It's all about the money

The BBC's annual Price of Football survey is always guaranteed to generate plenty of chat.

Chat that normally concludes: "The price of football? It's far too expensive."

Which at many clubs it almost certainly is.

The clubs argue that the survey offers no more than a snapshot, a glib spot of attention seeking that ignore the bigger picture.

Hibs, for example, suggested that the headline figure of £405 for an adult season ticket is offset by special deals like £1 offers for children.

(I, like Whitney Houston, believe children are the future. But unless I can borrow one for matchdays, I can't actually benefit from those deals. A lot of people are in the same position. Football's hidden discrimination against the childless is worthy of investigation.)

Is football value for money? Its fiscal beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

How can you even measure value for money? Cost per home win? (So far this season that's £202.50 for me at Easter Road.) Cost per home goal? (So far £67.50).

If you thought about value for money, you probably wouldn't bother going to games.

Supporting a team doesn't work like that.

What the Price of Football survey actually raises is yet another split between clubs and fans.

Clubs operate as businesses. Fans don't - usually - see themselves as consumers.

The more far sighted clubs will try and bridge that gap. But most still use it in the most dastardly way possible to wring every last drop of cash out of supporters. You'll pay for your loyalty, they'll make sure of it.

And fans tend to let them get on with it if the team is performing. It's the rank rotten football of the last few seasons that has left many fans drifting away from Easter Road, not the cost of watching it.

Maybe fans do have a tipping point though. Just last Saturday a revived Scotland were under supported against Georgia at Ibrox.

You might have put money on the befuddled SFA being the organisation that finally pushed its fans too far.

Because that's the one power fans have: to not turn up.

Unfortunately for many people that option is actually worse than going and paying inflated prices.

It's "our" team. And what else would we do on a Saturday afternoon anyway?

So we let the clubs get away with it.

And so it goes on. Until next year. When the BBC Price of Football 2015 will reveal exactly the same thing again.

The pies have it

One thing that is in my control - a boycott of the catering kiosks at Easter Road.

I give them chance after chance.

Last Saturday I bought a pie. Here are the results of my exclusive survey:

Queuing time: 16 minutes
Cost: £2.30
Taste: 0/10
Enjoyment time: 0 seconds

Never again. And this time I really mean it.

League Cup: Rangers v Motherwell

Order returned to the Scottish Communities League Cup last night with six SPL clubs beating lower league opposition.

Not a cakewalk for them all - Inverness needed penalties to get past Stenhousemuir, St Mirren waited until stoppage time to get the winner against Hamilton - and their efforts appear to have been met with a wave of apathy.

Apparently you could fit the combined attendance for the six games into Celtic Park and still have 30,000 empty seats.

Say what you like about the league cup but it's consistent. Every year the same:

A round where a few upsets are taken to prove the theory that there is so little to choose between the leagues that the SPL should be dramatically expanded forthwith.

A round where pitifully low attendances are taken to prove the theory that the competition has run its course and should continue only after extreme surgery.

Quite comforting in its own way.

Combining the two, reworking the league cup as part of the (hopefully) impending reworking of the league structure, might be a good place to start.

But those are questions for another day, to be chewed over by the great and good of the Scottish game.

In the meantime we can enjoy another fun game of cross-division "my attendance is bigger than yours" as Rangers host Motherwell at Ibrox.

When the dust settled after the summer's soul searching it always seemed likely that Rangers would face SPL opposition at some point this season.

The league cup draw was kind enough to throw up this peculiar spectacle relatively early.

The last time Rangers and Motherwell met in this competition Rangers won a 2010/11 semi final 2-1 en route to the trophy.

Less than two years later Motherwell sit top of the SPL - a Champions League qualifying appearance behind them - and Rangers lie second in the Third Division.

At times I think we're maybe too close to recent events, too drained by the tedium of the ever decreasing circles of vitriol and conspiracy theorising that surrounds it, to properly appreciate how spectacularly the game has been turned on its head.

All of which adds another level of intrigue to tonight's game.

It's hard to imagine any other set of circumstance that would see a team that hasn't won away from home in the fourth tier enter a game against a side unbeaten in the top flight as favourites.

But there we have it. Rangers are 6/4 to win. Motherwell are 7/4 to win.

This is Scottish football and normality has been suspended for the duration.

For all that their away form has been laboured, Rangers have scored 17 goals in five home games.

But there's only one clean sheet in that run and they were shunted out of the Challenge Cup by Queen of the South.

Motherwell will be their biggest test so far. And I'm still struggling to see how this one will go.

