IT
WASN'T until the weekend there,
some eight days post-broadcast, that I caught up with Wee Gordon
Strachan's (WGS') comments on Scottish football, on Sportsound.
The wee man spoke a lot of sense
The
Wee Man spoke a lot of sense. However, since he is “Wee
Strachan,” who has
never been flavour of the month with the intellectual giants of the
Scottish Football
Writers Association, the
former Scotland boss, turned Dundee
FC back-room boy's
thoughts are liable to go unheeded.
On
the same programme, we also had further words of wisdom from former
Herald Chief Football
Writer and SFA
Head of Media Darryl Broadfoot. This
being BBC Shortbread,
however, their wise
words had to be counter-pointed by the usual half-witted pish from my
old mucker Chick
Young.
I
am afraid, however, Scottish fitba is gong to continue its
glacier-like progress down the stank for a few years yet, since there
is – Strachan apart – a refusal to face facts. It's almost as if
dear old General
Melchett has morphed
into Rod Petrie.
The Gospel according to General Melchett - or is it Rod Petrie?
The
most-controversial point WGS made was: “Half
of our so-called senior professional clubs are not really
professional.” In
that, he's correct. Of our 42 so-called senior teams, only 20 are
full-time, and most of them have never produced a player who went on
to do anything worth-while in the game over about half a century.
OK,
Scottish Fitba tends to hide behind some statistic which indicates,
on a per capita basis, our attendances at senior football are the
highest in Europe. Well, take away the unbalancing effect of The
Old Firm, and
the figures do not look so good.
Indeed,
more often than not, the attendance at whichever one of the Bigot
Brothers is
at home frequently exceeds the combined attendances at the other five
SPFL Premiership fixtures that weekend.
For
instance, take the last weekend of Scottish football, before the
lockdown, Saturday/Sunday
7/8 March:
The
total attendances over the 21 matches that weekend was: 126,999.
Of
that, 51.5% were at the two matches involving The Old Firm. 58,998
were at Celtic Park for the Celtic v St Mirren game, and 6406 were at
the Ross County v Rangers game at Dingwall.
The
other four Premier Divison games attracted a total attendance of
36,880 – 29% of the total.
The
five Championship games attracted a combined attendance of 15,142
fans – that's just under 12% - and more than half of those fans
were at one game – Dundee United v Partuck Thistle.
The
Five League One games attracted a total attendance of 7,220, that's
5.7% of the totalo.
The
five League Two games attracted a total attendance of 2353 – which
is 1.85%.
These
figures demonstrate how unbalanced Scottish “Senior” football is,
with the combined attendance totals of the ten games in the two
lowest divisions not even reaching 10,000 fans – and only two of
the five Premier Division games (excluding the Celtic match)
attracting five-figure crowds.
Clearly,
the tail on the SPFL “dog” is clearly too-big and not wagging too
well.
The
population of Scotland
currently stands at around 5.5
million,
there are 42 senior football teams – one team for every 133,000
people.
The
West
Midlands Metropolitan County in
England has a population of 5,980,000
– it
is home to ten clubs playing within the English
Premiership and
the English
Football League. That's
one club for every 598,000 people.
These
clubs are: Aston
Villa, Wolverhampton Wanderers (Premiership), Birmingham City, Stoke
City, West Bromwich Albion (EFL Championship), Burton Albion,
Coventry City, Shrewsbury Town, Walsall (EFL League One) and
Port
Vale (EFL League Two).
To
me, ten clubs spread among 5.9 million people makes more sense than
42 spread among 5.5 million.
As things stand, fitba faces a very-uncertain future, for a start, we don't know when it will resume, and we certainly don't know how many clubs will fail to survive the shock to their fiscal systems which ahs been this pandemic.
Things will change when we re-start, some of these changes will be seismic.
For
as long as we view re-organisation as having to involve maintaining at least 42
senior clubs – we are going nowhere.
For
as long as we continue to allow the two biggest clubs to do as they
like – we are going nowhere.
For
as long as we allow unfettered recruitment of non-Scots, to the
detriment of Scottish players – we are going nowhere.
Bring
back the three foreigners rule.
Cut
the number of senior clubs to a maximum of 20.
Have
the Scottish League re-organised into a two x ten-club conference
system, of equal standing.
Limit
squad numbers to a maximum of 25 players, at least 80% of which
should be “Scotland-qualified.”
The
present “senior” sides which lose that status in our
re-organisation are re-designated as “Minor League Clubs.”
These
MLCs could, as in American baseball, be linked to a “Senior” of
Major League Club.
The
Minor League should be mostly Under-23 leagues – 75% of each squad
should meet that age criteria.
No
further re-organisation for at least ten years, let's give the new
system time to see if it works.
Finally
– let's hope a North American professional sport-type European
League kicks-off some time soon, and we can get rid of the Bigot
Brothers into it.
Because,
without them, we would habve a much-fairer and more exciting league
and Scottish football would be a lot healthier.
