
SPL: A pie for a new era?
Is the homogenisation of the football experience set to take another giant leap forward?
Reports this week suggest that Greggs, highly visible high street purveyors of steak bakes, are in talks to take over the catering franchises at every SPL club.
The Greggs phenomenon has pretty much passed me by. I've tried them, of course, but I've never found anything particularly worthy of queuing up for at lunchtime.
Plenty obviously disagree. And if you're happy to queue up in the rain on your own time, you'd probably be happy to queue up at half time.
It would deliver the SPL a high profile commercial partner - could we have the Greggs Sausage and Bean Melt SPFL SPL in a couple of seasons - and deliver Greggs a captive market.
I don't know exact figures for these things but current catering franchise tactics at football grounds seem to be based on selling the lowest standard of food for highest possible price while, I'll uncharitably suggest, not paying top dollar to attract top quality staff.
It's idle speculation to say how much Greggs would recognise in that particular model.
I'm the sort who wallows in nostalgia, who harks back to the days when the local High Street didn't have the uniform sequence of bookie, Greggs, charity shop, bookie, Cash Converter, pound shop, pawn shop, charity shop.
I'm not like the SPL, an organisation defined by its desire to explore new worlds.
That their explorations in football have been a failure does not mean they shouldn't be encouraged to find a new frontier in meat filled pastry products.
One day a contented Neil Doncaster will be able to sit back and say that, when Hearts were in administration and Kilmarnock in uproar, he "had a very productive chat about pies."
For their part a Greggs spokeswoman said:
"Currently we have no plans to supply the Scottish Premier League but are always open to new business opportunities."
Which might mean this is all bunkum.
Because it's been a long time since anyone saw the Scottish Premier League as a business opportunity.
Reports this week suggest that Greggs, highly visible high street purveyors of steak bakes, are in talks to take over the catering franchises at every SPL club.The Greggs phenomenon has pretty much passed me by. I've tried them, of course, but I've never found anything particularly worthy of queuing up for at lunchtime.
Plenty obviously disagree. And if you're happy to queue up in the rain on your own time, you'd probably be happy to queue up at half time.
It would deliver the SPL a high profile commercial partner - could we have the Greggs Sausage and Bean Melt SPFL SPL in a couple of seasons - and deliver Greggs a captive market.
I don't know exact figures for these things but current catering franchise tactics at football grounds seem to be based on selling the lowest standard of food for highest possible price while, I'll uncharitably suggest, not paying top dollar to attract top quality staff.
It's idle speculation to say how much Greggs would recognise in that particular model.
I'm the sort who wallows in nostalgia, who harks back to the days when the local High Street didn't have the uniform sequence of bookie, Greggs, charity shop, bookie, Cash Converter, pound shop, pawn shop, charity shop.
I'm not like the SPL, an organisation defined by its desire to explore new worlds.
That their explorations in football have been a failure does not mean they shouldn't be encouraged to find a new frontier in meat filled pastry products.
One day a contented Neil Doncaster will be able to sit back and say that, when Hearts were in administration and Kilmarnock in uproar, he "had a very productive chat about pies."
For their part a Greggs spokeswoman said:
"Currently we have no plans to supply the Scottish Premier League but are always open to new business opportunities."
Which might mean this is all bunkum.
Because it's been a long time since anyone saw the Scottish Premier League as a business opportunity.
Thursday, April 11, 2013
Reconstruction: Yes? No? Who cares?
Another week closer to the reconstruction that will save Scottish football.
Or another week further away from the reconstruction that will save Scottish football.
On Monday St Mirren poked their head out from under Neil Doncaster's blanket of SPL unanimity to confirm that actually they wouldn't be voting "yes" to the 12+12+18 structure after all:
"The concept of playing 22 games prior to breaking into three leagues of eight, including the middle eight losing their points gained in the first series of games, is not a system we see as taking the game forward in the long term. You will be aware that other countries have tried this system and have since rejected such a set up.
"We also feel that this system is not fair to fans who buy into their club by way of a season ticket, who are then unsure of what they are purchasing. It is also against the basic wishes of the fans for larger leagues as highlighted in all recent fan surveys."
Ross County are rumoured to be planning to join St Mirren on the naughty step, which led East Fife chairman, Sid Collumbine, to warn County's Roy MacGregor about the pressure he'll face:
"It is bullying, there is no question about that."
The "aye" camp roared to the defence of the proposals.
Stewart Milne called them "absolutely vital" for Scottish football:
"We believe it’s the right thing for Scottish football. We’ve been working on this for nearly three years now.
"We worked on the initial option of a 10-12 [structure] which we believed delivered all the things that would help Scottish football move forward.
"Unfortunately we couldn’t get enough support for that. We worked on this revised proposal over the last eight month along with reviewing all the other options."
Neil Doncaster, fresh from making a hash of releasing the SPL's post-split fixtures, wasn't for mincing his words:
"It’s really important that we don’t decide against all the benefits that can be delivered with a positive vote. At the moment, we have a scenario where, every season, any number of teams are playing Russian roulette because we have one team relegated from 12 into the financial abyss. I do not see that is in the best interests of the game.
"The money that is distributed to clubs in the Premier League, you get a tiny fraction of that within the SFL First Division. We need to solve that."
Armageddon in an abyss?
Kenny Cameron spoke with forked tongue in Inverness:
"The numbers just don't add up, so a vote against 12-12-18 this time round would be a vote for the same again. That's also true as far as SFL clubs are concerned. This is not a 'pick and mix' offer that is on the table but one requiring a straight yes or no.”
"The majority of these requests are delivered by the new proposals, a larger top league being the only omission, he said
"Some 85 percent of what fans asked for is being offered. But defeat for the new proposals could mean defeat for all the elements of change, which is surely a step backwards.
"If the SPL gets its fingers burned this time, having come such a long way, then my fear is that it may be years before we come so close again."
Threats, half truths, a certain willingess to play fast and loose with what the fans think.
A new dawn indeed.
"85 percent of what fans asked for." Really?
Watching your team in a league structure that you want, a league structure that you actually understand, only accounts for 15 percent of what you want when you buy a ticket?
I must be doing it wrong.
We're five games from the end of the season. Can nobody find the handbrake and just ca' canny?
Why are the proposals not "pick and mix?"
Why not push ahead where there is consensus and take time to reflect on the one issue that is really not convincing the paying public?
Why can't we disband the SPL and the SFL, create a new organisation and agree on a model for redistribution within the current set up for just one more season?
Why can't we let that new organisation decide on the new structure, rather than lumbering it with a both a fix and a muddle bequeathed by the dying SPL?
This is Scotland, current world champions of the 'interminably long navel gazing over a simple yes/no question' division.
What's the rush?
"We’ve been working on this for nearly three years now," says Stewart Milne.
They've been talking about it, stalling and enraging fans for far longer.
It's never been suggested before that a "yes" vote is required weeks before the end of a season.
Is 12+12+18 going to persuade sponsors to fling money at the game, the irresistible lure of a failed Swiss model run by an organisation that doesn't yet exist?
Kenny Cameron indicates that if we don't do what the SPL wants right here, right now they're going to pick up their ball and go home.
Maybe that passes for constructive debate in the SPL, an organisation so addled it can still use Neil Doncaster as its spokesperson.
It's not healthy that St Mirren and Ross County can dictate the future to every Scottish club. It's not healthy for any two clubs to be able to do that.
St Mirren and Ross County didn't create that system.
It's a difficult decision though: stop 12+12+18 and everything is off the table and the SPL, perhaps after ushering in hand selected teams for SPL2, will raise the drawbridge.
A new start in a house divided by SPL's intransigence? Or the SPL going it alone and let them eat cake?
Bullying? It looks like it. Bullied by the SPL, the failed experiment that was going to "save" Scottish football in 1998.
What will happen on Monday?
I don't know. But whatever way the vote goes don't hold your breath for a brave new world.
Or another week further away from the reconstruction that will save Scottish football.
On Monday St Mirren poked their head out from under Neil Doncaster's blanket of SPL unanimity to confirm that actually they wouldn't be voting "yes" to the 12+12+18 structure after all:
"The concept of playing 22 games prior to breaking into three leagues of eight, including the middle eight losing their points gained in the first series of games, is not a system we see as taking the game forward in the long term. You will be aware that other countries have tried this system and have since rejected such a set up.
"We also feel that this system is not fair to fans who buy into their club by way of a season ticket, who are then unsure of what they are purchasing. It is also against the basic wishes of the fans for larger leagues as highlighted in all recent fan surveys."
Ross County are rumoured to be planning to join St Mirren on the naughty step, which led East Fife chairman, Sid Collumbine, to warn County's Roy MacGregor about the pressure he'll face:
"It is bullying, there is no question about that."
The "aye" camp roared to the defence of the proposals.
Stewart Milne called them "absolutely vital" for Scottish football:
"We believe it’s the right thing for Scottish football. We’ve been working on this for nearly three years now.
"We worked on the initial option of a 10-12 [structure] which we believed delivered all the things that would help Scottish football move forward.
"Unfortunately we couldn’t get enough support for that. We worked on this revised proposal over the last eight month along with reviewing all the other options."
Neil Doncaster, fresh from making a hash of releasing the SPL's post-split fixtures, wasn't for mincing his words:
"It’s really important that we don’t decide against all the benefits that can be delivered with a positive vote. At the moment, we have a scenario where, every season, any number of teams are playing Russian roulette because we have one team relegated from 12 into the financial abyss. I do not see that is in the best interests of the game.
"The money that is distributed to clubs in the Premier League, you get a tiny fraction of that within the SFL First Division. We need to solve that."
Armageddon in an abyss?
Kenny Cameron spoke with forked tongue in Inverness:
"The numbers just don't add up, so a vote against 12-12-18 this time round would be a vote for the same again. That's also true as far as SFL clubs are concerned. This is not a 'pick and mix' offer that is on the table but one requiring a straight yes or no.”
"The majority of these requests are delivered by the new proposals, a larger top league being the only omission, he said
"Some 85 percent of what fans asked for is being offered. But defeat for the new proposals could mean defeat for all the elements of change, which is surely a step backwards.
"If the SPL gets its fingers burned this time, having come such a long way, then my fear is that it may be years before we come so close again."
Threats, half truths, a certain willingess to play fast and loose with what the fans think.
A new dawn indeed.
"85 percent of what fans asked for." Really?
Watching your team in a league structure that you want, a league structure that you actually understand, only accounts for 15 percent of what you want when you buy a ticket?
I must be doing it wrong.
We're five games from the end of the season. Can nobody find the handbrake and just ca' canny?
Why are the proposals not "pick and mix?"
Why not push ahead where there is consensus and take time to reflect on the one issue that is really not convincing the paying public?
Why can't we disband the SPL and the SFL, create a new organisation and agree on a model for redistribution within the current set up for just one more season?
Why can't we let that new organisation decide on the new structure, rather than lumbering it with a both a fix and a muddle bequeathed by the dying SPL?
This is Scotland, current world champions of the 'interminably long navel gazing over a simple yes/no question' division.
What's the rush?
"We’ve been working on this for nearly three years now," says Stewart Milne.
They've been talking about it, stalling and enraging fans for far longer.
It's never been suggested before that a "yes" vote is required weeks before the end of a season.
Is 12+12+18 going to persuade sponsors to fling money at the game, the irresistible lure of a failed Swiss model run by an organisation that doesn't yet exist?
Kenny Cameron indicates that if we don't do what the SPL wants right here, right now they're going to pick up their ball and go home.
Maybe that passes for constructive debate in the SPL, an organisation so addled it can still use Neil Doncaster as its spokesperson.
It's not healthy that St Mirren and Ross County can dictate the future to every Scottish club. It's not healthy for any two clubs to be able to do that.
St Mirren and Ross County didn't create that system.
It's a difficult decision though: stop 12+12+18 and everything is off the table and the SPL, perhaps after ushering in hand selected teams for SPL2, will raise the drawbridge.
A new start in a house divided by SPL's intransigence? Or the SPL going it alone and let them eat cake?
Bullying? It looks like it. Bullied by the SPL, the failed experiment that was going to "save" Scottish football in 1998.
What will happen on Monday?
I don't know. But whatever way the vote goes don't hold your breath for a brave new world.
Wednesday, April 03, 2013
I'm a muppet and other tales of reconstruction
I've been a little neglectful of the blog of late.
Real life stomped through the door uninvited, turned 2013 into a big bundle of rubbish and left even a little light blogging a stretch too far.
Beyond turning up at Easter Road and groaning quite a lot at what I've been watching, Scottish football has been a care too much.
I have, however, found the time to sign up for a season ticket renewal.
Which makes me a muppet.
Muppetry, some will say, is a particular requirement for life on what nobody should ever call the Hibee highway.
But there we are. On that score muppetry courses through my veins.
I'm well beyond the stage of buying a season ticket with high hopes for a summer of constructive, yet prudent, spending that lays the foundation for a season of thrilling accomplishment.
Far easier to expect a summer of underwhelming transfer market dealings, a panicked spate of loan signings and a season of distinct underachievement. It deadens the heart to the disappointments that follow.
That's the strange thing about season tickets. If you're not just buying out of habit, you're leaping before you have a chance to look at the squad that might break the pain of your fall.
"Here's my money Mr Petrie, I'd like you to spend it on a decent squad but I've noticed your jacket buttons are a bit strained of late so if you want to fire up to Slaters and blow the lot on suits then go for it, nowt I can do about it anyway."
That's usual.
As my justification for getting a season ticket is "it keeps me out of the pub" I can hardly complain.
Except this year I probably can. And so can fans of any other club in the country who have taken delivery of their club's annual begging brochure.
Because this year they really are doing little more than mug fans.
"Renew your season ticket. And we're offering a special deal for all our loyal fans this year.
"For the same price, or more, as last season you can watch an as yet unsigned team play in an as yet undecided league structure under the auspices of an as yet unconfirmed organisation.
"And if you sign up before 1st April you'll get a fiver off our as yet unreleased new fifth shirt."
Bargain.
(I should say that my season ticket renewal cost the same as last year but this time I've got a "cup top up" as well.
Obviously the cup top up might be worthless. But still - it's the same price as I paid for the dull, run of the mill league games this season.
Is £405 for a seat at Easter Road value for money?
The answer is both entirely subjective and completely obvious.
Of course it's not value for money.
But think of the cost of the pints I might drink, the legal fees that I might run up during my short descent into alcoholism if I wasn't at the football every fifth Saturday and every third Friday/Sunday/Monday.
It's an expenditure on the bigger picture.)
I used to tune into Watchdog to see Lynn Faulds Wood feign sympathy as daft folk looked mournful because the hotel they stayed at in Benidorm didn't look like it did in the brochure.
Then they'd hold up the brochure and show a lovely drawing of a nice hotel.
"It's a drawing," I'd think. "What did you expect?"
Now I've joined them. I've bought a season ticket to watch an artist's impression of a league structure.
Or, as we're dealing with Neil Doncaster, David Longmuir and their parcel of rogues, a piss artist's impression.
It might be that we're moving closer to knowing what we're going to be watching.
The current options seem to extend to the status quo and the little heralded 12+12+18 format, the Hampden zinger that was the only method they could devise that would leave fans feeling nostalgic for the "race for the top six."