If Ally McCoist can't motivate his players tonight then his position deserves to be questioned.

And Motherwell's record against Rangers can't be ignored. The last time they won at Ibrox Tony Blair had only been Prime Minister for four days. He wasn't even bathing in creosote back then.

A tricky one.

Rangers to start strongly, maybe nick a lead and Motherwell to eventually prevail? A half-time/full-time home/away combo at 20-1 looks generous.

In a game that would seem to promise goals you can get the same price for either side to win 3-2.

I fancy it will be close and Motherwell might just nick it. I'd not be shocked if they don't though.

Elsewhere this evening Aberdeen travel to Dunfermline as favourites - a label they've not always worn comfortably against lower league opposition.

Dunfermline manager Jim Jefferies has apparently promised to "have a right good go."

In seven games this season his side have lost only one, scored 18 and conceded just three goals. They look equipped for the job of right good going.

Aberdeen have beaten only St Johnstone in the SPL and required extra time to get past Morton in the last round.

I feel I should be more confident about Dunfermline's chances of pulling this off than I am.

Perhaps I'm being persuaded by Aberdeen's resilience in saving a last gasp point in their 3-3 draw with Motherwell at the weekend.

A nice simple 2-0 win for the SPL side? 9/1.

Tempting. But would a lower league shock actually shock me? 2-1 to Dunfermline? 10/1.

I might just settle for a Motherwell - Dunfermline double at 8.80/1.

It's going to be an interesting night.

All odds from Ladbrokes

Always remembering www.gambleaware.co.uk

SPL: Scottish Poundland League

If European exits weren't enough to depress us each summer we can always count on the annual Pricewaterhouse Cooper (PwC) report into the finances of the SPL to send our mood the way of the August weather.

Another year, another slap in the face for those of searching longingly for the fabled green shoots of recovery.

This year's report, Fighting for the Future: Scottish Premier League Football, shows the 2009/10 season delivered a small overall profit for the top flight clubs and a drop in the wage to turnover ratio.

Accentuate the positives?

Some will. But there's another tale to tell. Here's David Glen, head of tax for PwC, ripping off our rose tinted specs:

"Both Hearts and Kilmarnock results were boosted by related parties forgiving £8m and £1m of debt respectively, so the financial results posted don’t reflect the underlying performance of the club. While Rangers performance in the Champions League group phase turned a prior year operating loss of £8.5m into a £12.4m operating profit - a substantial £20.9m swing that is substantially down to their European performance.

"So by making reasonable adjustments for these two factors, the reality is that the SPL generated an underlying loss of around £16m. Adjusted turnover was around £156m, representing a fall of 6 per cent and the underlying operating loss was £6m, with only the Old Firm and Dundee United producing an operating profit - every other club was loss making at this level." (CA Magazine)

And what of the supporters? The report states:

"Overall, the average gate was down 10% this year, with a total of 347,000 fewer fans attending SPL games compared to last season, and I would argue that a fall of this magnitude is not solely due to the financial climate.

"Indeed, over the past four years attendances have fallen by over half a million fans a season, therefore other causal factors must be in play."

Neil Doncaster, the SPL chief executive, was quick to respond on his blog:

"The Clydesdale Bank Premier League is still the best supported league per head of the population anywhere in Europe, with 85,000 fans (ie one in 63 of the entire population of Scotland) attending matches each week."

Not to be sniffed at. But the 500,000+ figure suggests that around 10 or 11 percent of the population have skedaddled in the past five seasons.

Doncaster goes on:

"Over the same year, English Premier League clubs announced combined losses of an incredible £445million and Championship clubs of around £130million"

Shocking figures those. But tempered by a much bigger customer base and, crucially, much bigger TV deals.

And what's this from Mr D?

"Our best players and managers continue to remain desirable to the financial juggernauts of the English Premier League."

So we should be scrambling to the moral high ground to get a proper look at the big boys down south but at the same time we should be quite happy that our unsustainable business model is only sustainable if we profit from their unsustainable business model?

Welcome to Doncasternomics.

There's more:

"Indeed, early figures from Motherwell suggest that season ticket numbers are up around 10 percent so far this season."

Good. But knock me down with a feather if those "early figures" come close to being replicated across the rest of the league.

And another for luck:

"Early indications this season are that TV viewer numbers for SPL matches are well up on last year, which in turn showed a huge improvement on the year before."

Magic. Although "early indications" neccessarily measure games played without competitive football being played south of the border.

And while last year's TV figures increased by 35 percent this only represented around 9.7 million people. Across 60 live games that's an average of around 160,000 per match and I'll speculate that certain events might have artificially increased interest in the later Old Firm clashes of the season.

