We start the week with a look at the Scottish Premier League's announcement that they will recommend a 10-team SPL.
By J Hutcherson - WASHINGTON, DC (Jan 17, 2011) US Soccer Players -- If you preferred your Scottish Premier League with 10 clubs instead of 12, the SPL leadership has an announcement you might find interesting. On Monday, they released their conclusion for the future structure of the top two tiers of Scottish soccer. 10 teams for the Premier League and 12 for the second division. This is a step in a process before Scotland actually returns to a 10-team topflight, but it's a significant step.
As we've talked about before, this isn't a fix for the Scottish club game. It might not even be a push towards an eventual fix. It's a tweak, no doubt. But it's a tweak from a league structure that's shown no hesitation in the past for making adjustments.
It's worth pointing out that's been true for some English clubs as well. Though the immediate financial impact of promotion to England's Premier League is considerably greater than Scotland's, there's still a relative to scale issue. The clubs normally being promoted to England's topflight aren't as normally out of their depth.
Look at in terms of stadiums. There are enough clubs with 20,000 capacity venues outside of the English Premier League. In Scotland's Premier League this season, three of the 12 clubs have a listed stadium capacity of under 10,000 and a fourth is just over at 10,673. It's a significant jump from the third largest stadium in the league at 22,199 to the second largest at 51,082. This isn't Major League Soccer, where there are a few teams playing in over-sized stadiums. Rangers and Celtic are normally playing near capacity at 51,082 and 60,832.
Drop down a division, and half of the 10-team Scottish First Division play in stadiums with listed capacities at under 10k. The biggest stadium in the league is listed at 12,509. Again, by comparison there are two teams playing four divisions down in England's Football League Two with stadiums that hold over 20k and a third right at 20k.
You could make the argument that the English comparison is irrelevant. It's no secret that there's a significant drop off from the top two teams in Scottish club soccer, and then another drop off from a handful of teams considered Premier League regulars. By the time we work our way through the bottom half of the Scottish First Division, we're talking about small clubs in small buildings.
Fine, but the motivation for the latest fix in Scottish club soccer is and will always be about trying to keep from falling further behind what's happening in England. Thus the Premier League structure in the first place.
Why a 10-team league and a revamped First Division will work this time around ends up being the only question. Rangers and Celtic have each other and the European slots. The established Premier League teams might sign on to a new setup with some hope of competitive change, but it would almost have to fall under the 'cautiously optimistic' category. If there's sponsor indications that this latest revamp is something they'd also find very interesting, it's not making it through to the media or the general public.
In large part, it seems like the Scottish Premier League doing what it does. With no real mechanism to force the hands of club chairmen already in their league or those who would very much like to be, there's a stagnation among too many clubs. Rangers and Celtic only shoulder some of the blame here. There are enough metropolitan areas in Scotland to support other teams at a higher level. That it's not happening will remain the real SPL problem.
That's not to suggest yet another easy answer. Once again returning to the MLS comparison, there seem to be some places in Scotland where the club game doesn't work well enough. There's been enough time over the Premier League era to notice a few trends. Among them are the clubs that can't get traction alongside those that have had the cash and interest influxes without it really getting them anywhere.
Part of that remains the interest level in following the clubs competing for third-place. Though some did push for playoffs to determine Scotland's Premier League champion, there's not a workable structure tweak that will breakup the Celtic/Rangers lock on the top slots. That's going to take a club going out and winning more points than one or the other. Until that happens, the Scottish Premier League's leadership is operating around the edges. It's change, but it's not an answer.
Comments, questions, solutions to problems that have yet to present themselves. Please, tell me all about it.
