YOU'RE SIXTEEN

By Scrantlefish

You come on like a dream, peaches and cream

Lips like strawberry wine

You’re sixteen, you’re beautiful and you’re mine

A hit for Johnny Burnette back in 1960-61, subsequently slaughtered by Ringo Starr, thirteen years later. Scottish football has never proclaimed itself to be in ‘peachy’ condition though it has long had an association with wine, albeit more of the tonic than strawberry variety. But for many fans a sixteen-club top flight has been something of a later musical vintage than Burnette or Starr – Nirvana.

For over forty years now the top division in Scottish football has consisted of either ten or twelve clubs and while the current system has been one of the most stable in history –next season will mark it’s twentieth without change, equalling the record held by the eighteen-club format that existed between 1955-1975 – it is not without its defects.

Chief among these, in this writer’s opinion, is the ‘split.’ That division into top and bottom halves that comes with five games to go. Its supporters claim that it injects excitement into the game as teams from the two respective halves go head-to-head in a thrilling race to the line.

That’s a fallacy. If the league’s tight after 33 games it’s tight regardless of whether there’s a split or not. The same applies if the title and relegation are decided by then. If anything the split actually reduces competition as the season nears its denouement. A team in seventh can be within touching distance of a spot in Europe only to find that prize is no longer available to them with the remainder of the term spent in meaningless matches against the sides at the bottom.

Then there’s the ludicrous situation for some of finishing lower in the table with more points than the team above them. It also has competitive unfairness built in. In theory every club plays an equal number of matches – nineteen – both home and away. In practice it often doesn’t pan out that way. Pre-split fixtures inevitably produce an imbalance – seventeen home and sixteen away for half the clubs and the reverse for the other half. These fixtures are calculated on the basis of the previous season. If the top six after thirty-three games is the same as it was at the end of the previous season then everything’s fine and the remaining fixtures slot in easily to achieve the desired equality of matches.

But how often does that happen? Not very is the answer and Scottish football is predictable enough as it is without that happening. It’s perfectly possible under the current arrangements for one half of the table to have played seventeen home games come the split and the other half sixteen. In such circumstances it is mathematically impossible to provide an equal number of home and away games.

Without going to those extremes it is often the case anyway that an equal number of home and away matches is unachievable. All it takes is for one team to be out of kilter for that to happen. In short unless each half of the league consists of three clubs that have played seventeen home and sixteen away and three vice-versa then there are problems.

That’s why there have been so many occasions when some teams have played just eighteen home games in the season while others have played twenty. The problem is worse in the top six rather than the bottom for there is no way in the world that either of the Old Firm will be the lucky or unlucky ones to receive an extra home or away game. For them equality of matches is absolute. So any imbalance in the top half only applies to one or two of the other four clubs.

It is, in my view, one of the standard factors of a league system that every club plays an equal amount of home and away matches and that can never be guaranteed under the current system.

So, were any of the other systems applied over the past forty years any better? Not really. Currently in Scottish football only 8.33% of clubs are guaranteed to be relegated. Scandalously low. Compare for instance to 15% in England, Italy and Spain, 11% in Germany and 10% in France. Yet the initial Premier Division back in 1975 veered too much in the opposite direction. Two of the ten clubs in that set-up were automatically relegated, 20%. In reality, with the Old Firm highly unlikely to be one of the bottom pair, the relegation rate was 25%, one in four.

Several variants were tried at different times. One club down, one plus a play-off, a twelve-club division, though unlike now clubs played each other four times per season for an unwieldy 44-game campaign. Even in the early days of the current system relegation was almost non-existent as a 10,000 all-seater, all-covered stadium was a requirement for promotion. In some seasons only two or three sides in the division below were eligible for promotion.

The business of the same teams meeting four times in a season is an unattractive aspect too. Taking in the two domestic cups it’s possible for the same two teams to meet SEVEN times over the course of a single season. 