Those figures don't suggest to me that an SPL TV channel is sustainable or that a new deal with Sky and/or ESPN is likely to massively improve on the existing income.

That means the clubs will have to rely on matchday income and that, however it's spun, makes this year's PwC report another grim read.

Only last week I was writing:

"The normal rebuttal to this is that when quality returns on the pitch the fans will flock once more to our soccer citadels.

"That's a dangerously complacent attitude. People are annoyed. They're annoyed at what they see on the pitch, annoyed at ever increasing costs, annoyed that TV and incompetence rob them of games at 3pm on a Saturday afternoon, annoyed that the comforting repetition of home-away-home-away fixtures seems lost forever.

"There's a real risk, not just for Hibs, that when these fans disappear they won't come back. A bond is being broken that won't be easily repaired, a rift that will do long term damage just as much as it gives accountants headaches in the short term."

The other great hope is the world economy. Clearly our continued recessionary travails don't help matters but I'm not sure we should have complete confidence in a global financial recovery sparking a return to a Scottish footballing golden age. I don't see Gideon Osborne as a soccer saviour.

PwC seem to agree:

"When the economy starts to fully recover, there is no guarantee that fans will flock back to the turnstiles. There is a real danger of losing a generation of football fans; once you lose your customers, it’s hard to win them back."

As chief executive Neil Doncaster is almost duty bound to find the positives. He'll remember just fine what happened when Gerald Ratner started telling the truth. It's probably easier if, as he did yesterday, he says a lot without saying anything at all.

It still leaves us searching for answers though.

> The ever on the ball STV Sport website has a club-by-club run down of the PwC report

> The report itself can be downloaded (after free registration) here

SPL: Hamilton's Fate Sealed

In the end Hamilton had left their late rally too late. A good couple of months too late.

A season that began with back to back 4-0 defeats ended last night in relegation with a game to spare.

St Johnstone ended up the executioners. But Hamilton had were the authors their own death warrant.

Recent form suggested Hamilton were determined to cling on, to make a real fight it. But there was too much to do.

Too much for a team that have been unfailingly ineffectual - and often just downright bad - this season.

The late display of some tenacity perhaps looked more impressive because it came in a season of such misery.

After losing eight goals in their two opening games Hamilton then won 1-0 at Inverness. Another six games passed without a win before they went to Motherwell and secured another 1-0 victory.

That game was on the 30th October. It wasn't until the 17th of April - 22 league games later - that Hamilton won again with a 2-1 victory at Easter Road.

It was that win over Hibs that sparked the mini revival, a draw against Aberdeen was then followed by a win away to St Mirren and the first home win of the season against Hibs.

None of it was ever likely to be enough. Their only real hope would have been if they could play Hibs every week.

What went wrong?

Players offering quality left and the resources were not there to replace them adequately.

The lack of a proper goalscorer will be mentioned in many a post mortem. And, self evidently, a return of 23 goals so far this season is woeful.

But St Johnstone share that dire scoring record. The Perth side have converted those 23 goals into 11 wins compared to Hamilton's 5 and 43 points to Hamilton's 26.

The lack of goals hasn't helped but it's not the only cause of Hamilton's failure. The dearth of quality runs throughout the team, the shortage of goals as much a symptom of problems elsewhere as it is a reason for their relegation.

The buck stops with the manager?

It does.

But Billy Reid has had Hamilton punching above their weight for a while now. He simply ran out of options. Does he now regret not leaving on one of the many occasions when his name was linked with other jobs?

Worryingly for a team about to drop into the First Division is Hamilton's lack of fight at times this season. Even the more creditable results during that long spell without a win seemed to be caused more by ineffective opposition than any triumph of Hamilton's collective will.

Pundits like to talk about teams on a bad run of form suddenly getting nothing but bad luck.

Maybe it consoles those in the game to resort to superstition rather than lay blame or start making accusations of incompetence.

But bad teams don't need bad luck or a witch's curse to go down. Being bad is often enough. And Hamilton have been bad this season.

All of which should serve as a wake up call to the clubs immediately above them.

There but for the grace of Hamilton's lack of ability go St Mirren, Aberdeen or Hibs.

Where next for Hamilton?

The First Division is an inhospitable place where penury rules and a long season beckons. Belts will need to be tightened. Rumours earlier this season suggested the Accies were but a couple more weeks of bad weather away from major financial collapse.

Maybe that was just whisper and supposition. But they certainly look set to let a major cost cutting excercise loose on a squad that is already struggling.