I don't know how many clubs are already selling season tickets.
I hear that sales at Easter Road are going well, although I think that particular barometer will be a better gauge when the current interest free payment offer runs out and the real extent of Pat Fenlon's underachievement becomes clearer.
But something really stinks here.
When we're not being kept in the dark we're being told that we have to accept the medicine proscribed by a vacuous leadership that insists we don't know what's good for us.
Maybe I don't know what's good for me. But if football needs fans and football keeps treating fans with contempt then football is fooling itself.
I chuckled on Sunday when a tabloid reported that David Cameron was ready to force the issue of the Old Firm moving to England.
Not only had the paper run with such an obvious howler but they'd alighted on one of the few high profile leaders whose current form matches Scottish football's heid bummers for donkey-ness.
Where there is dischord they bring more dischord. Or apathy, which threatens to be even more damaging.
"We need you fans. Ignore the fans. We need the fans. We don't care what the fans want."
It's an odd attitude to adopt. Sometimes I think George Orwell could have done a job on Scottish football. Then I remember that the pigs of Manor Farm at least started out with good intentions.
Maybe we'll be surprised. 12+12+18 will be agreed this week, the benefits will become clearer, the excitement will return. The dreams of the suits will become a fanfare for the common fan.
Or maybe it will be another failure on the road to ruin.
And my muppetry is partly to blame. For the price of a week in an unfinished hotel in Benidorm I've legitimised the idiocy of the men who are failing to save the game.
There's no hope for me, undisputed muppet of the West Stand.
Hopefully Scottish football isn't such a lost cause.
Real life stomped through the door uninvited, turned 2013 into a big bundle of rubbish and left even a little light blogging a stretch too far.
Beyond turning up at Easter Road and groaning quite a lot at what I've been watching, Scottish football has been a care too much.
I have, however, found the time to sign up for a season ticket renewal.
Which makes me a muppet.
Muppetry, some will say, is a particular requirement for life on what nobody should ever call the Hibee highway.
But there we are. On that score muppetry courses through my veins.
I'm well beyond the stage of buying a season ticket with high hopes for a summer of constructive, yet prudent, spending that lays the foundation for a season of thrilling accomplishment.
Far easier to expect a summer of underwhelming transfer market dealings, a panicked spate of loan signings and a season of distinct underachievement. It deadens the heart to the disappointments that follow.
That's the strange thing about season tickets. If you're not just buying out of habit, you're leaping before you have a chance to look at the squad that might break the pain of your fall.
"Here's my money Mr Petrie, I'd like you to spend it on a decent squad but I've noticed your jacket buttons are a bit strained of late so if you want to fire up to Slaters and blow the lot on suits then go for it, nowt I can do about it anyway."
That's usual.
As my justification for getting a season ticket is "it keeps me out of the pub" I can hardly complain.
Except this year I probably can. And so can fans of any other club in the country who have taken delivery of their club's annual begging brochure.
Because this year they really are doing little more than mug fans.
"Renew your season ticket. And we're offering a special deal for all our loyal fans this year.
"For the same price, or more, as last season you can watch an as yet unsigned team play in an as yet undecided league structure under the auspices of an as yet unconfirmed organisation.
"And if you sign up before 1st April you'll get a fiver off our as yet unreleased new fifth shirt."
Bargain.
(I should say that my season ticket renewal cost the same as last year but this time I've got a "cup top up" as well.
Obviously the cup top up might be worthless. But still - it's the same price as I paid for the dull, run of the mill league games this season.
Is £405 for a seat at Easter Road value for money?
The answer is both entirely subjective and completely obvious.
Of course it's not value for money.
But think of the cost of the pints I might drink, the legal fees that I might run up during my short descent into alcoholism if I wasn't at the football every fifth Saturday and every third Friday/Sunday/Monday.
It's an expenditure on the bigger picture.)
I used to tune into Watchdog to see Lynn Faulds Wood feign sympathy as daft folk looked mournful because the hotel they stayed at in Benidorm didn't look like it did in the brochure.
Then they'd hold up the brochure and show a lovely drawing of a nice hotel.
"It's a drawing," I'd think. "What did you expect?"
Now I've joined them. I've bought a season ticket to watch an artist's impression of a league structure.
Or, as we're dealing with Neil Doncaster, David Longmuir and their parcel of rogues, a piss artist's impression.
It might be that we're moving closer to knowing what we're going to be watching.
The current options seem to extend to the status quo and the little heralded 12+12+18 format, the Hampden zinger that was the only method they could devise that would leave fans feeling nostalgic for the "race for the top six."
I don't know how many clubs are already selling season tickets.
I hear that sales at Easter Road are going well, although I think that particular barometer will be a better gauge when the current interest free payment offer runs out and the real extent of Pat Fenlon's underachievement becomes clearer.
But something really stinks here.
When we're not being kept in the dark we're being told that we have to accept the medicine proscribed by a vacuous leadership that insists we don't know what's good for us.
Maybe I don't know what's good for me. But if football needs fans and football keeps treating fans with contempt then football is fooling itself.
I chuckled on Sunday when a tabloid reported that David Cameron was ready to force the issue of the Old Firm moving to England.
Not only had the paper run with such an obvious howler but they'd alighted on one of the few high profile leaders whose current form matches Scottish football's heid bummers for donkey-ness.
Where there is dischord they bring more dischord. Or apathy, which threatens to be even more damaging.
"We need you fans. Ignore the fans. We need the fans. We don't care what the fans want."
It's an odd attitude to adopt. Sometimes I think George Orwell could have done a job on Scottish football. Then I remember that the pigs of Manor Farm at least started out with good intentions.
Maybe we'll be surprised. 12+12+18 will be agreed this week, the benefits will become clearer, the excitement will return. The dreams of the suits will become a fanfare for the common fan.
Or maybe it will be another failure on the road to ruin.
And my muppetry is partly to blame. For the price of a week in an unfinished hotel in Benidorm I've legitimised the idiocy of the men who are failing to save the game.
There's no hope for me, undisputed muppet of the West Stand.
Hopefully Scottish football isn't such a lost cause.
Friday, February 15, 2013
SPL: Stuttering Hibs
Fifth in the league, a point better off after 26 games of this season than they were after the SPL had run it's course last season.
Hibs fans, punch drunk from their annus horribilis, heard promises in the summer of a rebuilt side capable of making progress.
A top six berth after two-thirds of the season does indeed point to progress. But statistics, as students of the number crunching Craig Brown know only too well, can hide a multitude of sins.
Hibs have clung grimly to their league position despite a run of just seven points in ten games.
They slipped from fourth following Monday's meek capitulation to St Johnstone at Easter Road. It's not impossible that the SPL's unpredictable middle ten could throw up a combination of results that condemn them to ninth place by the middle of next week.
Fans could be forgiven for not travelling to tomorrow's match with St Mirren - whose last seven points have been garnered from just three games - with songs of joy in their hearts.
Hibs (2.8 at https://sports.bwin.com/en/sports/4/betting/football) remain five points ahead of their opponents - in the SPL's flabby midrift they are separated by five teams - but St Mirren (2.3) just edge ahead as favourites.
Home advantage counts. But so to must the laboured way Hibs have gone about their business of late.
After shipping three goals in successive games against Inverness and Motherwell in December, Pat Fenlon did successfully stop the flow of goals.
Just four were conceded in the next eight games. Unfortunately only four were scored.
The impression was of a team that couldn't confidently attack if they were to remain competent in defence. On Monday they could do neither and St Johnstone filled their boots.
Leigh Griffiths has too often been isolated up front, sometimes alone and sometimes partnered with the willing but profligate Eoin Doyle.
The younger alternatives in attack seem to have been deemed too raw to start. The moribund Shefki Kuqi's experience is rendered impotent by immobility.
The midfield often looks too flat footed to help out, David Wotherspoon's early season rejuvenation replaced by a hesitant anonymity while others are happy to graft but unwilling, unable or simply not encouraged to play a meaningful offensive role.
Where Paul Cairney offered sparks of creativity into the autumn, he's now slipping to the periphery, a tendency to embonpoint looking more like a problematic heavy arsedness on deteriorating pitches.
Ben Williams impresses in goal behind a defence that often sits too deep, especially on those occasions - and there have been a few of late - when James McPake is preoccupied by finding his own form. Tim Clancy's ongoing injury problems necessitate a starting back four that is susceptible to individual errors.
Yet Fenlon can rightly point to progress at the back. 34 goals conceded in 26 games compares favourably with the 50 conceded at the same stage last year. A goal difference of -1 is nothing to write home about but it knocks last season's -26 into a cocked hat.
So is this wintry malaise a blip and nothing more?
This supporter hopes so.
Scott Robertson and Matt Done arrived in January to provide more incisive options in midfield. Both started on Monday. Both will hope to quickly make amends.
The feeling persists, however, that the transfer window was not used to address gaps in the squad. Too often of late Fenlon's changes look like so much fiddling while Easter Road gurns.
Let us be sanguine and say that in the travails of recent years enduring a mid season blip while remaining in the top half of the table with a Scottish Cup quarter final to come would have been considered a position of some luxury.
But my reading of the mood suggests patience is becoming frayed.
Taking the same number of points in two games against Celtic as they have from three against an adrift Dundee suggests Fenlon hasn't cracked what we might romantically call the Hibs enigma or more prosaically label the destructive inconsistency of the club.
To hear a manager say he's "embarrassed" by a performance 26 games into a season, a performance indicative of "the last few weeks [when] we haven't shown the desire to win football matches" is about as depressing as spending Valentine's Day writing about the travails of your team.
The potential remains for this season to be one of positive progress.
But Fenlon needs to find a higher gear soon to avoid yet another year of broken promises. He could do worse than start in Paisley this weekend.
St Mirren v Hibs prediction: If I must, based on the perhaps forlorn hope that a reaction to Monday night should be inevitable, Hibs to win 2-1 (10.5.)
Hibs fans, punch drunk from their annus horribilis, heard promises in the summer of a rebuilt side capable of making progress.
Hibs have clung grimly to their league position despite a run of just seven points in ten games.
They slipped from fourth following Monday's meek capitulation to St Johnstone at Easter Road. It's not impossible that the SPL's unpredictable middle ten could throw up a combination of results that condemn them to ninth place by the middle of next week.
Fans could be forgiven for not travelling to tomorrow's match with St Mirren - whose last seven points have been garnered from just three games - with songs of joy in their hearts.
Hibs (2.8 at https://sports.bwin.com/en/sports/4/betting/football) remain five points ahead of their opponents - in the SPL's flabby midrift they are separated by five teams - but St Mirren (2.3) just edge ahead as favourites.
Home advantage counts. But so to must the laboured way Hibs have gone about their business of late.
After shipping three goals in successive games against Inverness and Motherwell in December, Pat Fenlon did successfully stop the flow of goals.
Just four were conceded in the next eight games. Unfortunately only four were scored.
The impression was of a team that couldn't confidently attack if they were to remain competent in defence. On Monday they could do neither and St Johnstone filled their boots.
Leigh Griffiths has too often been isolated up front, sometimes alone and sometimes partnered with the willing but profligate Eoin Doyle.
The younger alternatives in attack seem to have been deemed too raw to start. The moribund Shefki Kuqi's experience is rendered impotent by immobility.
The midfield often looks too flat footed to help out, David Wotherspoon's early season rejuvenation replaced by a hesitant anonymity while others are happy to graft but unwilling, unable or simply not encouraged to play a meaningful offensive role.
Where Paul Cairney offered sparks of creativity into the autumn, he's now slipping to the periphery, a tendency to embonpoint looking more like a problematic heavy arsedness on deteriorating pitches.
Ben Williams impresses in goal behind a defence that often sits too deep, especially on those occasions - and there have been a few of late - when James McPake is preoccupied by finding his own form. Tim Clancy's ongoing injury problems necessitate a starting back four that is susceptible to individual errors.
Yet Fenlon can rightly point to progress at the back. 34 goals conceded in 26 games compares favourably with the 50 conceded at the same stage last year. A goal difference of -1 is nothing to write home about but it knocks last season's -26 into a cocked hat.
So is this wintry malaise a blip and nothing more?
This supporter hopes so.
Scott Robertson and Matt Done arrived in January to provide more incisive options in midfield. Both started on Monday. Both will hope to quickly make amends.
The feeling persists, however, that the transfer window was not used to address gaps in the squad. Too often of late Fenlon's changes look like so much fiddling while Easter Road gurns.
Let us be sanguine and say that in the travails of recent years enduring a mid season blip while remaining in the top half of the table with a Scottish Cup quarter final to come would have been considered a position of some luxury.
But my reading of the mood suggests patience is becoming frayed.
Taking the same number of points in two games against Celtic as they have from three against an adrift Dundee suggests Fenlon hasn't cracked what we might romantically call the Hibs enigma or more prosaically label the destructive inconsistency of the club.
To hear a manager say he's "embarrassed" by a performance 26 games into a season, a performance indicative of "the last few weeks [when] we haven't shown the desire to win football matches" is about as depressing as spending Valentine's Day writing about the travails of your team.
The potential remains for this season to be one of positive progress.
But Fenlon needs to find a higher gear soon to avoid yet another year of broken promises. He could do worse than start in Paisley this weekend.
St Mirren v Hibs prediction: If I must, based on the perhaps forlorn hope that a reaction to Monday night should be inevitable, Hibs to win 2-1 (10.5.)
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Scottish football: Reinventing the wheel
12 + 12 + 18 = 8 + 8 + 8 + 18 = 36 + 36 + 36 + 34.
With such simple equations are Scottish football resurrections secured.
If the SPL is about to die, the dictators of the ancien regime are going to get their way before the peasants storm the castle.
12 + 12 + 18.
We could carve it in granite on the SPL's tombstone if an unmarked grave didn't seem more appropriate.
The SPL's Neil Doncaster has often been characterised on this blog as providing much of the deficit in Scottish football's leadership.
His stock fell further during the bloodletting of the summer and recently it has been his Scottish Football League counterpart, David Longmuir, who has been seen by many to better articulate the views of the ordinary punter.
Longmuir has been gazumped on the critical issue of reconstruction though. Step aside Donkey-caster, this was Don King-caster, persuading enough clubs that his dream was actually their dream too.
In the time honoured Scottish football tradition this was done with sticks and carrots, bribes and threats. Our change or no change and did we mention a redistribution of wealth? Our way or the highway and how about increasing the number of potential promotion spots?
In such ways can dreams be sold.
Fair to say that many fans have been less enamoured to the SPL's grand compromise. Never convinced by the split in the first place, supporters are unlikely to find appeasement in a further level of splittage.
This apparent disregard for the paying punter might be nothing more than some club chairmen judging that their support has been reduced to a loyal rump who will remain forlornly in attendance whatever the divisional machinations.
Or it could be that they can't quite escape playing matron. They know we don't like the idea of a three way split cabbage but it will help us grow strong and healthy so they'll force feed us it anyway.
The guardians of the game guarding the game against the romantically suicidal notions of supporters.
It's not unreasonable for directors to think that is simply a case of them doing their jobs.
Risky though. A wild stab in the demographic dark would lead me to surmise that few Scottish football fans grew up with Listen With Mother or accepting that nanny knew best.