For many years now the idea of a sixteen-club top division has been favoured by substantial numbers of supporters but could it work and WOULD it work? I think the answer to both questions is ‘yes.’

Let’s look at the case against first. Those opposed to the idea say that it would seriously dilute the quality of opposition, that clubs lose those lucrative four games per season against the Old Firm and it also means further loss of revenue through fewer matches.

I don’t think the quality argument holds water any more. In the days of the ten-club league adding another six would undoubtedly have produced many mismatches and that was one of the main reasons for dropping the eighteen-club format. But today moving from twelve to sixteen means adding just four clubs and in effect two.

What do I mean by ‘in effect two?’ Well, until 1994 there were no Highland clubs in the league structure at all. Today we have both Inverness Caledonian Thistle and Ross County, both well versed in playing in the top division. Yes, this season both are in the Championship but as of the time of writing Ross County are on course for a return to the Premiership and ICT have a good chance of making the play-offs.

This is only the second time in the past fifteen seasons there has been no Highland representation in the top division.

That was unthinkable in the days of a ten-club top division. Assuming these two clubs finish in the top four in the championship means just two more are needed to form a sixteen-club league. Now look at the Championship in 2018-19. It’s packed with clubs that have all been in the top division in the recent or comparatively recent past. And not just clubs that have played the odd season. No, we’re looking at clubs that have held down top division places for long stretches and are on a par with, or close to, established Premiership sides like Kilmarnock and Motherwell in terms of support and in the case of one – Dundee United – likely to draw more. Dunfermline Athletic, Falkirk, Partick Thistle – no matter their current travails – all could, and all HAVE, prospered in the top league. Of the rest of the Championship, Morton and Ayr United both have the potential to be at least the equal of Livingston and Hamilton Accies – though admittedly both would have to seriously upgrade grounds that are more fit for the 1920s than the 2020s.

With support equal to or better than, several current Premiership sides there is no reason to suppose that finance would mean a lack of quality on the field. Since that memorable second tier season when Rangers, Hearts and Hibs all found themselves at that level the standard of play has improved immeasurably. The dark days of the 1980s when at least one of the promoted sides was effectively relegated by Christmas are long gone.

Losing matches against the Old Firm would no longer bring a vast loss in revenue as it would have in the past. For a start, assuming both Old Firm are in the top six only four other clubs now play the big two four times at home. For the bulk of the league a sixteen-club division would mean the loss of just one home match against the Glasgow giants.

Attendances at these games are also far smaller nowadays. In the 1980s, before the introduction of all-seaters, most clubs could bank on five-figure gates for these games. Now we have several clubs with ground capacities far smaller than that. Any drop in attendances would have a far less great effect than in the past. Add in the fact that virtually guaranteed live TV coverage of Old Firm away games, allied with changes to kick-off times and days means fewer Old Firm fans travel in any case and you can see loss of income is by no means as severe as might be thought. And that can be compensated for in other ways, as I shall set out.

That leaves us with the quandary that a sixteen-club league means just fifteen home games as opposed to a notional nineteen (though occasionally eighteen or twenty) at present.

I would agree that the loss of three or four home fixtures constitutes a blow though again not as savage as it once would have been. For all-seater grounds have revolutionised the pattern of attendance. Not just because grounds are in the main smaller. Before clubs were allowed to keep the revenue from home matches a minimum guarantee had to be paid to the away team. Where gates exceeded the guarantee match income was split between the two contestants. As a result, season tickets – the money from which by their very nature was retained in its entirety be the selling club – were strictly limited in number so as to prevent clubs from exploiting this to the detriment of a 50% gate split. Rangers, to take an obvious example, could easily have sold more than 3,000 season tickets each season but that was more or less the maximum permitted. And smaller clubs were entitled to sell far fewer. At the opposite extreme from Ibrox, Clyde – regular top-flight participants until the 1975 re-organisation – never sold more than 300 season books.