This year their average attendance has dropped below 3000. Only Gretna have suffered that ignominy in the SPL before. Even as they sought to establish themsevles as a fixture in the top flight Hamilton have been shedding fans.

Will relegation persuade them back?

A struggling squad likely to be further weakened, penny pinching the order of the day. And a real need to start somehow reconnecting with supporters.

Yesterday was a dark day for Hamilton.

Unfortunately for them I can't see anyone turning the light back on in a hurry.

Scottish Cup: All Well At Fir Park

Motherwell 3 v 0 Dundee United

Blimey.

The curse of The Scottish Football Blog's predictions strikes again.

I said away win.

Instead Motherwell dominated proceedings, goals from Jamie Murphy, Chris Humphrey and Francis Jeffers sealing a place in the semi finals.

Motherwell's unpredictability is becoming a predictable cliche now. But still. It is quite remarkable.

So the Scottish Cup semi-finals are now set.

Motherwell play St Johnstone on 16th April with Aberdeen and Celtic meeting the following day.

It's an interesting line up. And not one many people would have predicted.

Tonight's attendance

Motherwell made the decision to charge only £10 and £5 for tonight's game.

A welcome initiative that the fans seemed to respond to, 8,337 turning out.

I've done a very quick check and leaving out the visits of the Old Firm - who regularly bump the Fir Park crowd over 9000 - I make that the highest attendance at Fir Park since 9105 watched the 1-0 defeat to Odense back in August.

Again, leaving aside the Old Firm, only twice (Hibs in August and Aberdeen in September) have SPL opposition attracted over 5000 to Fir Park this season. 7,721 were in attendance for the European game against Aalesunds and almost 6000 for the match against Breidablik.

So congratulations to Motherwell for a brave ticketing decision and fair play to the fans for responding.

Here's the thing though: If the game had been shown on Sky and 2000 fans had turned up, Motherwell would probably have made more money than they did tonight.

As ever, there are no easy answers in Scottish football.

Friday Night Football

Would you be happy if you were going to a Scottish football match this evening?

There is a suggestion that the SPL might be looking at playing games on Fridays as part of their backlog clearing plans.

The talk seems to be of the April holiday Fridays, although as these are both after the split I'm not sure what the need is.

Anyway, it has led to some discussion about Friday kick offs. An experiment tried in both the league and the Scottish Cup in the 1990's when Sky first got involved with the Scottish game.

Henry McLeish also backed the idea in part two of the McLeish Report:

There has to be a greater level of innovation and for example why shouldn’t SFL clubs be able to play on a Friday evening if that represents a response to the changing patterns of social and family life and has the support of clubs, fans and the authorities.

Certainly it seems odd that Partick Thistle can't play at Firhill on a Friday evening but Glasgow's pro rugby side can.

I'm not against the idea. I think Friday games might be appealing to fans especially in the spring and summer months of the season.

Setanta actually wanted 7.45pm kick offs on Friday evenings when they had the SPL television contract.

That met with this response from the police:

Kevin Smith, assistant chief constable at Strathclyde Police and the lead officer on football for the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland (Acpos), described the Friday games as "unacceptable".

He added: "Acpos does not support scheduling football matches on a Friday night as such events place too great a demand on police resources at a time when the demand from communities is at its highest.

"I think this is a common sense approach and allows us to focus our resources in communities throughout Scotland."

One police source went even further, however, saying that should the SPL push on and include the Friday matches in its schedule, forces would refuse to send their officers to police the games. (Sunday Herald, 23 July 2006)

Worth the footballing authorities exploring if that is the still the case. I suspect it might be.

Leaving aside the SPL, that the police apparently consider this a blanket ban is outrageous. If there is any evidence to suggest that fans would the respond to Friday night football then the SFL should be screaming to get them to change their minds.

It's not a new idea but it worth exploring. Time to get together with the police and at least finding a way of trialling Friday night games.

> I'd appreciate your thoughts on the idea of Friday football. Comment in the usual way.

SPL Reconstruction: Everything Changes, Everything Stays The Same

Much more to write on SPL reconstruction when I get the time. Unscientific in the field polling suggests that Rangers' Martin Bain loves the proposals he helped write. Derek Longmuir of the Scottish Football League doesn't like them and doesn't think his clubs will either.

Many fans seem to think the new proposals are a bit of a muddle that fail to address the real issues. "Rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic" and "Revolution? I suppose you can revolve backwards" are a flavour of the comments I've heard so far.

A couple of quick points: when people (like me) argued for a streamlining of football administration in Scotland they probably weren't advocating the SPL land grab that these proposals would deliver.

