Ah, the Scottish Premier League 'split' is almost upon us, a feature of every season since the Millennium. I think you can count on the fingers of one hand the number of Scottish football fans who like the split. Because of it we often end up with a league table where the team in seventh has more points than the team in sixth, or where some teams get to play an extra home game whilst others play one fewer. It doesn't feel right to a lot of us. We've had thirteen seasons to get familiar with it, and it still doesn't feel right.
Yet nobody seems to be able to come up with a better solution yet...or, at least, a solution that suits everyone.
Scottish football's Powers That Be have been trying to agree on a plan ever since the dawn of time (at least, that's how it feels), but last summer's debacle that saw Rangers end up in the fourth tier seemed to provide the necessary desire impetus for change. The Scottish Football League, representing the 30 clubs outwith the SPL, proposed a top division of 16 and an expanded League Cup, but that has been shot down as the SPL clubs want a smaller top flight - basically, so that their slice of the league's income is bigger and because a larger division means playing each other less often and missing out on one or two paydays from the Old Firm coming to down. So, at the moment, with reservations, the SFL appears to be supporting the plan proposed by the SPL (all these acronyms are bloody confusing, aren't they?) for a top division of 12, and a second tier of 12, which will split after 22 matches into three groups of 8. The main carrot for the smaller teams is a much wider spread of prize money and TV cash to the sides in the second tier. Yes, you're right - none of this is about the greater good. It's all about self-interest. How depressing.
The trouble is that the SPL clubs don't seem to be fully behind the plan their own organization has proposed. They plan to vote on implementing the plan in about three weeks - it needs 11 of the 12 clubs to vote in favour of it in order to pass (of course, this assumes the SFL clubs vote for it too). As it stands, Ross County seem set to vote against it. Having pledged to follow the will of the club's support, chairman Roy McGregor has discovered that County's fans are overwhelmingly opposed to the plan. Their main objection is the split after 22 matches - they don't think it's fair to pay for season tickets when they don't know who their opponents are for the last 14 games of the season.
St. Mirren's chairman has also been public with his reservations. The SPL's chief executive, Neil Doncaster continues to insist, when asked, that the clubs are all behind his plan, in the face of all the evidence to the contrary; whatever pills he is on, I'd like some of them.
Meanwhile, the clubs in the lower divisions hardly seem united behind the 12-12-18 plan either - not least because the goalposts keep getting shifted. The head of the SFL, David Longmuir, emailed his 30 members last week to suggest the addition of Old Firm 'colt' teams (that is, their reserve sides) to the bottom tier. This got shot down in flames publicly by the chairmen of Falkirk (Martin Ritchie) and Raith Rovers (the esteemed Turnbull Hutton, who you may recall as being one of the heroes of last summer's debacle) who pointed out to the embarrassment of Longmuir that, a few weeks earlier, the subject had been brought up at an SFL meeting and wholeheartedly rejected.
Longmuir's move was quite bizarre; I initially liked the idea of Rangers B and Celtic B in the bottom tier, on the grounds that I believed their fans would turn up in reasonable numbers to watch games at places like Montrose, Clyde etc and it would mean more cash for the small clubs. But, given the revelations in this weekend's Scotland On Sunday that, according to Strathclyde Police, the average attendances at Rangers and Celtic this season have plummeted below 40,000 (the clubs count their season ticket holders as present when giving figures to the press, in order to disguise the shoddy numbers), it seems unlikely the colt teams would attract much attention. Considering the mess the Rangers seniors are making of winning the third division, one wonders how well their reserve side would actually compete, at least initially. More than one journalist has openly considered that Longmuir might even be positioning himself for a job offer from Ibrox - we'll see how that goes.
The Gers' chief executive, Charles Green, continues to mouth off about the whole affair, painting his club as the big losers in the reconstruction plan, as, despite winning the third division, he claims they wouldn't be promoted as they'd be playing all the same teams again (plus a few extra), in the third tier of 18. Rangers would be no further away from the SPL - they'd still be two seasons adrift of returning to the top flight - but the club need the narrative of 'climbing the leagues' and beating everyone on the way in order to keep their supporters interested in watching the lousy football on display at Ibrox every fortnight. Given the crowds are nowhere near as large as Green's PR department would have you believe, it's no wonder he is fighting tooth and nail over this - including his humorous suggestion that Rangers should go straight into the second tier of 12 and bypass half a dozen more deserving second division teams on the way.
Of course, rather amusingly, Rangers are only associate members of the SFL, and therefore have no vote and no real voice in the proceedings.
So the debate rages on - today the SFL clubs met again to 'refine the reconstruction document'. The timetable for putting it in place for next season is now tighter than Eric Pickles' thong (now there's a simile to put you off your dinner) - the current season finishes in less than two months and, presumably, the 2013-14 campaign kicks off in late July, only four months away. The 12-12-18 plan, if implemented, would mean no relegation from the first division or second division this season plus a need for refinement of the second division playoffs and the scrapping of the third division playoffs. So there are several clubs who are unsure what their current league position means with only seven or eight matches left. What. A. Farce.
Frankly, it's too late already. There is no sign of any consensus, and the plan looks destined to fail. Better to set the deadline back a season and take some time to sort this out. Though, given the various organizations have been arguing over this subject for as long as I can remember, another year may not make the slightest difference.
Of course, there is a wild card in all this. The SFA had said last summer that they would step in and take control of the situation if necessary - after all, they are supposed to be in charge of the whole thing. So far, there's not been a peep from them. If I was generous, I would call it a laissez-faire attitude. But to outsiders like me, they simply appear to be fiddling while Scottish football burns.
L.
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