Today of course clubs keep the revenue from home games and bar the agreed minimum number of seats reserved for away fans can sell as many season tickets as they like. The all-seater culture has led to a far greater percentage of seasons being sold and clubs now actively promote this either by upfront payments for the entire term or regular debit or credit card payments.

It makes financial sense to bank several hundred pounds from a fan in July than to eventually receive the same amount from the same spectator paid once every fortnight until mid-May.

Yet three or four home games fewer still represents a loss of income. No doubt. One way to offset this is to structure end of season play-offs for the title, Europe and relegation. It can lead to extremely complicated systems as in Belgium or if established more simply provides extra matches at only the top and bottom ends of the table. It’s not a system I personally would favour but it is there as one means of compensation.

From my point of view a revamp of the League Cup would be a better option. Despite the cut-throat nature of this tournament for over thirty years with no replays, all ties decided on the day via extra time or penalty kicks if need be, this competition is dying on its feet. All rounds are seeded, European qualifiers don’t enter until the last sixteen. Money-spinning games are few and far between and despite seeding there are rarely any big shocks.

The recent change to unwieldy partially geographical groups with each club playing each other once, the points system altered and the season starting in mid-July has exacerbated the situation.

The attendance figures tell their own tale. The bigger clubs are content to field sub-standard sides until the semi-finals. It is, to the Old Firm anyway, the ‘Diddy’ Cup – until, that is, they get within sniffing distance of the silverware.

For most of the first thirty years of its existence the League Cup was played in sections - what we now call group stages – of four. Teams played each other twice with the winners (very occasionally the top two) qualifying for two-leg quarter-finals then neutral venue semis and final.

It had its advantages but also disadvantages. Section attendances were often big as these were played at the start of the season before the league commenced. But the sections were determined by division. Four lower division teams were guaranteed places in the last eight and the two-leg ties often produced hideous mismatches. Eight, nine and even ten-goal victories were commonplace and that was after one leg, rendering the return totally meaningless. Within the divisions the sections were drawn at random.

A GEOGRAPHICALLY revamped tournament would allow for greater attendances and provide a guaranteed eighteen home games per season (fifteen league, three League Cup) for top division sides, one fewer than now. And it should be remembered that in almost 75 years of post-war football, only around one-third of seasons have guaranteed more than eighteen top division home games.

What does ‘geographically’ mean then? There existed, for two solitary seasons in the mid-1960s, a competition called the Summer Cup. The Old Firm refused to take part, preferring to take off for more lucrative post-season tours in climes where summer meant summer and wasn’t just a euphemism for ‘a bit less wet and windy’ as it so often is in Scotland. The remaining top flight sides played in ‘group stages’ similar to the League Cup. The difference being there was no open draw. The groups were determined by location.

Obviously this is an imperfect system as there’s no way possible to fit sixteen clubs into four neatly arranged groups. In the Summer Cup it was easy to pick the northernmost group – Aberdeen, St Johnstone and the two Dundee outfits neatly dovetailed – but more problematic elsewhere.  By and large though it can be done. There would always be one or two awkward placings but a geographic League Cup would mean Hearts and Hibs, Dundee and Dundee United and, crucially, Celtic and Rangers would always be in the same group.

A far cry from the current set-up which pretends Edinburgh City are in the same geographical area as Stranraer and Queen of the South or Alloa Athletic with Ross County and Elgin City

This also resolves what would be the main issue with broadcasters regarding a sixteen-club league, the guarantee of four Old Firm games per season. In an ideal world the considerations of TV companies would play no part in deciding football’s schedules. In the world we live in though it does. And it’s unlikely to change. The Devil’s bargain was made some years ago and like it or not we are stuck with it.