In difficult times we might decide that paying for the privilege of eating cabbage is a miserable luxury we can forego or that the time has come to find a restaurant where the menu is more entertaining and less cabbage centric.
(And while I am throttling this cabbage nonsense to death, full disclosure: I am a fan of the Cabbage who will likely perservere with that support no matter the method of shredding the leaves in mid season. Part, as it were, of Rod Petrie's cabbagey rump.)
If clubs are prepared to gamble that 12 + 12 + 18 minimises destruction in the court of public opinion, do they have the same confidence in the corportate world?
However the cards fall on reconstruction, the model will require a title sponsor and media partners will need to be satisfied they are getting value for their investment.
Last week there were rumours that ESPN were either looking at ditching their Scottish football coverage or ditching all their remaining assets and pulling out of the UK market.
Would Sky want a monopoly? Could BT's new kid on the televised sport block be persuaded to intervene?
Has anyone even asked them?
Part of the problem with the SPL's vision is what remains unsaid.
On sponsorship and TV deals. On how a fairer distribution of money would work. On how the leagues below the SFL will be persuaded that this is a pyramid system that can actually work for them. On what exactly increasing access to promotion will mean in practice. On how willing the SPL will be to give up their rotten borough of a voting system within a single league body.
We don't know enough. Is it any surprise that fans are taking a lot of convincing when the known knowns seem so needlessly complicated and the known unknowns seem so plentiful?
Rangers have offered a counter proposal a 14 + 14 + 14 structure. That 14 team top flight was the model favoured by Rangers and Celtic a couple of years ago. It was also the model, probably quite coincidentally, outlined by Jim Traynor in 2011.
It has merits. It has flaws. Given how steadfastly a majority of SPL clubs have been in their desire to do anything but expand the top flight it seems unlikely, as Charles Green is no doubt aware, to find favour. Having kicked up a fuss about 12 + 12 + 18 and been challenged to deliver an alternative, Green was perhaps lucky to have Jim Traynor's back catalogue lying around Ibrox.
And clearly there are already SFL clubs persuaded by the 12 team second tier, that SPL2 by any other name.
Are we closer to reconstruction in time for next season?
I'd think so. But for it to happen in the next few months it will be along the 12 + 12 + 18 model.
That is the model that preserves the number of home gates the SPL clubs need to sustain their often hand to mouth existence, the model that gives clubs in the current First Division that tantalising prospect of access to the top flight and the model that seems to have found a degree of acceptance among the remaining SFL clubs.
If it's not agreed, we will be back to various brains trusts banging together in the corridors of Hampden. Again.
It's far from perfect.
It's already been branded a failure in Austria and the Swiss - who successfully sold the world cuckoo clocks, multi functional penknives with little apparent functionality and Sepp Blatter - couldn't make it work.
Fans are resistant and it seems quite an emotional resistance, one not easily countered by bland marketing and "here's the maths" spreadsheets.
That's a hard sell for an imperfect product.
Maybe honesty would be best the option:
"We want 12 + 12 + 18 for reasons of self-preservation. We're not sure the football will improve, the games will be more exciting or the blot of meaningless game will be forever erased from the top two divisions.
"But we're all skint and this is the best way we can find to try and maximise revenues, the best way to keep the greatest number of clubs alive.
"Perfect? No. A quick fix? Probably not. But if you've been watching Scottish football through the years you'll know that the problems are too deep for a change in the size of the top flight to make the game an overnight success.
"We're taking a risk that 12 + 12 + 18 will give us the stability to build something a bit better. We kind of need your help to do it."
It might not persuade a lot of fans but it could prove quite cathartic for all involved.
It might also help to rebuild trust between clubs and fans, a trust that has been eroding for too long, making it trickier to sell any reconstruction idea to the majority.
That this reconstruction has been framed as the last act of a collapsing SPL hasn’t helped - people are less keen to grant your last wish if you’ve been universally derided for most of your life.
If pushing ahead with 12 + 12 + 18 erodes that trust further, fails to improve what we see on the pitch, leaves yet more fans choking on their cabbage then we'll be chasing down yet another dead end.
And with every passing season we're getting less and less room for manoeuvre.
With such simple equations are Scottish football resurrections secured.
If the SPL is about to die, the dictators of the ancien regime are going to get their way before the peasants storm the castle.
12 + 12 + 18.
We could carve it in granite on the SPL's tombstone if an unmarked grave didn't seem more appropriate.
The SPL's Neil Doncaster has often been characterised on this blog as providing much of the deficit in Scottish football's leadership.
His stock fell further during the bloodletting of the summer and recently it has been his Scottish Football League counterpart, David Longmuir, who has been seen by many to better articulate the views of the ordinary punter.
Longmuir has been gazumped on the critical issue of reconstruction though. Step aside Donkey-caster, this was Don King-caster, persuading enough clubs that his dream was actually their dream too.
In the time honoured Scottish football tradition this was done with sticks and carrots, bribes and threats. Our change or no change and did we mention a redistribution of wealth? Our way or the highway and how about increasing the number of potential promotion spots?
In such ways can dreams be sold.
Fair to say that many fans have been less enamoured to the SPL's grand compromise. Never convinced by the split in the first place, supporters are unlikely to find appeasement in a further level of splittage.
This apparent disregard for the paying punter might be nothing more than some club chairmen judging that their support has been reduced to a loyal rump who will remain forlornly in attendance whatever the divisional machinations.
Or it could be that they can't quite escape playing matron. They know we don't like the idea of a three way split cabbage but it will help us grow strong and healthy so they'll force feed us it anyway.
The guardians of the game guarding the game against the romantically suicidal notions of supporters.
It's not unreasonable for directors to think that is simply a case of them doing their jobs.
Risky though. A wild stab in the demographic dark would lead me to surmise that few Scottish football fans grew up with Listen With Mother or accepting that nanny knew best.
In difficult times we might decide that paying for the privilege of eating cabbage is a miserable luxury we can forego or that the time has come to find a restaurant where the menu is more entertaining and less cabbage centric.
(And while I am throttling this cabbage nonsense to death, full disclosure: I am a fan of the Cabbage who will likely perservere with that support no matter the method of shredding the leaves in mid season. Part, as it were, of Rod Petrie's cabbagey rump.)
If clubs are prepared to gamble that 12 + 12 + 18 minimises destruction in the court of public opinion, do they have the same confidence in the corportate world?
However the cards fall on reconstruction, the model will require a title sponsor and media partners will need to be satisfied they are getting value for their investment.
Last week there were rumours that ESPN were either looking at ditching their Scottish football coverage or ditching all their remaining assets and pulling out of the UK market.
Would Sky want a monopoly? Could BT's new kid on the televised sport block be persuaded to intervene?
Has anyone even asked them?
Part of the problem with the SPL's vision is what remains unsaid.
On sponsorship and TV deals. On how a fairer distribution of money would work. On how the leagues below the SFL will be persuaded that this is a pyramid system that can actually work for them. On what exactly increasing access to promotion will mean in practice. On how willing the SPL will be to give up their rotten borough of a voting system within a single league body.
We don't know enough. Is it any surprise that fans are taking a lot of convincing when the known knowns seem so needlessly complicated and the known unknowns seem so plentiful?
Rangers have offered a counter proposal a 14 + 14 + 14 structure. That 14 team top flight was the model favoured by Rangers and Celtic a couple of years ago. It was also the model, probably quite coincidentally, outlined by Jim Traynor in 2011.
It has merits. It has flaws. Given how steadfastly a majority of SPL clubs have been in their desire to do anything but expand the top flight it seems unlikely, as Charles Green is no doubt aware, to find favour. Having kicked up a fuss about 12 + 12 + 18 and been challenged to deliver an alternative, Green was perhaps lucky to have Jim Traynor's back catalogue lying around Ibrox.
And clearly there are already SFL clubs persuaded by the 12 team second tier, that SPL2 by any other name.
Are we closer to reconstruction in time for next season?
I'd think so. But for it to happen in the next few months it will be along the 12 + 12 + 18 model.
That is the model that preserves the number of home gates the SPL clubs need to sustain their often hand to mouth existence, the model that gives clubs in the current First Division that tantalising prospect of access to the top flight and the model that seems to have found a degree of acceptance among the remaining SFL clubs.
If it's not agreed, we will be back to various brains trusts banging together in the corridors of Hampden. Again.
It's far from perfect.
It's already been branded a failure in Austria and the Swiss - who successfully sold the world cuckoo clocks, multi functional penknives with little apparent functionality and Sepp Blatter - couldn't make it work.
Fans are resistant and it seems quite an emotional resistance, one not easily countered by bland marketing and "here's the maths" spreadsheets.
That's a hard sell for an imperfect product.
Maybe honesty would be best the option:
"We want 12 + 12 + 18 for reasons of self-preservation. We're not sure the football will improve, the games will be more exciting or the blot of meaningless game will be forever erased from the top two divisions.
"But we're all skint and this is the best way we can find to try and maximise revenues, the best way to keep the greatest number of clubs alive.
"Perfect? No. A quick fix? Probably not. But if you've been watching Scottish football through the years you'll know that the problems are too deep for a change in the size of the top flight to make the game an overnight success.
"We're taking a risk that 12 + 12 + 18 will give us the stability to build something a bit better. We kind of need your help to do it."
It might not persuade a lot of fans but it could prove quite cathartic for all involved.
It might also help to rebuild trust between clubs and fans, a trust that has been eroding for too long, making it trickier to sell any reconstruction idea to the majority.
That this reconstruction has been framed as the last act of a collapsing SPL hasn’t helped - people are less keen to grant your last wish if you’ve been universally derided for most of your life.
If pushing ahead with 12 + 12 + 18 erodes that trust further, fails to improve what we see on the pitch, leaves yet more fans choking on their cabbage then we'll be chasing down yet another dead end.
And with every passing season we're getting less and less room for manoeuvre.
Wednesday, January 09, 2013
Rangers: Say no evil
Jim Traynor has spoken.
We better all listen.
His second blog as the supremo of communications at Ibrox - jolly decent it was of the Daily Record to give him his first Rangers blog as part of his valedictory message to their paying readers - hit every target.
Let nobody accuse James of being high brow. He's so tuned to the lowest common denominator he can name check Benidorm and think he's got away with it.
A tour de force from James is always a thing of beauty, even if it doesn't last forever.
He gets a hard time from some quarters does Jim but I've always agreed with him on a number of issues.
I agreed with him when he said Rangers should end up in the Third Division. I agreed with him when he said Rangers' divisional rehabilitation would be better served by a new manager.
I agree with him too, when he says Rangers will eventually take their place in the top flight. The SPL? Yep, if it still exists. That flies in the face of comments made by Charles Green. But it doesn't mean Charles has been speaking with a forked tongue. Good salesmanship often only flirts with the truth.
I also agree with Jim when he hints at the power of social media. That old line about absolute power corrupting absolutely? The serried ranks of Scottish football tweeters, bloggers, Facebook-ers, Kiltr-ers, forum users et al don't yet have absolute power. But they can be influential and some will always confuse influence with a chance to be destructive.
Jim is right - again - that there are idiots out there using social media. Just as there are idiots writing in the press, just as there idiotic talking heads taking a shilling for bad punditry, just as there are idiots supporting football clubs, just as idiocy infiltrates the corridors of power at our football clubs and our footballing authorities.
Idiocy abounds in society. So does decency, intelligence, the milk of human kindness. We are a mixed bag, us people. Social media reflects us.
The good, the bad and the odd. Jim has never really understood that. He's worn his ignorance of it as a badge of pride. That's fair enough. He's hardly alone.
But it is intriguing. Because Jim's first blog for Rangers suggests he's now in the social media battleground.
It suggests that Rangers are going to try and colonise social media, turn the club website into an opinion driven blog and fight the battles their fans want them to fight using the very channels Jim has previously dismissed.
I'd guess Rangers will eventually try to monetise that. It could be revolutionary. If there are ten Rangers blogs slagging off the SPL, 10,000 Rangers fans slagging off the SPL on Twitter, then how powerful could it be to harness that, take it in-house? The staid, say nothing drudgery of club websites could be blown away.
All by learning from social media.
Not that Jim would admit it. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. But don't give them the satisfaction of telling them that's what you're doing.
If that is the plan then Jim is not just building barricades to keep out the tweeting enemies of Ibrox. He's also planting his tank amid a thriving Rangers social media ecosystem. And why not?
If there's an audience out there then why not nab them for the good of the club? It's common sense and too few clubs do it.
But there is a danger there. A danger that walks hand in hand with Jim's Phil Mitchell-like threat - these references to TV shows are contagious - to critics of Charles Green's Ibrox project.
Because what Jim really dislikes - more than he dislikes Twitter, more than he dislikes BBC pundits - is opinions.
Not all opinions. He's a big fan of his own opinions and he's being paid to be a big fan of Charles Green's opinions.
No, it's opinions that he disagrees with that really wind him up. And now he's threatening to throw the full weight of Rangers against any journalists who deviates from his world view.
Really? Militant new media atheist and opinionated scribe Jim Traynor using new media to threaten opinionated scribes. He'd have spiked this story himself.
We are, as football fans, a shallow bunch. We love to hear club employees say "woe betide the journalist/tweeter/opposing manager that slags off our club."
Unfortunately that means too many of us too often fall for the charming chancers that can blight this game.
Often it's those journalists and tweeters who hold the money men at clubs to account.
I'd agree with Jim's motivation: we'd all like to do our jobs free from the glare of critical comment.
We don't all have that luxury. Journalists should hold people to account. Strange that Jim Traynor should so quickly forget that.
Strange too that a man so against social media should now be employing social media by any other name to get his message across.
Get the fans onside, hunker down and turn that bunker mentality into cash.
Make sure every story critical of your new boss is derided as fantasy by your fans.
That's Jim's utopia.
I think Rangers fans, the spiritual guardians of their club, deserve more than that. They've carried the club through a nightmare. For doing that they deserve more from the future than Jim Traynor's airbrushed fantasy.
We better all listen.
His second blog as the supremo of communications at Ibrox - jolly decent it was of the Daily Record to give him his first Rangers blog as part of his valedictory message to their paying readers - hit every target.
Let nobody accuse James of being high brow. He's so tuned to the lowest common denominator he can name check Benidorm and think he's got away with it.
A tour de force from James is always a thing of beauty, even if it doesn't last forever.
He gets a hard time from some quarters does Jim but I've always agreed with him on a number of issues.
I agreed with him when he said Rangers should end up in the Third Division. I agreed with him when he said Rangers' divisional rehabilitation would be better served by a new manager.
I agree with him too, when he says Rangers will eventually take their place in the top flight. The SPL? Yep, if it still exists. That flies in the face of comments made by Charles Green. But it doesn't mean Charles has been speaking with a forked tongue. Good salesmanship often only flirts with the truth.
I also agree with Jim when he hints at the power of social media. That old line about absolute power corrupting absolutely? The serried ranks of Scottish football tweeters, bloggers, Facebook-ers, Kiltr-ers, forum users et al don't yet have absolute power. But they can be influential and some will always confuse influence with a chance to be destructive.
Jim is right - again - that there are idiots out there using social media. Just as there are idiots writing in the press, just as there idiotic talking heads taking a shilling for bad punditry, just as there are idiots supporting football clubs, just as idiocy infiltrates the corridors of power at our football clubs and our footballing authorities.
