Mr Chips

A while ago I became involved in a discussion with 7 other football fans - all Scottish - about the Manchester United v Roma game. We had all watched the game. None of us are Manchester United Fans. We just like watching good football. All of us are supporters of Scottish clubs in one way or another, some cannot attend but buy mechandise - others attend games. There were

2 Celtic, 2 Rangers, 1 Dundee United, 1 Hibs, 1 Dundee, 1 Aberdeen

During this discussion only the 2 Rangers fans indicated that they would watch the Lisbon v Rangers game. The general opinion was that the standard would be such that watching paint dry might be more interesting.

This then led on to a discussion on Scottish football in general and the concensus of opinion was that Scottish football was of a poor standard, badly run, going nowhere fast and frankly not worth the effort to support for most people. To support this view the following points were put forward.

1. All of us have Sky sports and watch English Premier league matches regularly. Generally there is a good atmoshphere with most games reasonably well supported and the standard of football is generally good.
2. All of us at one time or another have subscribed to Setanta and have watched Scottish Premier league games. None of us still subscribe. The reason is that we do not wish to pay £10 per month extra to watch football of a very poor standard, even the old firm teams are capable of producing poor displays on a regular basis. The atmoshphere at the games is generally equivalent to that at a wake. On many occasions the only football on TV was Scottish matches on Setanta and none of watched them. We have all recently been contacted by Setanta with an offer to renew our subscription for a fee of £5. We all declined. I recently received a phone call from Setanta as an ex subscriber attempting to get me to subscribe again with a offer of £5 per month for 3 months. I refused becasue I will not pay for a poor product. I do not watch the Scottish highlishts program as I would probably end up throwing myself out of the top floor window.
3. We have to wait until late on Monday night - when most kids, the future of Scottish football are in bed - to view highlights of this poor product made even worse by poor presenters, poor TV production etc. English premier league highlights are on at 10.30 pm on Saturday night, a reasonable hour, and for those who cannot stay up, Sunday morning at 07.30 am. Hey Ho, the kids - the future of football - can all watch. Have you taken a look around and noticed the number of Scottish kids who wear football shirts of English and Spanish clubs. They are being drawn away to support foreign leagues. Once lost will they come back ? Probably not. I stood next to a kid in a sports shop in Dundee a while back who was buying a Chelsea shirt. After chatting to him I discovered he was a Dundee United supporter bur did not have a Dundee United shirt.
4. We know of 3 groups of Scottish people resident in Scotland who regularly make trips down to watch Liverpool, Manchester United, Sunderland and Arsenal. None of them have the desire to watch a Scottish team.
5. We are all tired of watching the same p*sh where teams play each other 4 times - Oh sorry, I forgot about the diddy split where it means team might only face each other 3 times. In this mornings table we have Hearts in 7th place on 45 points and Abrerdeen in 6th Place on 44 points. Great!!!!! Gives credibility to the Scottish game.
Played Points
6 Aberdeen 34 44
7 Hearts 34 45

I remember at the end of last season a few Sky commentators laughing about the same thing.

We were all convinced that a final proper reconstruction of Scottish football, the elimination of meaningless games, and the exposure to more people, especially kids - the future of Scottish football - would help to secure the future of Scottish football. Our proposals are

1. Restructure the leagues so that we have 3 leagues with a Premier league of 16 clubs.
2. Introduce relegation of the bottom team of the lowest league. This would encourage some smaller teams to look to improve. At the moment the bottom teams plod along and we see very little improvement.
3. Scrap the league cup or whatever they call it now. It is meanigless and offers no prospect of a place in Europe so why play it.
4. Restructure the Scottish cup along the lines of the Champions league. Set a number of seeded mini leagues where each team play the other home and away. This would no doubt lead to the top teams getting through to subsequent rounds, these rounds to be played home and away - apart from the final - in most cases leaving the top teams to battle it out with each other for the honours. In this way most of top teams would play each other many times guaranteeing income.
5. Get rid of the 3 governing bodies and replace it with a single body.
6. Look at merging some of the smaller teams. What about merging league teams with junior teams ?
7. Put football back onto a platform with a decent production where the kids can see it at a reasonable hour. This might stimulate interest


These are just some ideas for one last meaningful change - in contrast to the oddball changes that have occurred in the past. If Scottish football does not make the effort soon then it will surely be consigned to the bin.