Why the rush? Surely the SPL didn't want to get their ideas out before the second part of the McLeish Report delivers a different set of findings based on much wider consultations? We'll see.

And given the state of many of our SPL clubs and their rickety finances why are their chairmen and chief executives the best people to decide the future of the national game? It's like making Bernard Madoff chancellor.

Right, that's enough for now.

But no apologies for pointing you in the direction of a couple of articles on the Scottish Football Archive:

Scottish Top Division Reconstruction: Championships

Statistically, in terms of non-Old Firm dominance, the 9 year period of the 16 team format between 1946-47 and 1954-55 was the best.

The league has been through twenty reconstructions and this is only the 113th season and both stability and change have shown varying degrees of success in terms of breaking the Old Firm dominance over the league - but the Old Firm dominance appears to be something that Scottish football fans have to live with, while hoping for brief periods of change.

Scottish Top Division Reconstruction - Attendances

Four of the seven seasons after a reconstruction, the attendances have dropped.

So, as well as highlighted in the earlier post than the 9 year period of the 16 team format (30 games a year) were the best for non-Old Firm dominance, that 9 year period was also one of the most successful for attendances.

It would also point towards the fact that less games (only 30 in a 16 team format) actually causes higher attendances, in terms of simple supply and demand perhaps?

Lied, damned lies and statistics? Possibly (and I'm quoting selectively but I think give a flavour of their findings) but some interesting theories nonetheless. Football, and society, have changed to such an extent that comparisons can only tell us so much. But it does provide a counter argument to the idea that a ten team league has delivered our nearest brush with footballing utopia.

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Where is everybody?

A report in Rupert Murdoch's S*n today about SPL attendances this season.

And, surprise, it doesn't make for a particular cheery read:

Figures calculated by the SPL up to the top-six split showed Hearts are one of just THREE teams whose average attendance has gone up this season.

Kilmarnock and Falkirk have shown marginal improvements, but for other sides the attendance figures make grim reading.

Celtic's average gates this season are down by more than 11,000 and Parkhead was half-empty for the visit of Hibs last weekend.

Aberdeen, Dundee United, St Mirren and Hamilton have also seen major drops, while Hibs and Motherwell made smaller losses.

Even Rangers, despite going for their second successive title, are being watched by an average of 2,000 people less than last season.

These statistics need more analysis than I've got time to do at the moment. But a quick check reveals that Hearts' growth still leaves them down on where they were a couple of years ago.

And Hibs are now well below the "break-even" figure that the club said they needed to hit a couple of years ago. Although having only three stands for part of this season is partly to blame.

Dundee United's drop would seem to be the most worrying - this is a club enjoying their most successful season for years with the press gushing about the belief at Tannadice. For those who turn up anyway.

Reasons for the slump? Not really got time for that either because there are a hell of a lot.

But I will jump on my favourite hobby horse (one of them) and say that the SPL needs to return to clubs playing one game at home, one game away.

Going to games is a habit (and it's difficult to get people back into the habit once they've gone) and a home game every other week is a far easier pattern to develop than the mess of a fixture list we've got just now.

Is it worth it?

Up on the roof.

Two intrepid souls find a new way to watch Hibs and Rangers in a not so very scintallating no score draw.

Apparently they left at half time to get a carry out. Which, if nothing else, probably made them the envy of the fans inside the ground.

Seriously guys, there must be 100 pubs within a mile of the roof that were showing the game on TV.

I hear Rod Petrie is trying to track them down to get them to pay for a match ticket.

Hearts fans come out - but is it enough?

Regular readers will know that I am occasionally perplexed by the Romanov regime at Tynecastle. Occasionally perplexed and often supremely cynical.

But Vladimir promised to bring the fans back into Tynecastle. And, in that, he has been successful. This season Hearts’ total attendance has risen to 428,000. This figure would have been far closer to the half million mark if their Champion’s League and UEFA Cup fixtures had worked out differently.

The figures, somewhat obviously hailed as "fan-tastic" by the Evening News, are, to borrow punnery from the Edinburgh tabloid, heart-ening. Yet they also show the size of Romanov’s task if he is to compete with the Old Firm.

Based on their last home attendances it would take Celtic just over seven games to achieve the same total. Rangers would surpass it in little over eight and a half games.

Lies, damned lies and statistics? Possibly. But it shows the disparity that any Old Firm challengers face.

Whatever else Romanov brings to the party he’s going to need come up with some way of levelling the playing field. A new stadium might be the start. We can only watch and wait.