Idiocy abounds in society. So does decency, intelligence, the milk of human kindness. We are a mixed bag, us people. Social media reflects us.
The good, the bad and the odd. Jim has never really understood that. He's worn his ignorance of it as a badge of pride. That's fair enough. He's hardly alone.
But it is intriguing. Because Jim's first blog for Rangers suggests he's now in the social media battleground.
It suggests that Rangers are going to try and colonise social media, turn the club website into an opinion driven blog and fight the battles their fans want them to fight using the very channels Jim has previously dismissed.
I'd guess Rangers will eventually try to monetise that. It could be revolutionary. If there are ten Rangers blogs slagging off the SPL, 10,000 Rangers fans slagging off the SPL on Twitter, then how powerful could it be to harness that, take it in-house? The staid, say nothing drudgery of club websites could be blown away.
All by learning from social media.
Not that Jim would admit it. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. But don't give them the satisfaction of telling them that's what you're doing.
If that is the plan then Jim is not just building barricades to keep out the tweeting enemies of Ibrox. He's also planting his tank amid a thriving Rangers social media ecosystem. And why not?
If there's an audience out there then why not nab them for the good of the club? It's common sense and too few clubs do it.
But there is a danger there. A danger that walks hand in hand with Jim's Phil Mitchell-like threat - these references to TV shows are contagious - to critics of Charles Green's Ibrox project.
Because what Jim really dislikes - more than he dislikes Twitter, more than he dislikes BBC pundits - is opinions.
Not all opinions. He's a big fan of his own opinions and he's being paid to be a big fan of Charles Green's opinions.
No, it's opinions that he disagrees with that really wind him up. And now he's threatening to throw the full weight of Rangers against any journalists who deviates from his world view.
Really? Militant new media atheist and opinionated scribe Jim Traynor using new media to threaten opinionated scribes. He'd have spiked this story himself.
We are, as football fans, a shallow bunch. We love to hear club employees say "woe betide the journalist/tweeter/opposing manager that slags off our club."
Unfortunately that means too many of us too often fall for the charming chancers that can blight this game.
Often it's those journalists and tweeters who hold the money men at clubs to account.
I'd agree with Jim's motivation: we'd all like to do our jobs free from the glare of critical comment.
We don't all have that luxury. Journalists should hold people to account. Strange that Jim Traynor should so quickly forget that.
Strange too that a man so against social media should now be employing social media by any other name to get his message across.
Get the fans onside, hunker down and turn that bunker mentality into cash.
Make sure every story critical of your new boss is derided as fantasy by your fans.
That's Jim's utopia.
I think Rangers fans, the spiritual guardians of their club, deserve more than that. They've carried the club through a nightmare. For doing that they deserve more from the future than Jim Traynor's airbrushed fantasy.
Sunday, January 06, 2013
SPL: Breaking bad?
The SPL's winter leave of absence seems to have taken a few people by surprise.
It is only a fortnight though and we're not supposed to have a winter break as such, so they've maybe been trying to keep it quiet.
There also seems a reasonable chance that the holiday will land plum in the middle of the most clement stretch of winter weather.
Maybe somebody could ask Neil Doncaster what the chances of that would be, of the SPL ushering in a winter break through the back door only for the bad weather to arrive in grand style just as we get back to the football?
They'd need to find him first. The Scarlet Pimpernel of Hampden is Mr Doncaster.
They seek him here, they seek him there. And then they just give up because he's never got anything useful to say anyway.
Still, the Doncaster Bank Holiday is a fine time to look back on the season so far. A chance to savour what we've seen and look ahead to the joys still to come.
So: Celtic will win the SPL. Dundee will be relegated. The ten other teams will fill the remaining ten positions, the order to be decided when their befuddling mutual pattern of inconsistency settles into a more readable pattern of inconsistency.
Simple game, punditry.
Celtic, certainly, have huffed and puffed. Heroic carrying of the standard in Europe doesn't always equal domestic bliss. As Churchill was rudely awakened by the order of the boot in 1945, so the SPL is blowing a giant raspberry at Georgios Samaras this season.
Theories abound on their SPL stutters.
I got a close up view last Saturday at Easter Road. It didn't appear to a be a Krypton Factor-esque teaser.
There are good enough players in the SPL to take advantage of bad defending and there is spirit enough in most teams to stand up to Celtic's attempts to get back on terms.
They might do that standing up physically, aggressively, energetically and in your face-dly. The answer, it seems to me, is not to get increasingly miffed and give up the ghost but to try and match the chippy upstarts.
When Celtic do that consistently - or when other teams find they have other battles sapping their energy - they will accelerate clear.
And the acceleration will be smoother if they avoid entrusting their best chance of any given game to Efe Ambrose's knee.
Dundee's board this week stepped back from the brink of sacking manager Barry Smith and promised to spend some cash in January.
I fear this might mean poor Barry gets his jotters in February after Dundee whittle away January spending no money.
Either way they look doomed. They look like a side that fell short of promotion getting an unexpected promotion with little chance to prepare for the challenges of that promotion.
Strange that. The unluckiest winners of Scottish football's daft summer.
If the job Smith did in taking Dundee to second in the First Division was good enough for his board, then the job he's doing for them in the SPL should be good enough for his board.
The rest? Stick a pin in them. Few will splash the cash in January so the transfer window is likely to be a study in survival, of holding on to assets and snapping up the odd bargain.
Relaxing at Butlins or Haggerston Castle this coming fortnight each manager will be able to reflect on good games, a few decent results and bad games, the odd poor run.
"We're building something here" say managers in the English Premier League and Scottish national coaches on the brink of being sacked.
Most SPL managers are only ever building a work in progress. The one that emerges with the most competent transitory package will grab second place in the league. High stakes when you're trying to build a house on sand.
High stakes and high pressure.
Kenny Shiels has gone the full Colonel Kurtz in Kilmarnock. Every post match interview Terry Butcher gives is a coded plea for help as his red wine dependency grows in Inverness. John McGlynn was reduced to tramping about in the Dingwall puddles wearing a shirt and tie coupled with tracksuit bottoms.
Will nobody think of the managers?
Or the accountants?
Money. Money. Money.
Neil Lennon bought Celtic the winning lottery ticket with Champions League progress.
Things have been bleaker elsewhere.
Hearts extended the begging bowl, counted the takings and still don't look as if they're completely sure how the fiscal circle can be comfortably squared.
Rod Petrie produced a set of accounts at Hibs that proved that frugalness and disastrous leadership create a black hole. 0 + 0 = -£900,000.
I've started building a scale model of Aberdeen's proposed new stadium out of matchsticks. It will be finished before Stewart Milne is able to pull the trigger and discharge the silver bullet of leaving Pittodrie.
We must concede that it's not been a season awash with cash. That, of course, has been the SPL way for a number of years.
Will any of the impecunious and infirm die on the operating table? That can't be discounted, as much as we hope it can be avoided.
The shouts of "hell mend you, it's your own fault" emanate from another place.
But no club in the SPL is a financial basket case because of events in 2012.
Those events might yet quicken a monetary decline. Eventually they might be pinpointed as the tumbling pebbles that set off an avalanche of doom at some clubs.
It's likely, however, that any club that falls victim will already have been flirting with financial insanity.
Most clubs need to think smarter. There's a leadership deficit in Scottish football and it's evident at club level and national level.
There's nothing inherently wrong with accountants and marketing men running clubs or running the game.
There is a problem if we have incompetent accountants and incompetent marketing men running clubs and running the game.
And that's been a problem since Motherwell-born billionaires were still Motherwell-born billionaires.
What solace can be sought from the football?
Some games have been absolutely honking.
The winter break by any other name was ushered in with a derby howler at Tynecastle.
Funny thing though. As Hearts racked up 500 corners in a 15 minute spell, as the Hibs defence heroically repelled the maroon advance then stood heroically about looking glaikit in the six yard box waiting for the next barrage, I was involved in that game.
Purple of face, hoarse of throat involvement.
The Sky sponsored imperialism of English football and the Scottish media's "no such thing as a meaningless Old Firm game" mantra can hide an obvious truth: without an emotional attachment to one of the teams, televised games are often pish.
People tell me - I say it myself - that nobody outside Scotland is interested in the SPL.
People - often the very same people - tell me that a lot of televised games are dire adverts for the SPL.
Surely we can take comfort from that? Crap, aye. But in the SPL nobody can see you being crap.
And we've given our TV masters a few moments of excitement, the odd flash of skill, the unearthing of a player or two who might, with a fair wind, one day be talked up during Sky's coverage of Swansea v Wigan.
The patient still has a pulse.
I once overheard a chat in my local:
"Seen Joe lately?"
"Aye, awffy limp he's got now."
"Aye, right enough. Bad limp. He's a quick limper though, he can limp at quite a rate."
Armageddon is not catching up with us yet.
Thursday, November 29, 2012
Reconstruction: Home and away
European football is once again to be buffeted by the winds of change.
UEFA are considering dropping the Europa League and doubling the Champions League to accommodate 64 teams.
Nothing is final yet but a decision is likely to be made by 2014.
Having been treated by like a second rate tournament by its organisers - and some of its participants - the Europa League hasn't been as fiscally rewarding as the Champions League. Strange that.
And if you don't pay your way, modern football would prefer you to die quickly and with a minimum of fuss.
So the cash cow of the Champions League will become ever more lucratively bloated.
Don't hold your breath for a democratisation of access or wealth. European football will remain tilted towards the big clubs from the big leagues.
The idea of a European league, driven by an orchestrated breakaway led by the European Club Association, will again be shelved.
Even with UEFA's meddlesome involvement, the big clubs can get what they want out of the Champions League and periodic tantrums can be always used to force UEFA's hand on pressing issues.
The European League, a persuasive idea for many in Scotland, remains a concept more powerful in the abstract than reality: a fine stick to threaten UEFA with and a fine carrot to keep the "smaller big" clubs doing exactly what the "big big" clubs want.
But probably not something that the cabal of super clubs have any intention of pursuing in the immediate future.
What does all this mean for Scotland?
Scottish clubs would be competing for space in a 64 team tournament. This season five of our teams competed for places in two tournaments featuring 80 teams. Only one survived qualifying.
Our current strike rate suggests that few of our clubs would be bothering the business end of an expanded Champions League any time soon.
You never know though, losing in the qualifying rounds might become a more lucrative hobby.
In the meantime we have our own restructuring debate to monitor.
How's that going?
The SFL have a draft set of proposals that sees the top flight expanded and the SPL disbanded.
The SPL have a counter set of proposals that sees the SPL gain 12 more teams in an extra division and an extraordinarily daft sounding three way split into three leagues of eight after 22 games.
So the SFL want the SPL to bugger off and the SPL want to not only stick around but expand into two leagues for a bit of the season and three leagues for another bit of the season.
These approaches to reconstruction do not immediately suggest that the SPL and the SFA are singing from the same hymn sheet. Or that they're even in the same church.
That means it's time for the SFA to play a role: cajoling, brokering, soothing, arse kicking.
To this end the governing body's Professional Game Board released a statement yesterday:
Which, from this vantage point, looks like another fine example of the SFA's mealy-mouthed dithering.
Given their headline differences on the big issues it's unclear what common ground the SPL and SFL might have found.
To drag the restructuring debate on until no sane person could reasonably be expected to care? Possibly.
Mutual loathing? Maybe.
A shared desire to make the SFA look as weak as possible. Perhaps.
We're left with two organisations at odds with each other and a governing body with the inspirational leadership qualities of a burst balloon.
If you were looking for a structure that would produce the most directionless governance for your sport, you could do far worse than mimic Hampden's tripartite travesty.
And so the debate drags on, each side trying to promote their vested interests, each saying they'll do the best for the fans while trying to avoid giving the fans any voice in the debate.
In that respect Scottish football's reconstruction shenanigans are pretty much like a low budget version of UEFA's blockbuster.
The difference is likely to be the pace of change.
By the time four or five Scottish clubs are getting emptied from the qualifiers of a 64 team Champions League, the bitter status quo will probably still reign supreme in Scotland.
UEFA are considering dropping the Europa League and doubling the Champions League to accommodate 64 teams.
Nothing is final yet but a decision is likely to be made by 2014.
And if you don't pay your way, modern football would prefer you to die quickly and with a minimum of fuss.
So the cash cow of the Champions League will become ever more lucratively bloated.
Don't hold your breath for a democratisation of access or wealth. European football will remain tilted towards the big clubs from the big leagues.
The idea of a European league, driven by an orchestrated breakaway led by the European Club Association, will again be shelved.
Even with UEFA's meddlesome involvement, the big clubs can get what they want out of the Champions League and periodic tantrums can be always used to force UEFA's hand on pressing issues.
The European League, a persuasive idea for many in Scotland, remains a concept more powerful in the abstract than reality: a fine stick to threaten UEFA with and a fine carrot to keep the "smaller big" clubs doing exactly what the "big big" clubs want.
But probably not something that the cabal of super clubs have any intention of pursuing in the immediate future.
What does all this mean for Scotland?
Scottish clubs would be competing for space in a 64 team tournament. This season five of our teams competed for places in two tournaments featuring 80 teams. Only one survived qualifying.
Our current strike rate suggests that few of our clubs would be bothering the business end of an expanded Champions League any time soon.
You never know though, losing in the qualifying rounds might become a more lucrative hobby.
In the meantime we have our own restructuring debate to monitor.
How's that going?
The SFL have a draft set of proposals that sees the top flight expanded and the SPL disbanded.
The SPL have a counter set of proposals that sees the SPL gain 12 more teams in an extra division and an extraordinarily daft sounding three way split into three leagues of eight after 22 games.
So the SFL want the SPL to bugger off and the SPL want to not only stick around but expand into two leagues for a bit of the season and three leagues for another bit of the season.
These approaches to reconstruction do not immediately suggest that the SPL and the SFA are singing from the same hymn sheet. Or that they're even in the same church.
That means it's time for the SFA to play a role: cajoling, brokering, soothing, arse kicking.
To this end the governing body's Professional Game Board released a statement yesterday:
"The Scottish FA’s Professional Game Board met at Hampden Park today to hear and discuss proposals on league reconstruction made by the Scottish Premier League and the Scottish Football League.
"The PGB is encouraged by the common ground established on many issues in what is an emotive subject.
"The respective league bodies will now hold further discussions with their member clubs, in the hope that this common ground can be expanded upon within each proposal.
"The next meeting of the PGB is scheduled for January 30, 2013. However, it has offered to reconvene earlier to expedite the process once the bodies have held further talks with their members."
Which, from this vantage point, looks like another fine example of the SFA's mealy-mouthed dithering.
Given their headline differences on the big issues it's unclear what common ground the SPL and SFL might have found.
To drag the restructuring debate on until no sane person could reasonably be expected to care? Possibly.
Mutual loathing? Maybe.
A shared desire to make the SFA look as weak as possible. Perhaps.
We're left with two organisations at odds with each other and a governing body with the inspirational leadership qualities of a burst balloon.
If you were looking for a structure that would produce the most directionless governance for your sport, you could do far worse than mimic Hampden's tripartite travesty.
And so the debate drags on, each side trying to promote their vested interests, each saying they'll do the best for the fans while trying to avoid giving the fans any voice in the debate.
