Sound Sense From WGS - But, Is Anyone Listening?

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.