How then would such a tournament be arranged? To take the easy bit first, keep the format from the last sixteen onwards as now. Playing six games to reach that stage means no additional matches for European entrants. Indeed the guaranteed minimum of thirty-six matches (thirty league, six League Cup) is two fewer than at the moment, meaning not only is there no additional burden for clubs in Europe but also that two of those ridiculous midweek evening league kick-offs in darkest winter could be struck off the fixture list.

I digress here from the League Cup for a moment but if the SPFL are going to insist on a winter break (even though a Scottish winter is unpredictable, save for knowing it will be sometime between early October and mid-April) then have it after New Year’s Day. Right now clubs lose the once-traditional and well-attended New Year fixtures and ‘gain’ a Wednesday night in February. There’s actually nothing to stop this from happening under the current set-up. The number of days in the break remain the same, it’s only the starting point that would be moved.

Back to the League Cup and a format that takes us to the last sixteen. The answer is simple. Eight geographic groups of four with the top two qualifying. While this doesn’t guarantee success for the big clubs it increases the chances for both the Old Firm and Edinburgh clubs for example coming through their groups and it rules out automatic failure for one of them. Again, in an ideal world it would be winner takes all and straight to the quarter-finals but in our world that would require turkeys to vote for Xmas and that isn’t going to happen. Mollifying the larger clubs would be a necessary evil. It happens already with the split and with exempting European qualifiers to the last sixteen of the League Cup even though their continental adventures are often over by then.

Timetabling is easy. Simply replace the first six scheduled league games with League Cup matches. The league season would end at the same time as now but the start if in application this season would have been the end of September. Clubs would already have played between six-eight League Cup ties by then. There would be no ‘ring-rusty’ start. And it might even be beneficial in terms of media coverage by starting at a different time from most other leagues.

You will have noticed that eight groups of four is a total of thirty-two and currently the SPFL has forty-two clubs. There are various ways to whittle that down to the required number. To my mind the simplest way is to operate as per the Scottish Cup – the top twenty-two placed league teams in the previous season enter the tournament in the last thirty-two. That leaves the bottom twenty teams to play a one-off or two-legged tie to provide ten qualifiers to join them. A two-legged tie guarantees one home match per club. That’s one less than now but one more than at any time over thirty years prior to that.

Naturally fixtures would have to be arranged before qualifiers are known. This shouldn’t be a problem. Many leagues that operate split systems publish fixtures well in advance showing club one v club seven on a certain date and for the vast majority of sides opponents and venues would be known well in advance. Clubs taking part in the preliminary round would also know where they would slot in in the event of winning their tie. They would know too that success would bring at least one – and possibly two or three – matches against higher grade opponents who would bring travelling supports well above the norm, meaning greater crowds and greater revenue.

Here’s an example of how it may have worked this season. For sake of exposition I’ve imagined the qualifiers would be seeded and ‘fixed’ the draw so as to make it highest v lowest. I’ve included the two sides relegated from the Championship in 2017-18 as being in League One and the two League One promoted clubs as now in the Championship and exempt until the group stage. I’ve also assumed two-legged ties with the lower placed team at home in the first leg. I’m not advocating this as the format, merely using it as a convenient way to show how it might work.

Qualifiers – matches designated 1-10 in order

Cowdenbeath v Dumbarton

Edinburgh City v Brechin City

Berwick Rangers v Raith Rovers

Annan Athletic v Arbroath

Elgin City v Stranraer

Clyde v East Fife

Stenhousemuir v Airdrieonians

Stirling Albion v Forfar Athletic

Peterhead v Albion Rovers

Montrose v Queen’s Park

Group Stage

Arranged geographically with qualifying teams included on the assumption the higher placed team wins their tie. This is where problems come in as – to take the most extreme example – were Elgin City to win their qualifier in the scenario outlined above, they would replace Stranraer in the group stage and with the best will in the world there is no way that could be regarded as geographically correct. But as I say the above is simply for purposes of example. The qualifiers could themselves be arranged geographically or be an all-in random draw or even be composed of two rounds if automatic group stage qualification was restricted to the sixteen-club top division only.