In that respect Scottish football's reconstruction shenanigans are pretty much like a low budget version of UEFA's blockbuster.
The difference is likely to be the pace of change.
By the time four or five Scottish clubs are getting emptied from the qualifiers of a 64 team Champions League, the bitter status quo will probably still reign supreme in Scotland.
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
Scottish football: Reconstruction rivals
"The battle lines were drawn months ago and the main players have been digging the trenches.
"But listen closely and you will hear the first volleys being fired as Scottish football edges closer, yet again, to civil war."
So spake the BBC's Chris McLaughlin as the latest contributions emerged in the eternal "reconstruction of Scottish football" debate.
The Scottish Football League will announce its plans first: a top league of 16, a 12 team second division and 18 teams in the bottom tier. Celtic and Rangers will be invited to enter "colt" teams. And the SPL will be disbanded, the "big" clubs returning to the SFL fold.
"Haud yer wheesht" say the SPL. They've their own plans and they don't include being disbanded. Rather: a top flight of 16, an SPL2 of 12 teams and a third flight of 12 teams.
Forget our romantic notions of a pyramid structure, of a constructive dialogue involving all stakeholders - including fans.
Where are we after our strange summer, the McLeish Report before that and the hints that the SFA were building up to bang heads together to get things moving forward?
We're nowhere. It seems hot air doesn't fuel the engines of change.
On one side the SPL, as defensive of its territory as ever, on the other a newly emboldened SFL.
And never the twain shall meet.
Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals - The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln is a brilliant study of how Lincoln weaved different points of view into his presidency, to shape the America he wanted to emerge from its most tumultuous period.
From Barack Obama down many have adopted the book as a leadership guide, towering narrative history as self help manual.
Lincoln strengthened his grip on the White House and the country by drawing opponents of different hues into his inner circle.
Now I've no idea of reading habits inside Hampden and it is a churlish habit of football - this blog included - to hurl military descriptions at events on and off the field.
But for the same to happen at Hampden we must rely on the leadership of Campbell Ogilvie and Stewart Regan.
We must rely on those with different views to air them openly, without agendas, and be prepared to sacrifice their own ambition to build a better future for Scottish football.
What we're likely to get is the SFA abdicating responsibility for as long as possible as an increasingly bitter argument between the SPL and the SFA results in either the status quo or a bad fudge, our promised utopia replaced by the worst of both worlds.
A leadership vacuum filled by selfish bickering, the fans ignored, the hope of lasting, positive change ever more forlorn.
It wouldn't take Lincoln and his team of rivals to sort out Scottish football.
Unfortunately Screaming Lord Sutch would be an improvement on the current mob masquerading as "guardians of the game."
Scottish football is not doomed. Too many people care too much.
But nor does constructive change look likely any time soon. And the longer the spectacle remains bald men fighting over a comb, the harder the recovery will be.
"But listen closely and you will hear the first volleys being fired as Scottish football edges closer, yet again, to civil war."
So spake the BBC's Chris McLaughlin as the latest contributions emerged in the eternal "reconstruction of Scottish football" debate.
"Haud yer wheesht" say the SPL. They've their own plans and they don't include being disbanded. Rather: a top flight of 16, an SPL2 of 12 teams and a third flight of 12 teams.
Forget our romantic notions of a pyramid structure, of a constructive dialogue involving all stakeholders - including fans.
Where are we after our strange summer, the McLeish Report before that and the hints that the SFA were building up to bang heads together to get things moving forward?
We're nowhere. It seems hot air doesn't fuel the engines of change.
On one side the SPL, as defensive of its territory as ever, on the other a newly emboldened SFL.
And never the twain shall meet.
Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals - The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln is a brilliant study of how Lincoln weaved different points of view into his presidency, to shape the America he wanted to emerge from its most tumultuous period.
From Barack Obama down many have adopted the book as a leadership guide, towering narrative history as self help manual.
Lincoln strengthened his grip on the White House and the country by drawing opponents of different hues into his inner circle.
Now I've no idea of reading habits inside Hampden and it is a churlish habit of football - this blog included - to hurl military descriptions at events on and off the field.
But for the same to happen at Hampden we must rely on the leadership of Campbell Ogilvie and Stewart Regan.
We must rely on those with different views to air them openly, without agendas, and be prepared to sacrifice their own ambition to build a better future for Scottish football.
What we're likely to get is the SFA abdicating responsibility for as long as possible as an increasingly bitter argument between the SPL and the SFA results in either the status quo or a bad fudge, our promised utopia replaced by the worst of both worlds.
A leadership vacuum filled by selfish bickering, the fans ignored, the hope of lasting, positive change ever more forlorn.
It wouldn't take Lincoln and his team of rivals to sort out Scottish football.
Unfortunately Screaming Lord Sutch would be an improvement on the current mob masquerading as "guardians of the game."
Scottish football is not doomed. Too many people care too much.
But nor does constructive change look likely any time soon. And the longer the spectacle remains bald men fighting over a comb, the harder the recovery will be.
Friday, October 19, 2012
Your game needs you
What do Scottish football fans want?
Ask 100 people. Get 99 different answers.
We're not short of opinions. Events this summer showed that there are times when clubs are forced to listen.
Too often though clubs feel able to ignore the paying punter.
Partly that's the arrogance of a game that wants to run itself as a business while ignoring its "customers."
And partly it's because the channels for constructive communication between fans and clubs have simply not existed.
It's too easy for chairmen and chief executives to write off forums and social media sites as a playground for the overly opinionated or the crazily disaffected.
They latch on to the most extreme views, claim the tail is wagging the dog and give themselves an excuse to ignore anything that might be considered constructive. And there is a lot of constructive opinion out there.
And those fans with something constructive to say might be about to find a collective voice with the launch of new initiative from Supporters Direct Scotland.
A 'Fans Parliament' is to be launched across Scotland giving fans of every club a vehicle to air their views - and have those views collected and reported to Scottish football's overly complicated governing bodies and the Scottish Government.
Launched at the Scottish Parliament yesterday the initiative builds on the recommendations made in the McLeish Report that fans were recognised as key stakeholders in the game with a role to play in shaping the future of Scottish football.
The author of that report, Henry McLeish, said:
"It has been a unique year for football fans in Scotland, on a local as well as national basis, with ordinary fans’ voices being heard loud and clear in a way they’ve never been heard, or listened to, before. Now there is a drive and determination to ensure that the momentum that was gained isn’t lost.
"The new 'Fans Parliament' initiative will provide a platform for fans to continue the debate in the knowledge that it will be reported back to the Scottish Government and to the organisations running football in Scotland."
Fans will be encouraged to get involved through a series of roadshows, at matches, using social media and at www.scottishfans.org.
Paul Goodwin, head of Supporters Direct in Scotland, said:
"Fans voices are being listened to more than ever before and we know that in recent months there has been an unprecedented debate about the game in Scotland.
"Through Supporters Direct Scotland fans have a direct route into government and policy makers and we want the new ‘Fans Parliament’ initiative to be the conduit for the debate and discussion between fans across the country and, in effect, be the voice of Scottish football fans.
"As an organisation funded by the Scottish Government we have the ability to present supporters views directly to them as well as to the SPL, SFL and the SFA. Talks have already started at Hampden Park looking at how we formalise this relationship with the governing bodies."
An interesting scheme this. Football fans are not a homogeneous bunch. I've probably got no more in common with the chap who sits next to me at Easter Road than a shared love of Hibs and some subconscious masochism.
Our views on the future of our club probably diverge. Our views on the future of Scottish football almost certainly do.
Football fans don't necessarily do consensus.
So surveying fans, pulling together those opinions and turning those findings into something positive and focused enough to influence the SFA, SPL and SFL is likely to be a mammoth undertaking.
Not an impossible undertaking though. And a very worthwhile one.
I've met with some of the people involved and I can vouch for their enthusiasm in seeing this through.
And given that most of us should agree that a sustainable future for Scottish football is an absolute must, there is common ground to build on.
There's also a simple message for the men stalking the corridors of power at Hampden and ruling clubs like their own private dominions.
140 years of autocracy has got us where we are today.
There has to be a better way.
The first roadshow will be held in Edinburgh on 28th October with Pat Stanton and Gary Mackay in attendance.
Register by email: [email protected] with your name and date of birth.
www.scottishfans.org
Ask 100 people. Get 99 different answers.
Too often though clubs feel able to ignore the paying punter.
Partly that's the arrogance of a game that wants to run itself as a business while ignoring its "customers."
And partly it's because the channels for constructive communication between fans and clubs have simply not existed.
It's too easy for chairmen and chief executives to write off forums and social media sites as a playground for the overly opinionated or the crazily disaffected.
They latch on to the most extreme views, claim the tail is wagging the dog and give themselves an excuse to ignore anything that might be considered constructive. And there is a lot of constructive opinion out there.
And those fans with something constructive to say might be about to find a collective voice with the launch of new initiative from Supporters Direct Scotland.
A 'Fans Parliament' is to be launched across Scotland giving fans of every club a vehicle to air their views - and have those views collected and reported to Scottish football's overly complicated governing bodies and the Scottish Government.
Launched at the Scottish Parliament yesterday the initiative builds on the recommendations made in the McLeish Report that fans were recognised as key stakeholders in the game with a role to play in shaping the future of Scottish football.
"It has been a unique year for football fans in Scotland, on a local as well as national basis, with ordinary fans’ voices being heard loud and clear in a way they’ve never been heard, or listened to, before. Now there is a drive and determination to ensure that the momentum that was gained isn’t lost.
"The new 'Fans Parliament' initiative will provide a platform for fans to continue the debate in the knowledge that it will be reported back to the Scottish Government and to the organisations running football in Scotland."
Fans will be encouraged to get involved through a series of roadshows, at matches, using social media and at www.scottishfans.org.
Paul Goodwin, head of Supporters Direct in Scotland, said:
"Fans voices are being listened to more than ever before and we know that in recent months there has been an unprecedented debate about the game in Scotland.
"Through Supporters Direct Scotland fans have a direct route into government and policy makers and we want the new ‘Fans Parliament’ initiative to be the conduit for the debate and discussion between fans across the country and, in effect, be the voice of Scottish football fans.
"As an organisation funded by the Scottish Government we have the ability to present supporters views directly to them as well as to the SPL, SFL and the SFA. Talks have already started at Hampden Park looking at how we formalise this relationship with the governing bodies."
An interesting scheme this. Football fans are not a homogeneous bunch. I've probably got no more in common with the chap who sits next to me at Easter Road than a shared love of Hibs and some subconscious masochism.
Our views on the future of our club probably diverge. Our views on the future of Scottish football almost certainly do.
Football fans don't necessarily do consensus.
So surveying fans, pulling together those opinions and turning those findings into something positive and focused enough to influence the SFA, SPL and SFL is likely to be a mammoth undertaking.
Not an impossible undertaking though. And a very worthwhile one.
I've met with some of the people involved and I can vouch for their enthusiasm in seeing this through.
And given that most of us should agree that a sustainable future for Scottish football is an absolute must, there is common ground to build on.
There's also a simple message for the men stalking the corridors of power at Hampden and ruling clubs like their own private dominions.
140 years of autocracy has got us where we are today.
There has to be a better way.
The first roadshow will be held in Edinburgh on 28th October with Pat Stanton and Gary Mackay in attendance.
Register by email: [email protected] with your name and date of birth.
www.scottishfans.org
Friday, September 14, 2012
SPL: Dundee United v Ross County
Preparing for his Dundee United side's home clash with Ross County tonight, Peter Houston observed that the visitors look hard to beat.
These days we only expect such powers of deduction in the creations of Steven Moffat.
But give Peter his due. He spent much of the last fortnight polishing Craig Levein's spectacles.
And realising that a team on 39 game unbeaten league run might be a tough nut to crack is more insightful than anything we heard from the Scotland camp on Tuesday evening.
It's been a funny sort of opening to the SPL season.
The international break, United's postponed game, the artificial feeling you always get when the transfer window closes after the season has begun.
There's been a sense that the league hasn't quite bedded down yet.
Maybe the events of the summer have contributed to that. Or maybe it's always like this but I've had more to distract me this year.
It's time to get down to business though.
Starting with another Friday night experiment.
For or against? I'm still undecided although I am in favour of the trial run continuing throughout this season so that judgements can be made based on evidence rather than on the hunch of a chairman or a young marketing graduate looking to make a quick impact.
Both United and County go into this one with seven points, lying fourth and fifth in a concerntinaed league table.
They've got there in different ways though.
Ross County have opened with four draws and an away win against Dundee. They've scored two goals and conceded one.
Critics of manager Derek Adams might use that to label his side as excessively functional.
They're also effectively functional though. And there are far worse things for a newly promoted side to be.
United started out with back-to-back 3-0 home wins over Hibs and Dundee, wins that were every bit as comfortable and deserved as the scores suggest.
Since then they've stuttered on the road. A 3-1 defeat at Kilmarnock led one preposterous tabloid journalist to hammer the final nail in the coffin of match report writing.
That was followed by a 0-0 in Perth, a result that is arguably worse than it sounds in the context of St Johnstone's run of 14 competitive matches without a win.
Still, hardly soul destroying form. And tonight offers a return to the free-scoring comforts of home against a team that hasn't done much scoring anywhere.
County will have their game plan though. And they've been bloody good at putting into action. Of course a 39 game unbeaten run carries with it both luck and a trail of opponents cursing their own profligacy. County seem adept at capitalising on that luck and on the frustration of other teams.
That, as Peter Houston very reasonably pointed out, makes them hard to beat.
Being hard to beat doesn't, of course, win games and it is trickier to see County suddenly delivering a goal rush in the SPL.
They're 4/1 to win tonight with Ladbrokes. If they're going to win I wouldn't expect it to be by much so 1-0 at 10/1 doesn't look a bad shout.
These two teams have cooked up five draws - four of them goalless - in nine league games so far this season. Tonight the draw is 11/4 and 0-0 is 9/1.
That bet would be to put more faith in the visitors's miserly defence than United's attackers.
I'd certainly expect County to be less obliging than Hibs and Dundee were in the first two games at Tannadice this season and United will be without Gary Mackay-Steven while Jon Daly is doubtful.
39 games is also a very long time to get into the habit of not losing.
All runs end somewhere. But 40 not out looks a real possibility.
Which I think means I've convinced myself.
0-0 at 9/1.
All odds from Ladbrokes
Always remembering www.gambleaware.co.uk
These days we only expect such powers of deduction in the creations of Steven Moffat.
But give Peter his due. He spent much of the last fortnight polishing Craig Levein's spectacles.
And realising that a team on 39 game unbeaten league run might be a tough nut to crack is more insightful than anything we heard from the Scotland camp on Tuesday evening.
It's been a funny sort of opening to the SPL season.
The international break, United's postponed game, the artificial feeling you always get when the transfer window closes after the season has begun.
There's been a sense that the league hasn't quite bedded down yet.
Maybe the events of the summer have contributed to that. Or maybe it's always like this but I've had more to distract me this year.
It's time to get down to business though.
Starting with another Friday night experiment.
For or against? I'm still undecided although I am in favour of the trial run continuing throughout this season so that judgements can be made based on evidence rather than on the hunch of a chairman or a young marketing graduate looking to make a quick impact.
