So, how many Scottish football bureaucrats does it take to change a light bulb? Rather a lot, I would imagine, although to be fair to the blazers, it looks as if the much-vaunted restructure of the Scottish football league is finally on the cards.
For some time now, the consensus of opinion has been that a radical restructure was essential. Initially, the McLeish Review (former First Minister Henry, as opposed to Nottingham Forest’s Alex!) suggested an overhaul would galvanise the game.
However, last year’s Rangers debacle ensured the debate assumed far greater significance – that is, the very survival of the game north of the border.
If that all sounds somewhat mellow-dramatic, consider the following salient points for a moment:
1 - The SPL, in light of Rangers’ liquidation and re-invention within the third division, has become a one horse race for the next three seasons at least. Broadcasters don’t make a habit of throwing good money at certainties.
2 - Attendances are plummeting, with most matches being played out in front of great swathes of emptiness at grounds throughout the country.
3 - The money has all but dried up, with most topflight clubs operating on shoestring budgets.
4 – The quality of play on offer has seriously diminished, with players of a standard lower than has been experienced in more than a generation.
5 – The national team has become a laughing stock, sinking slowly into the wilderness with little prospect of competing at a major competition any time soon.
We could go on, but that’s enough to emphasise the critical condition of the patient for now. However, the question remains – will restructure alone lead to an eventual return to robust good health? Or will it simply act as the life-support machine which will ultimately prolong the agony, before a lingering and painful demise?
The answer, as ever, depends on your point of view.
Here’s the optimist’s stance. A move to a 12-12-18 league structure will prove to be the lifeblood of the game for years to come, providing as it does a re-vamped fixture system of split formats and increased pay-offs, all serving to mitigate against a high number of meaningless matches over the closing months of the season.
There will also be a more equitable spread of the cash available among the lower division clubs, thereby reducing at a stroke the financial gulf between the haves and the have nots. And the bonus is the proposed merger of the SPL and SFL into a unitary body which will have the best interests of Scottish football as an entity at heart..
If all that sounds positive, we should be wary of the pessimist, who nods sagely at the plans, and keeps his views succinct – you can move things around all you like, he says, but changing the league structure is akin to shuffling the deck chairs around the Titanic as it slowly sinks towards the abyss, with not a rescue boat in sight.
The rationale here, of course, is that there are simply too many clubs operating in the senior ranks of the game in Scotland. 42 clubs for a population of little more than 5 million? England, for instance, has roughly twice as many clubs (92) for ten times the population of its northern neighbour.
Spain and Italy also have 42 senior clubs, but then their populations are 47 million and 61 million respectively. Germany’s 81 million residents are serviced by 36 senior clubs, and France’s 65 million have 40 clubs to choose from. Do your arithmetic, and it’s clear why many opine that the proposed changes are tinkering around the edges, as opposed to addressing the bigger picture.
So, it can be suggested that the league restructure, for all it is a step in the right direction, is simply not radical enough during this, Scottish football’s hour of need. League restructure may well maintain a lightly beating pulse, but the feeling persists that much more needs to be done to leave the heart beating strongly on a longer term basis.