Groups 1-8 in order

Aberdeen, Ross County, Inverness CT, Arbroath

Celtic, Rangers, Partick Thistle, Queen’s Park

Dundee, St Johnstone, Dundee United, Brechin City

Hamilton Academical, Motherwell, Airdrieonians, Albion Rovers

St Mirren, Morton, Dumbarton, Alloa Athletic

Hearts, Hibernian, Falkirk, Livingston

Kilmarnock, Ayr United Queen of the South, Stranraer

Dunfermline Athletic, Raith Rovers, East Fife, Forfar Athletic

These groups would be of varying strength. Group Two the strongest and Group Eight (with no current Premiership sides) the weakest. That group too could be a hostage to fortune with Dunfermline the only guaranteed qualifier and a chance that one, two or all three of Berwick Rangers, Clyde and Stirling Albion could end up playing there. But for the most part the groups make sense geographically.

This system guarantees derby fixtures which under the current league arrangement wouldn’t take place. Both Dundee sides would meet. As would the Renfrewshire and Ayrshire outfits. If qualification worked out as seeded, three Fife clubs would clash. There would be an all-Lanarkshire group.

Elsewhere, smaller sides would benefit from the new format. Arbroath would have a lucrative home game v Aberdeen. Queen’s Park would face both of the Old Firm. Brechin City would have visits from both Dundee sides.

Of course it’s not perfect but no system is and in the main would provide attractive fixtures before the knockout stages which would be as at present from the last sixteen onwards.

Based on last season we would then progress to a sixteen-club Premiership as follows (‘promoted’ clubs in bold)

Celtic

Aberdeen

Rangers

Hibernian

Kilmarnock

Hearts

Motherwell

St Johnstone

Dundee

Hamilton Academical

Partick Thistle

Ross County

St Mirren

Livingston

Dundee United

Dunfermline Athletic

Look at the bottom four of the 2017-18 Premiership and the four ‘promoted’ clubs and try and convince yourself there is any discernible gap in quality. You can’t. There isn't.

This system operated in the immediate post-war period 1946-1955 and provided a strong league with four of the titles lifted outwith Glasgow. I’m not claiming that would happen again, given the gulf in finance and support between the Old Firm and the rest but it would increase competition elsewhere. Under this format it was rare to see teams cut adrift at the bottom and rarer still for both relegation places to be decided before the end of the season. On several occasions the drop was a threat to teams almost up to halfway, with close finishes the norm.

Obviously such a restructuring would have knock-on effects. There would be twenty-six clubs outside the Premiership, too few to continue with three divisions as at present. Several solutions present themselves. The simplest and most obvious is to promote two Highland and two Lowland League teams to bring the numbers up to thirty and carry on with the present format of three divisions of ten with clubs playing each other four times and the current play-off system remaining intact. Or the SPFL could move to a three-division set-up with two further leagues of sixteen – though this would necessitate the addition of six new clubs. The second tier could consist of sixteen clubs operating the same format as the new Premiership with clubs meeting twice and the remaining ten would play as at present, meeting each other four times. This would also mean the current numbers remaining intact with no need to add any clubs. Under this system this season’s second tier would have comprised:

Inverness CT

Queen of the South

Morton

Falkirk

Ayr United

Alloa Athletic

All of 2018-19’s League One

League Two would now be the third tier.

But regardless of which system is adopted one further change would be necessary and that’s at least one guaranteed promotion place and a further play-off for a potential second promotion for non-league clubs. Highland and Lowland champions would meet as now but instead of the winner advancing to meet the team at the bottom of League Two, victory would gain them automatic promotion with the loser proceeding to a two-leg play-off versus the second bottom team in League Two and the bottom league team automatically relegated.

This season that would have meant Cowdenbeath playing in the Lowland League and Cove Rangers in League Two. Edinburgh City and Spartans would have clashed in the play-offs to determine a League Two spot with losers dropping into/remaining in the Lowland League.