Both United and County go into this one with seven points, lying fourth and fifth in a concerntinaed league table.
They've got there in different ways though.
Ross County have opened with four draws and an away win against Dundee. They've scored two goals and conceded one.
Critics of manager Derek Adams might use that to label his side as excessively functional.
They're also effectively functional though. And there are far worse things for a newly promoted side to be.
United started out with back-to-back 3-0 home wins over Hibs and Dundee, wins that were every bit as comfortable and deserved as the scores suggest.
Since then they've stuttered on the road. A 3-1 defeat at Kilmarnock led one preposterous tabloid journalist to hammer the final nail in the coffin of match report writing.
That was followed by a 0-0 in Perth, a result that is arguably worse than it sounds in the context of St Johnstone's run of 14 competitive matches without a win.
Still, hardly soul destroying form. And tonight offers a return to the free-scoring comforts of home against a team that hasn't done much scoring anywhere.
County will have their game plan though. And they've been bloody good at putting into action. Of course a 39 game unbeaten run carries with it both luck and a trail of opponents cursing their own profligacy. County seem adept at capitalising on that luck and on the frustration of other teams.
That, as Peter Houston very reasonably pointed out, makes them hard to beat.
Being hard to beat doesn't, of course, win games and it is trickier to see County suddenly delivering a goal rush in the SPL.
They're 4/1 to win tonight with Ladbrokes. If they're going to win I wouldn't expect it to be by much so 1-0 at 10/1 doesn't look a bad shout.
These two teams have cooked up five draws - four of them goalless - in nine league games so far this season. Tonight the draw is 11/4 and 0-0 is 9/1.
That bet would be to put more faith in the visitors's miserly defence than United's attackers.
I'd certainly expect County to be less obliging than Hibs and Dundee were in the first two games at Tannadice this season and United will be without Gary Mackay-Steven while Jon Daly is doubtful.
39 games is also a very long time to get into the habit of not losing.
All runs end somewhere. But 40 not out looks a real possibility.
Which I think means I've convinced myself.
0-0 at 9/1.
All odds from Ladbrokes
Always remembering www.gambleaware.co.uk
Saturday, September 01, 2012
SPL: Celtic v Hibs
After they both enjoyed SPL wins last Saturday the week rather diverged for Celtic and Hibs.
Celtic progressed to the Champions League group stage, that promised land where the streets are paved with gold and the couches upholstered with £50 notes.
24 hours earlier Hibs were dumped out of the League Cup by Queen of the South in a display that seems to have flitted between pathetic and miserable.
Pat Fenlon said he was "disgusted" with the performance and well he might have been. He should also have been mildly nauseated by his own decision to rejig the team with a series of changes that made Hibs weakest in the very areas where Queen of the South were strongest.
After taking seven points from three games - Fenlon's best SPL sequence - it was an unfortunate return to the amateurism that has pockmarked Hibs' recent travails.
The result wasn't the end of the world. But it was hugely unfortunate.
Fenlon remains very much on trial with a lot of supporters. If he wants to win them over he can't afford to take a couple of steps back just when he seems to be moving forward.
Can't afford to lose too many players out of his starting eleven either.
He looked in the cupboard on Tuesday night and - as most of us would have guessed - the cupboard was bare.
No such worries for Neil Lennon who has taken Celtic back to the group stages of the Champions League, returning the glamour of Barcelona to Celtic Park along with all that thunder.
The SPL is warmed by the reflected glory of Celtic's qualification even as it increases the inequality between the haves and the have nots.
For now Hibs need to try and cope with the inequality on the pitch.
60 points separated the two teams last year and a goalless draw in Glasgow couldn't hide how woefully Hibs fared against the teams at the top end of the table.
In 18 league clashes with top six teams Hibs managed just six points, that draw at Celtic joined by draws with Motherwell and Dundee United and a home win against St Johnstone.
Fenlon himself was only in charge for the 1-1 draw with Motherwell.
It's a record that has to be improved. The last three games have indicated progress - a step in the right direction but not a destination.
Certainly Fenlon will feel that he could have done without facing a buoyant Celtic in Glasgow today.
Odds of 12/1 on a away win suggest there's a mountain to climb.
Trying for a repeat of last year's 0-0 would be a risky strategy although with Ben Williams in goal and James McPake at the heart of defence Hibs look capable of being more organised this season.
Fenlon's favoured midfield four - not enhanced by any deadline day deals - might lack creativity but look reasonably well configured to help out a rearguard action while Leigh Griffiths and Eoin Doyle would attempt to take the pressure off with constant movement up front.
That could be the theory anyway. So 14/1 on a no scoring draw might tempt me.
If I had any faith that Hibs will be able to keep a clean sheet.
I don't.
Which would lead me to the conclusion that Celtic will probably prevail.
A 3-1 Celtic win at 10/1 looks enticing.
The head can't rule when Hibs are involved though.
2-1 Hibs with Griffiths getting the first goal. 125/1.
If dreams can come true you might as well make a few quid off the back of them.
All odds from Ladbrokes
www.gambleaware.co.uk
Monday, August 06, 2012
SPL: One horse, week one
The SPL is back. Games have been played, points have been won. Hibs fans have been depressed all over again.
Robbie Devine takes a look at the weekend:
Saturday August 4 2012 saw the start of a new experiment in world football, the kick off for a top tier championship in which the race for the runner-up spot is the main aim for the majority of sides rather than the mounting of a championship challenge.
Surely there cannot be another league where a team is declared definite champions before a ball is kicked by managers, players, pundits and fans alike.
Celtic will surely stroll to a second successive title as, with no Rangers on the scene, no club will be in a position to launch a proper challenge.
It is a sad indictment of the game in Scotland that the Old Firm will always be champions, indeed Aberdeen were the last club outside Glasgow to become top dogs way back in the dim and distant days of 1985.
The Dons were the first team to take on the prospective champions as Celtic Park was filled fans witnessing the spectacle of legendary former Celtic assistant manager Sean Fallon unfurling the League flag before the match started.
Now there is a prevalent sense of optimism amongst SPL supporters that this will be a good season as the Rangers saga has now abated but without wanting to put a damp squib on top of that positivity I feel I simply must embrace my Victor Meldrew and admit that I do not share that view, especially on the viewing of the game at Celtic Park.
For those of you who did not have the misfortune to witness it you must have enjoyed a better weekend than I.
It was a poor, poor spectacle.
The home side failed to break down a resolute Dons defence until the 79th minute when Kris Commons' low shot somehow managed to hit the back of the net evading the clutches of Aberdeen keeper Jamie Langfield whose woeful attempt to stop it leads us back to the days when the fumblings of Scottish goalkeepers were considered a long running joke amongst the English press.
Langfield’s nickname is ‘clangers’ so his latest blunder should not have surprised anyone.
What may surprise people though was Neil Lennon’s assertion that one of the main reasons for Celtic’s lethargic showing was because his players were ‘leggy’ following their midweek match against HJK Helsinki.
Surely, after a summer of recharging their collective batteries, the last thing any professional footballer should feel is ‘leggy’ on the opening day of the season.
That aside it is abundantly obvious that Lennon will have to freshen up his squad as there was a real lack of flair on show from his troops whilst Craig Brown’s main concern will be what do with Langfield.
Elsewhere St Mirren Park was the place to go for excitement as the 4104 spectators were treated to an old fashioned rip snorter of a match in which the Buddies rescued a point in injury time against Inverness Caley Thistle but did lose new signing Lewis Guy, who had opened the scoring, to a red card.
There was also a good atmosphere generated at Tynecastle as goals from Sutton and Templeton secured the three points for Hearts with St Johnstone manager Steve Lomas later bemoaning the ordering off of new signing Gregory Tade.
The First Division flag was raised at the newly named New Energy Stadium, Dingwall as last season’s First Division champions Ross County held Motherwell to a 0-0 draw with the same result signalling the return to top flight football for Dundee who took a large travelling support down to Kilmarnock.
And Sunday saw the final match of the opening SPL campaign taking place at a sun drenched Tannadice where Dundee United shook off the hangover of losing a last minute equiliser in their Europa League tie against big spending Dinamo Moscow to humble hapless Hibernian 3-0.
On this showing United will indeed, along with Hearts, be the most serious challengers for that much coveted second spot while the odds on Hibs making a managerial change yet again before Christmas have shortened considerably.
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Robbie Devine takes a look at the weekend:
Saturday August 4 2012 saw the start of a new experiment in world football, the kick off for a top tier championship in which the race for the runner-up spot is the main aim for the majority of sides rather than the mounting of a championship challenge.
Surely there cannot be another league where a team is declared definite champions before a ball is kicked by managers, players, pundits and fans alike.
Celtic will surely stroll to a second successive title as, with no Rangers on the scene, no club will be in a position to launch a proper challenge.
It is a sad indictment of the game in Scotland that the Old Firm will always be champions, indeed Aberdeen were the last club outside Glasgow to become top dogs way back in the dim and distant days of 1985.
The Dons were the first team to take on the prospective champions as Celtic Park was filled fans witnessing the spectacle of legendary former Celtic assistant manager Sean Fallon unfurling the League flag before the match started.
Now there is a prevalent sense of optimism amongst SPL supporters that this will be a good season as the Rangers saga has now abated but without wanting to put a damp squib on top of that positivity I feel I simply must embrace my Victor Meldrew and admit that I do not share that view, especially on the viewing of the game at Celtic Park.
For those of you who did not have the misfortune to witness it you must have enjoyed a better weekend than I.
It was a poor, poor spectacle.
The home side failed to break down a resolute Dons defence until the 79th minute when Kris Commons' low shot somehow managed to hit the back of the net evading the clutches of Aberdeen keeper Jamie Langfield whose woeful attempt to stop it leads us back to the days when the fumblings of Scottish goalkeepers were considered a long running joke amongst the English press.
Langfield’s nickname is ‘clangers’ so his latest blunder should not have surprised anyone.
What may surprise people though was Neil Lennon’s assertion that one of the main reasons for Celtic’s lethargic showing was because his players were ‘leggy’ following their midweek match against HJK Helsinki.
Surely, after a summer of recharging their collective batteries, the last thing any professional footballer should feel is ‘leggy’ on the opening day of the season.
That aside it is abundantly obvious that Lennon will have to freshen up his squad as there was a real lack of flair on show from his troops whilst Craig Brown’s main concern will be what do with Langfield.
Elsewhere St Mirren Park was the place to go for excitement as the 4104 spectators were treated to an old fashioned rip snorter of a match in which the Buddies rescued a point in injury time against Inverness Caley Thistle but did lose new signing Lewis Guy, who had opened the scoring, to a red card.
There was also a good atmosphere generated at Tynecastle as goals from Sutton and Templeton secured the three points for Hearts with St Johnstone manager Steve Lomas later bemoaning the ordering off of new signing Gregory Tade.
The First Division flag was raised at the newly named New Energy Stadium, Dingwall as last season’s First Division champions Ross County held Motherwell to a 0-0 draw with the same result signalling the return to top flight football for Dundee who took a large travelling support down to Kilmarnock.
And Sunday saw the final match of the opening SPL campaign taking place at a sun drenched Tannadice where Dundee United shook off the hangover of losing a last minute equiliser in their Europa League tie against big spending Dinamo Moscow to humble hapless Hibernian 3-0.
On this showing United will indeed, along with Hearts, be the most serious challengers for that much coveted second spot while the odds on Hibs making a managerial change yet again before Christmas have shortened considerably.
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Friday, July 13, 2012
Scottish football: Destiny delayed?
The time has finally come for Scottish football to greet the future.
What should happen when the Scottish Football League clubs meet at Hampden today?
Problems and issues should be fully discussed. Threats made by other bodies should be retracted. Fears over the sustainability of the current incarnation of the newco Rangers should be allayed.
Any lingering ambiguity on the resolutions laid in front of the clubs should be resolved.
When the votes are counted Rangers newco should be free to start life in Division Three.
That should be an end to it. For better or for worse we'll all need to embrace what that means for the future.
Scottish football will need to be proactive, people in positions of influence will need to overcome the fear that has undermined the game these last few weeks and be brave, inventive and resilient.
That shouldn't be too much to ask. With the power of being a "guardian" of the game comes the responsibility of building a sustainable model for everyone involved in the game.
Plans for reconstruction should be put in place. Those plans should be borne from rational, constructive discussion rather than panic and self-interest.
The SPL experiment - a 14 year exercise in greed, delusion and failure - should be disbanded.
The governance of the game - the governance that allowed cowardice to leave the SFL clubs with this decision and then allowed bullying and threats to try and influence that decision - should be revolutionised.
The new business model, whatever hardships it might bring, must involve all clubs in all divisions. We've tried thinking only about the elite. It's ended in debt, anger on the terraces and a whopping corporate collapse.
The fans who have shown commendable passion - whatever some might think of their motives - should be engaged, not disregarded as an inconvenient revenue stream.
That's what should happen.
It probably won't though.
The last few days have had the feel of a bizarre list of classified results as clubs hailing from what Jonathan Meades called "football pools towns" have declared their voting intentions.
There has been an avalanche of statements favouring the Division Three option. It says much for the unpredictability of recent events that I'm far from convinced the actual votes will be cast quite as decisively as that.
I'm tired and weary of the whole thing now. But am I alone in thinking that today is just another staging post, another day labelled historic that probably won't resolve very much at all?
Whatever happens it's unlikely that the uncertainty, the vitriol, the self-immolation of the last few weeks will end.
Expect the interchangeable malevolent cop-incompetent cop double act of the SPL's Neil Doncaster and the SFA's Stewart Regan to continue.
Expect this grubby chapter in the history of both those organisations to continue.
Expect SPL chairmen, silently hiding behind the contrived integrity of their "no to newco" vote, to continue to exert influence in the search for the outcome they want.
Expect them to pretend these are principled actions, the actions of men who know that the only way to save the game is to save the fans of all clubs from themselves.
Expect their very vocal supporters to champion them as the real heroes, the brave few doing their best to protect football from the wishes of the majority.
Expect them to ignore their own failings and the remarkable failure of the last 14 years, an intolerable status quo that they are determined to preserve even as they try and cover the unmentionables behind a fig leaf of "positive change."
Expect all that and more.
Expect to be enraged over and over again.
Expect this miserable story to run for a few more days or weeks yet, with a little more of what Scottish football should mean to fans dying with every hour.
But don't expect Regan, Doncaster or their organ grinders to meekly accept the outcome of today's meeting at Hampden if it doesn't end with the result they want.
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What should happen when the Scottish Football League clubs meet at Hampden today?
Problems and issues should be fully discussed. Threats made by other bodies should be retracted. Fears over the sustainability of the current incarnation of the newco Rangers should be allayed.
Any lingering ambiguity on the resolutions laid in front of the clubs should be resolved.
When the votes are counted Rangers newco should be free to start life in Division Three.
That should be an end to it. For better or for worse we'll all need to embrace what that means for the future.
Scottish football will need to be proactive, people in positions of influence will need to overcome the fear that has undermined the game these last few weeks and be brave, inventive and resilient.
That shouldn't be too much to ask. With the power of being a "guardian" of the game comes the responsibility of building a sustainable model for everyone involved in the game.
Plans for reconstruction should be put in place. Those plans should be borne from rational, constructive discussion rather than panic and self-interest.
The SPL experiment - a 14 year exercise in greed, delusion and failure - should be disbanded.
The governance of the game - the governance that allowed cowardice to leave the SFL clubs with this decision and then allowed bullying and threats to try and influence that decision - should be revolutionised.
The new business model, whatever hardships it might bring, must involve all clubs in all divisions. We've tried thinking only about the elite. It's ended in debt, anger on the terraces and a whopping corporate collapse.
The fans who have shown commendable passion - whatever some might think of their motives - should be engaged, not disregarded as an inconvenient revenue stream.
That's what should happen.
It probably won't though.
The last few days have had the feel of a bizarre list of classified results as clubs hailing from what Jonathan Meades called "football pools towns" have declared their voting intentions.
There has been an avalanche of statements favouring the Division Three option. It says much for the unpredictability of recent events that I'm far from convinced the actual votes will be cast quite as decisively as that.
I'm tired and weary of the whole thing now. But am I alone in thinking that today is just another staging post, another day labelled historic that probably won't resolve very much at all?
Whatever happens it's unlikely that the uncertainty, the vitriol, the self-immolation of the last few weeks will end.
Expect the interchangeable malevolent cop-incompetent cop double act of the SPL's Neil Doncaster and the SFA's Stewart Regan to continue.
Expect this grubby chapter in the history of both those organisations to continue.
Expect SPL chairmen, silently hiding behind the contrived integrity of their "no to newco" vote, to continue to exert influence in the search for the outcome they want.
Expect them to pretend these are principled actions, the actions of men who know that the only way to save the game is to save the fans of all clubs from themselves.
Expect their very vocal supporters to champion them as the real heroes, the brave few doing their best to protect football from the wishes of the majority.
Expect them to ignore their own failings and the remarkable failure of the last 14 years, an intolerable status quo that they are determined to preserve even as they try and cover the unmentionables behind a fig leaf of "positive change."
Expect all that and more.
Expect to be enraged over and over again.
Expect this miserable story to run for a few more days or weeks yet, with a little more of what Scottish football should mean to fans dying with every hour.
But don't expect Regan, Doncaster or their organ grinders to meekly accept the outcome of today's meeting at Hampden if it doesn't end with the result they want.
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Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Rangers newco: Berwick say Division 3
And yet another statement.
Many clubs have embraced verbosity. Not so Berwick.
Less than 100 words.
The crucial line: "directly into SFL Division Three."
Berwick Rangers Board tonight agreed unanimously that should the new Rangers FC be admitted to the SFL for the new season, that they would support a move directly into SFL Division Three. The Club has also taken on board the feelings of their Supporters Club, Supporters Trust and the countless individual fans who have contacted them directly. There will be no further statement from the club on this matter.
From www.berwickrangersfc.co.uk
STV Sport has the latest on declared voting intentions
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Many clubs have embraced verbosity. Not so Berwick.
Less than 100 words.
The crucial line: "directly into SFL Division Three."
Berwick Rangers Board tonight agreed unanimously that should the new Rangers FC be admitted to the SFL for the new season, that they would support a move directly into SFL Division Three. The Club has also taken on board the feelings of their Supporters Club, Supporters Trust and the countless individual fans who have contacted them directly. There will be no further statement from the club on this matter.
From www.berwickrangersfc.co.uk
STV Sport has the latest on declared voting intentions
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Rangers newco: Clyde comment
Devoid as we are of international success it might be heartening that Scottish football is now head and shoulders above any other country when it comes to releasing statements.
Today it was the turn of Clyde.
Quite explosive this one. It seems to nail as hollow some of the threats that have been made, it questions the continued silence of most SPL clubs and draws attention once more to the uncertainty that still surrounds the Charles Green owned Rangers newco.
And it also suggests - perhaps more explicitly than any other club statement - that based on the information so far provided to the SFL the Rangers newco should not actually be admitted at any level.
It certainly seems to me that, whatever the outcome on Friday, it is going to be difficult for Scottish football to keep either Neil Doncaster or Stewart Regan in positions of such influence.
The board of Clyde Football Club met last night to consider how it might approach the resolutions (see below) to be voted on at the SFL meeting on Friday 13th July. This update is to inform our owners and supporters and hopefully explain some of the complexities that face the club when carefully and objectively considering how we might vote. We hope that by being as clear as possible about the difficulties surrounding this situation that the people able to support the process act swiftly to do so.
The overwhelming reality is that we are being asked to make one of the most important decisions for Scottish Football in a vacuum devoid of factual information, that vacuum having been filled with unhelpful rhetoric and scaremongering by the chief executives of the SFA and SPL.
We therefore looked at what we were being asked to vote on, how it fitted with the principles of the sport, and what information we might need to inform a logical decision in context of the current reality.
It was clear that the resolutions marked a clear departure from all previous process and custom and practice when considering admitting a team to the SFL, albeit operating within the rules of the SFL. It was in that context which we considered the resolutions. In reality, the customary principles of sport were not at the forefront of the resolutions.
We first concluded that there was limited risk to the SFL from the 'Armageddon' theory, as depicted in the detailed presentation by Neil Doncaster and supported by Stewart Regan, which had prompted fears of cash flow loss to the SFL next season. We have obtained a copy of the Settlement Agreement signed up to by the SPL and the SFL in April 1998 - it is clear that the agreement is not ambiguous in this regard and there is no scope for the SPL to fail to meet the obligations to the SFL except by deliberately breaching the agreement. Neil Doncaster was unequivocal when he said that there would be no payment under the agreement and stressed that it was not the board of the SPL that made big decisions, it was the clubs themselves. We have concluded that it defies credibility that the SPL clubs would instruct the SPL to deliberately breach a legal agreement. To assist the SFL clubs to take decisions in the right manner then the external threat should be removed by the SPL clubs, confirming to the SFL that they have not and will not instruct the SPL to breach the Settlement Agreement.
Consideration was then given to Resolution 1 which we concluded required to be reworded to be explicit that entry was to SFL3. The reason for this is that once entered to the SFL in the manner proposed under Resolution 1, we understand that it is within the power of the Board of the SFL to place a club into any league of their choosing. We believe that, due to the intolerable pressure placed on the SFL board to date by external parties, this resolution should be explicit to avoid the Board coming under pressure from either the SFA or SPL in the event that Resolution 2 is rejected. It is also our opinion that Resolution 1 being explicit sits more appropriately with Resolution 2 which in itself is explicit about where any club might play.
In terms of Resolution 1, whether reworded or not, it seemed inconceivable to the Board of Clyde that absolutely no information whatsoever has been provided to support the resolution. This is clearly a matter of haste and again driven by an external agenda, perhaps because Sevco have not lodged an application to join the SFL then they have not submitted any information. Whilst we have accepted that this is being treated as a special case and we are willing to run with this, it simply was not possible to conclude that we could make any decision at this time. The matter is made worse because of the extent of uncertainty which hangs over Sevco. There is no need to prepare an exhaustive list of the issues as they are well publicised, however the extent of outstanding sanctions that may or may not be levied against a club which has yet to obtain SFA membership, together with the increasing number of possible commercial and legal challenges to the transactions to date simply presents a significant risk to the ability of the club to fulfil its fixtures in any league. Given that some of these matters are in the hands of the governing bodies it seems inexplicable that they are left hanging. We are clear that for the good of the game that we would want a swift and positive conclusion that would see Rangers Football Club taking part in the game again and we would wish to be able to support a Resolution that saw them entered to SFL3. However, until we receive enough information to inform such a decision then we are being pushed into a corner which would actually leave any club making a logical decision arrive at the conclusion that Resolution 1 should not be supported. The SFA could assist the process by transferring the SFA membership to Sevco prior to the Friday meeting if they have satisfied themselves of fit and proper tests and have carried out their own diligence on the viability of the club and the various legal challenges.
Resolution 2 suffers from the same issues as Resolution 1, in that no information of any sort about Sevco, not even whether it will obtain SFA membership, leaves no possibility of making a decision about entry to the SFL based on facts or logic. Clearly it is incumbent on all the governing bodies to make available all factual information they have available if they truly want this process to have any chance of being recovered from the current chaos. At the very least the business plan for Sevco and any other information that led the SPL clubs to arrive at a decision should be made available to the SFL clubs, and not with inappropriately short notice, although that point has as good as passed. Resolution 2 was where the challenge to sporting integrity arose. It was impossible to engage with this concept without continually bearing in mind that the SFA had already undermined the prospects for any integrity to be maintained by making it clear that failure to deal with the admission of a newco to SFL3 would be a dereliction of duty. In effect posting notice that no matter what decision is taken by the SFL clubs to administer their league, the SFA would not tolerate anything other than SFL 1, an equivalent point having been made by Neil Doncaster on behalf of the SPL clubs. The stated position of the SFA and SPL chief executives means that, whilst this club can have faith in David Longmuir to do all in his power to deliver a new combined structure that meets the objectives of Resolution 2, we have no faith in the parties that the new arrangements would be negotiated with. Their behaviour to date is evidence enough for us. We should not be disingenuous on our own position in terms of the question of trading sporting integrity for transformational change to the way the game is governed that is posed by Resolution 2. We have said previously that there would be no winners and that compromise would be required at some point. With this in mind, had we worked through this process and seen positive collaborative behaviour from the leaders of the SFA and SPL and we were challenged with backing Resolution 2 in exchange for revolutionary change that would truly benefit the game as a whole, then we would have engaged with that. As it stands, we have no information on the proposals other than that distributed in advance of the meeting last week and no confidence in the parties that will control the process outside of the SFL. As such we would vote no to Resolution 2.
Resolution 3, as many have pointed out this resolution seems presumptuous as no invitation has been issued from the SPL to either club. Again, this arises because of the external pressures, the haste and the failure of other bodies to complete their own processes. As things stand, whilst Sevco/Newco was not voted into the SPL, it seems that the SPL still has 12 members based on the reported voting at the SPL meeting last week, albeit one of whom is in liquidation. It seems to make more sense that the SPL complete their processes and make the appropriate invitation for a club to join the SPL. We would seek to support whichever of our member clubs are invited to join the SPL to make that move, however, at the moment there is no certainty that Sevco will be entered into the SFL and the SFL should not risk leaving itself short of a team.
In summary, the complete absence of information on Sevco Scotland Ltd renders it impossible to vote with any logic in favour of any of the Resolutions. The default in these circumstances would unfortunately be to vote against. We hope and trust that this unacceptable situation will be resolved swiftly and will allow Clyde Football Club to support Resolution 1 from an informed position and will see Rangers Football Club playing in SFL3. We see Resolution 2 as a matter of trust and it would take a change of personnel and attitude for us to be confident that David Longmuir would be entering discussions with a group of people committed to a collaborative process in a spirit of genuine partnership. In the current circumstances our only decision could be to vote against Resolution 2. Subject to a satisfactory outcome on Resolution 1 we would support Resolution 3.
The three resolutions presented to the club are as follows:-
(i) That the Scottish Football League Members agree to admit Sevco Scotland Limited as an Associate Member and agrees to permit Rangers F.C. to play in the League during Season 2012/13.
(ii) That the Scottish Football League Members direct the Board of Management of The Scottish Football League (the “Board”) to provide that Rangers F.C. shall play in the Third Division of the Scottish Football League during Season 2012/13 unless the Board shall have to its satisfaction negotiated and reached agreement with The Scottish Premier League and The Scottish Football Association on a series of measures which the Board shall consider to be in the best interests of the game, how it is structured, how it is governed and how it is financed, whereupon the Board shall be authorised to provide that Rangers F.C. shall play in the First Division of the Scottish Football League during Season 2012/13.
(iii) That the Scottish Football League Members in terms of Rule 12 approve the resignation of either Dundee F.C. or Dunfermline Athletic F.C., whichever shall be admitted to join the Scottish Premier League for Season 2012/13, such resignation to take effect as at the date of admission of such club to the Scottish Premier League, notwithstanding that the requisite notice under Rule 12 shall not have been given.Details of the series of measures referred to at (ii) above shall be made available to the Members in advance of the meeting and an opportunity for full discussion of those measures will be given prior to the proposals being put to the meeting.
From www.clydefc.co.uk
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Today it was the turn of Clyde.
Quite explosive this one. It seems to nail as hollow some of the threats that have been made, it questions the continued silence of most SPL clubs and draws attention once more to the uncertainty that still surrounds the Charles Green owned Rangers newco.
And it also suggests - perhaps more explicitly than any other club statement - that based on the information so far provided to the SFL the Rangers newco should not actually be admitted at any level.
It certainly seems to me that, whatever the outcome on Friday, it is going to be difficult for Scottish football to keep either Neil Doncaster or Stewart Regan in positions of such influence.
The board of Clyde Football Club met last night to consider how it might approach the resolutions (see below) to be voted on at the SFL meeting on Friday 13th July. This update is to inform our owners and supporters and hopefully explain some of the complexities that face the club when carefully and objectively considering how we might vote. We hope that by being as clear as possible about the difficulties surrounding this situation that the people able to support the process act swiftly to do so.
The overwhelming reality is that we are being asked to make one of the most important decisions for Scottish Football in a vacuum devoid of factual information, that vacuum having been filled with unhelpful rhetoric and scaremongering by the chief executives of the SFA and SPL.
We therefore looked at what we were being asked to vote on, how it fitted with the principles of the sport, and what information we might need to inform a logical decision in context of the current reality.
It was clear that the resolutions marked a clear departure from all previous process and custom and practice when considering admitting a team to the SFL, albeit operating within the rules of the SFL. It was in that context which we considered the resolutions. In reality, the customary principles of sport were not at the forefront of the resolutions.
We first concluded that there was limited risk to the SFL from the 'Armageddon' theory, as depicted in the detailed presentation by Neil Doncaster and supported by Stewart Regan, which had prompted fears of cash flow loss to the SFL next season. We have obtained a copy of the Settlement Agreement signed up to by the SPL and the SFL in April 1998 - it is clear that the agreement is not ambiguous in this regard and there is no scope for the SPL to fail to meet the obligations to the SFL except by deliberately breaching the agreement. Neil Doncaster was unequivocal when he said that there would be no payment under the agreement and stressed that it was not the board of the SPL that made big decisions, it was the clubs themselves. We have concluded that it defies credibility that the SPL clubs would instruct the SPL to deliberately breach a legal agreement. To assist the SFL clubs to take decisions in the right manner then the external threat should be removed by the SPL clubs, confirming to the SFL that they have not and will not instruct the SPL to breach the Settlement Agreement.
Consideration was then given to Resolution 1 which we concluded required to be reworded to be explicit that entry was to SFL3. The reason for this is that once entered to the SFL in the manner proposed under Resolution 1, we understand that it is within the power of the Board of the SFL to place a club into any league of their choosing. We believe that, due to the intolerable pressure placed on the SFL board to date by external parties, this resolution should be explicit to avoid the Board coming under pressure from either the SFA or SPL in the event that Resolution 2 is rejected. It is also our opinion that Resolution 1 being explicit sits more appropriately with Resolution 2 which in itself is explicit about where any club might play.