In the end the principle of guaranteed promotion from non-league to the SPFL is more important than the format. It’s operated in England for over thirty years and it’s high time it was introduced in Scotland too.

It also strengthens the pyramid which was missing from Scottish football for far too long. The mass exodus of clubs from the East Juniors to the East of Scotland League this season – twenty-five in all, including Dunipace from the West Juniors - shows that clubs at that level are finally beginning to appreciate the benefits of an integrated structure. West Juniors too are starting to favour integration. The Lowland League successes of East Kilbride, BSC Glasgow and Cumbernauld Colts from virtually nowhere has not gone unnoticed in the western and central areas of Junior football.

North Juniors would become the feeder to the Highland League, the Lowland League could be split into East and West sections (and possibly even Central) accommodating the existing top division Junior clubs as a sixth tier. The lower Junior divisions would form the seventh and subsequent tiers.

This way Scottish football would finally see the introduction of a proper pyramid system offering ambitious clubs the opportunity to move up the leagues. There needs to be one important rider though and that is that no team below the current fifth tier Highland and Lowland Leagues should be forced to accept promotion. One reason for Junior antipathy towards the Lowland League when it was initially established was the loss of local derbies. The likes of Auchinleck Talbot for instance didn’t just want to remain the biggest fish in a small pool. It was also the thought of losing fiercely competitive and crowd-pulling matches against Cumnock and Glenafton and seeing them replaced with trips to Galashiels and Innerleithen that prompted lack of interest in the new structure. Allowing clubs to remain at a level they feel comfortable with alleviates any worries about losing the local aspect of the game while at the same time permitting ambitious outfits to progress.

However it is important to stress that to ensure the success of the pyramid that any team willing to accept promotion to the fifth tier should also guarantee that if successful they will also undertake promotion to the SPFL.

A final beneficial effect of restructuring would come in knockout tournaments. What were previously called ‘senior’ non-league clubs would now be eligible to participate in the Scottish Junior Cup. There would be no need for a new trophy or to rename the venerable competition but it would give the former senior teams the chance to compete for a prestigious trophy at a national level for the first time since the Qualifying Cup was regionalised in 1931.

The Scottish Cup would benefit too. When the current format was introduced in 2007-08, allowing four Junior sides to compete, there were just under forty non-league sides taking part. This season there were over fifty. A nationally integrated pyramid league structure would allow the Scottish Cup to become more like its English equivalent where clubs several tiers below the league enter at the beginning of the season and participation is one of the highlights of the term. All clubs and every supporter can dream and all clubs and every supporter should have the chance to dream.

I accept the likelihood of much of this coming true is remote. Particularly at the top level where the most powerful clubs are content with the current system (though the two biggest clubs would like to escape it if they could find a league elsewhere willing to take them in). Reconstruction normally takes place at a time of crisis in the game as clubs desperately search for a way to make the game more attractive to spectators (though oddly enough the 1998 breakaway to form the SPL was initiated at a time when top flight attendances were at their third highest in history).

It may well be that we have to wait until fans start to walk away before new thinking prevails. But at the other end we have started to see movement on a scale unthinkable just a few seasons ago. Credit should be given where due and while the game’s authorities often receive justified criticism the decision to expand the Scottish Cup has been a success. More importantly the Lowland League, slated almost universally at its outset in 2013, has been a shot in the arm for Scottish football. Edinburgh City became the first club in history to gain a place in the league structure through merit and at the time of writing stand a good chance of promotion to League One. Twenty-five junior clubs have shown willing to move to the East of Scotland League with the aim of promotion to the Lowland League. Some of them would have had automatic membership had they been prepared to make the jump six years ago.

So, the outlook for change in a growing and effective pyramid is positive even if the higher echelons remain reluctant to think beyond next year’s season ticket sales. But as said three paragraphs above, every supporter has the right to dream.