In terms of Resolution 1, whether reworded or not, it seemed inconceivable to the Board of Clyde that absolutely no information whatsoever has been provided to support the resolution. This is clearly a matter of haste and again driven by an external agenda, perhaps because Sevco have not lodged an application to join the SFL then they have not submitted any information. Whilst we have accepted that this is being treated as a special case and we are willing to run with this, it simply was not possible to conclude that we could make any decision at this time. The matter is made worse because of the extent of uncertainty which hangs over Sevco. There is no need to prepare an exhaustive list of the issues as they are well publicised, however the extent of outstanding sanctions that may or may not be levied against a club which has yet to obtain SFA membership, together with the increasing number of possible commercial and legal challenges to the transactions to date simply presents a significant risk to the ability of the club to fulfil its fixtures in any league. Given that some of these matters are in the hands of the governing bodies it seems inexplicable that they are left hanging. We are clear that for the good of the game that we would want a swift and positive conclusion that would see Rangers Football Club taking part in the game again and we would wish to be able to support a Resolution that saw them entered to SFL3. However, until we receive enough information to inform such a decision then we are being pushed into a corner which would actually leave any club making a logical decision arrive at the conclusion that Resolution 1 should not be supported. The SFA could assist the process by transferring the SFA membership to Sevco prior to the Friday meeting if they have satisfied themselves of fit and proper tests and have carried out their own diligence on the viability of the club and the various legal challenges.
Resolution 2 suffers from the same issues as Resolution 1, in that no information of any sort about Sevco, not even whether it will obtain SFA membership, leaves no possibility of making a decision about entry to the SFL based on facts or logic. Clearly it is incumbent on all the governing bodies to make available all factual information they have available if they truly want this process to have any chance of being recovered from the current chaos. At the very least the business plan for Sevco and any other information that led the SPL clubs to arrive at a decision should be made available to the SFL clubs, and not with inappropriately short notice, although that point has as good as passed. Resolution 2 was where the challenge to sporting integrity arose. It was impossible to engage with this concept without continually bearing in mind that the SFA had already undermined the prospects for any integrity to be maintained by making it clear that failure to deal with the admission of a newco to SFL3 would be a dereliction of duty. In effect posting notice that no matter what decision is taken by the SFL clubs to administer their league, the SFA would not tolerate anything other than SFL 1, an equivalent point having been made by Neil Doncaster on behalf of the SPL clubs. The stated position of the SFA and SPL chief executives means that, whilst this club can have faith in David Longmuir to do all in his power to deliver a new combined structure that meets the objectives of Resolution 2, we have no faith in the parties that the new arrangements would be negotiated with. Their behaviour to date is evidence enough for us. We should not be disingenuous on our own position in terms of the question of trading sporting integrity for transformational change to the way the game is governed that is posed by Resolution 2. We have said previously that there would be no winners and that compromise would be required at some point. With this in mind, had we worked through this process and seen positive collaborative behaviour from the leaders of the SFA and SPL and we were challenged with backing Resolution 2 in exchange for revolutionary change that would truly benefit the game as a whole, then we would have engaged with that. As it stands, we have no information on the proposals other than that distributed in advance of the meeting last week and no confidence in the parties that will control the process outside of the SFL. As such we would vote no to Resolution 2.
Resolution 3, as many have pointed out this resolution seems presumptuous as no invitation has been issued from the SPL to either club. Again, this arises because of the external pressures, the haste and the failure of other bodies to complete their own processes. As things stand, whilst Sevco/Newco was not voted into the SPL, it seems that the SPL still has 12 members based on the reported voting at the SPL meeting last week, albeit one of whom is in liquidation. It seems to make more sense that the SPL complete their processes and make the appropriate invitation for a club to join the SPL. We would seek to support whichever of our member clubs are invited to join the SPL to make that move, however, at the moment there is no certainty that Sevco will be entered into the SFL and the SFL should not risk leaving itself short of a team.
In summary, the complete absence of information on Sevco Scotland Ltd renders it impossible to vote with any logic in favour of any of the Resolutions. The default in these circumstances would unfortunately be to vote against. We hope and trust that this unacceptable situation will be resolved swiftly and will allow Clyde Football Club to support Resolution 1 from an informed position and will see Rangers Football Club playing in SFL3. We see Resolution 2 as a matter of trust and it would take a change of personnel and attitude for us to be confident that David Longmuir would be entering discussions with a group of people committed to a collaborative process in a spirit of genuine partnership. In the current circumstances our only decision could be to vote against Resolution 2. Subject to a satisfactory outcome on Resolution 1 we would support Resolution 3.
The three resolutions presented to the club are as follows:-
(i) That the Scottish Football League Members agree to admit Sevco Scotland Limited as an Associate Member and agrees to permit Rangers F.C. to play in the League during Season 2012/13.
(ii) That the Scottish Football League Members direct the Board of Management of The Scottish Football League (the “Board”) to provide that Rangers F.C. shall play in the Third Division of the Scottish Football League during Season 2012/13 unless the Board shall have to its satisfaction negotiated and reached agreement with The Scottish Premier League and The Scottish Football Association on a series of measures which the Board shall consider to be in the best interests of the game, how it is structured, how it is governed and how it is financed, whereupon the Board shall be authorised to provide that Rangers F.C. shall play in the First Division of the Scottish Football League during Season 2012/13.
(iii) That the Scottish Football League Members in terms of Rule 12 approve the resignation of either Dundee F.C. or Dunfermline Athletic F.C., whichever shall be admitted to join the Scottish Premier League for Season 2012/13, such resignation to take effect as at the date of admission of such club to the Scottish Premier League, notwithstanding that the requisite notice under Rule 12 shall not have been given.Details of the series of measures referred to at (ii) above shall be made available to the Members in advance of the meeting and an opportunity for full discussion of those measures will be given prior to the proposals being put to the meeting.
From www.clydefc.co.uk
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Saturday, July 07, 2012
Rangers newco: Hamilton hit back
Another day, another statement.
Hamilton this time, again capturing the anger that SFL feel about the position they've been put in. And still no response from the SPL "no to newco" majority that could help allay these fears.
Coupled with the earlier statement from Raith might we be moving to a position where the SFL clubs refuse to take any vote on admitting the Rangers newco? That would certainly heap the pressure back on the SPL and SFA.
The full statement:
As you all know I attended the SFL meeting earlier this week to discuss the various proposals put to us by the SFA/SFL/SPL. We have subsequently had a board meeting to discuss the consequences of each of these scenarios. It is also now apparent that Rangers Newco will not play in the SPL next season.
As you are aware the proposal being favoured by the governing bodies is that Rangers Newco are parachuted into the Irn Bru SFL Division 1, contrary to Scottish Football League rules. If our Governing bodies ever get round to tabling any firm proposal to vote on it is unlikely in our opinion that this proposal, in isolation, would be acceptable to the members.
We believe that a complete overhaul of the game is required for the good of Scottish Football. League Reconstruction, play-offs, a fairer financial distribution model and a more effective Corporate Governance are some of the major issues which require to be addressed. The current circumstances we find ourselves in have created an opportunity for these changes to be implemented.
We believe the problems facing the game are not of the SFL’s making and as such would strongly suggest that the SFA, our governing body, take immediate ownership of the current situation in tandem with the two League bodies, and table a set of proposals at next week’s meeting providing a solution for the way forward in the best interests of Scottish Football.
In the meantime the situation changes daily and it is our view that HAFC and the other SFL clubs should not be put in the position to vote on something which may destroy Scottish Football.
Thank you for your support in these most challenging of times.
Les Gray
Chairman HAFC
From www.acciesfc.co.uk
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Hamilton this time, again capturing the anger that SFL feel about the position they've been put in. And still no response from the SPL "no to newco" majority that could help allay these fears.
Coupled with the earlier statement from Raith might we be moving to a position where the SFL clubs refuse to take any vote on admitting the Rangers newco? That would certainly heap the pressure back on the SPL and SFA.
The full statement:
As you all know I attended the SFL meeting earlier this week to discuss the various proposals put to us by the SFA/SFL/SPL. We have subsequently had a board meeting to discuss the consequences of each of these scenarios. It is also now apparent that Rangers Newco will not play in the SPL next season.
As you are aware the proposal being favoured by the governing bodies is that Rangers Newco are parachuted into the Irn Bru SFL Division 1, contrary to Scottish Football League rules. If our Governing bodies ever get round to tabling any firm proposal to vote on it is unlikely in our opinion that this proposal, in isolation, would be acceptable to the members.
We believe that a complete overhaul of the game is required for the good of Scottish Football. League Reconstruction, play-offs, a fairer financial distribution model and a more effective Corporate Governance are some of the major issues which require to be addressed. The current circumstances we find ourselves in have created an opportunity for these changes to be implemented.
We believe the problems facing the game are not of the SFL’s making and as such would strongly suggest that the SFA, our governing body, take immediate ownership of the current situation in tandem with the two League bodies, and table a set of proposals at next week’s meeting providing a solution for the way forward in the best interests of Scottish Football.
In the meantime the situation changes daily and it is our view that HAFC and the other SFL clubs should not be put in the position to vote on something which may destroy Scottish Football.
Thank you for your support in these most challenging of times.
Les Gray
Chairman HAFC
From www.acciesfc.co.uk
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Rangers newco: The wrath of Raith
In a football story jammed with villains, Raith Rovers have offered up one of the few men to be hailed as a heroe.
Director Turnbull Hutton has consistently called out the SFA and the SPL on their bullying and their half truths.
It was Hutton spoke of "corruption" on the steps of Hampden, the parish councillor taking the fight to the doors of Westminster.
On Friday evening Raith released a statement regarding next week's SFL vote.
It should make the SPL and the SFA - and anyone who does actually care about Scottish football - uncomfortable.
Note the focus on the question of Rangers' ownership. As far as I'm aware this is the first time any other club has expressed concern about the medium term viability of the Duff and Phelps/Charles Green carve up of the oldco's assets.
Perhaps nothing more than conjecture. But as I mentioned last week Stewart Regan and Neil Doncaster are taking an even bigger risk in so heavily pushing for the First Division compromise if they are not absolutely certain of the sustainability of the new Rangers ownership.
Attention is also brought - as it should be by each and everyone of us - to the essential cowardice of the SPL voting "no" and then shutting up shop, refusing to disown their own chief executives tactics and offering no support to the SFL clubs.
The Raith statement in full:
The club has this evening received the notice of resolutions to be voted on next Friday and we are told to expect an information pack at some time next week. We hope that this pack will present a more balanced report to SFL member clubs than they have so far received.
At last Tuesday’s meeting, financial information provided by Neil Doncaster showed an unrealistic worst case scenario. It showed the impact of potential total loss of 3 TV contracts, all of which had been inexplicably agreed on the basis that the broadcaster could walk away if either Rangers or Celtic were not in the SPL. His information did not, however, set out the potentially positive impact of negotiating replacement contracts with other broadcasters or alternatively the much mentioned possibility of launching SPL TV (which we understand could have been launched within a matter of months).
Mr Doncaster warned SFL members that if these contracts were indeed lost, this would mean the annual payment to the SFL under the Settlement Agreement would either be greatly reduced or not paid at all. Raith Rovers FC believes this not to be the case, and that the SPL would remain both contractually obliged and able to pay the £1.9m - £2m annual sum, even in that worst case scenario. We call upon the SFL Board to clarify its view on this vital point urgently, before club boards finalise their positions on these important votes.
We are also concerned that there has not as yet been an opportunity for clubs to receive legal advice from the SFL and/or debate the potential consequences on the smooth running of our league in the event that the Courts are asked to annull/strike down any of the corporate transactions that have led to the current position of Sevco Scotland Ltd as owners of certain assets of the Rangers oldco. Indeed, the position as regards the potential sanctions to be applied by the Scottish FA via its Appellate Tribunal has also still to be bottomed out. In summary, we remain concerned that the SPL clubs have overwhelmingly voted to pass on this potential time bomb, which may yet explode once passed to the SFL’s jurisdiction, and we are being asked to accept this new company into membership, worse still in our top division.
Without all of this information, and the opportunity for clubs to further discuss these issues on a fully informed basis amongst themselves before the formal SGM, in a similar format to last Tuesday’s meeting, we are concerned that the fairness and transparency of the process itself is at risk of being compromised.
Raith Rovers FC will consider its stance with regard to attendance at this meeting once we receive the information from the SFL.
From www.raithrovers.net
Director Turnbull Hutton has consistently called out the SFA and the SPL on their bullying and their half truths.
It was Hutton spoke of "corruption" on the steps of Hampden, the parish councillor taking the fight to the doors of Westminster.
On Friday evening Raith released a statement regarding next week's SFL vote.
It should make the SPL and the SFA - and anyone who does actually care about Scottish football - uncomfortable.
Note the focus on the question of Rangers' ownership. As far as I'm aware this is the first time any other club has expressed concern about the medium term viability of the Duff and Phelps/Charles Green carve up of the oldco's assets.
Perhaps nothing more than conjecture. But as I mentioned last week Stewart Regan and Neil Doncaster are taking an even bigger risk in so heavily pushing for the First Division compromise if they are not absolutely certain of the sustainability of the new Rangers ownership.
Attention is also brought - as it should be by each and everyone of us - to the essential cowardice of the SPL voting "no" and then shutting up shop, refusing to disown their own chief executives tactics and offering no support to the SFL clubs.
The Raith statement in full:
The club has this evening received the notice of resolutions to be voted on next Friday and we are told to expect an information pack at some time next week. We hope that this pack will present a more balanced report to SFL member clubs than they have so far received.
At last Tuesday’s meeting, financial information provided by Neil Doncaster showed an unrealistic worst case scenario. It showed the impact of potential total loss of 3 TV contracts, all of which had been inexplicably agreed on the basis that the broadcaster could walk away if either Rangers or Celtic were not in the SPL. His information did not, however, set out the potentially positive impact of negotiating replacement contracts with other broadcasters or alternatively the much mentioned possibility of launching SPL TV (which we understand could have been launched within a matter of months).
Mr Doncaster warned SFL members that if these contracts were indeed lost, this would mean the annual payment to the SFL under the Settlement Agreement would either be greatly reduced or not paid at all. Raith Rovers FC believes this not to be the case, and that the SPL would remain both contractually obliged and able to pay the £1.9m - £2m annual sum, even in that worst case scenario. We call upon the SFL Board to clarify its view on this vital point urgently, before club boards finalise their positions on these important votes.
We are also concerned that there has not as yet been an opportunity for clubs to receive legal advice from the SFL and/or debate the potential consequences on the smooth running of our league in the event that the Courts are asked to annull/strike down any of the corporate transactions that have led to the current position of Sevco Scotland Ltd as owners of certain assets of the Rangers oldco. Indeed, the position as regards the potential sanctions to be applied by the Scottish FA via its Appellate Tribunal has also still to be bottomed out. In summary, we remain concerned that the SPL clubs have overwhelmingly voted to pass on this potential time bomb, which may yet explode once passed to the SFL’s jurisdiction, and we are being asked to accept this new company into membership, worse still in our top division.
Without all of this information, and the opportunity for clubs to further discuss these issues on a fully informed basis amongst themselves before the formal SGM, in a similar format to last Tuesday’s meeting, we are concerned that the fairness and transparency of the process itself is at risk of being compromised.
Raith Rovers FC will consider its stance with regard to attendance at this meeting once we receive the information from the SFL.
From www.raithrovers.net
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