The SPL Reinvention – The Update

The SPL has become a dreary and repetitive place, for example recent events have seen Hamilton having to head to paisley for a third time this season and the buddies only having to return the favour twice.

The SPL split has seen the fan divided in opinion, personally I’m against it one of the points being that one or two of the teams in the lower part of the relegation section end up with more points than a club or two at the business end, which hardly does their good work justice.

The progress on reinventing the SPL, if you could call it that, has shown that each of the 12, maybe 10 – with Rangers trying to not go out of business and Celtic too busy keeping Lennon under lock and key, top flight clubs are littered with middle aged chairmen afraid of change, this point well proven by Inverness chairman George Fraser being quoted in saying “I think we’ll stick with the current 12-team set-up – probably for a couple of years, see how that goes, introduce everything else in the SPL’s strategic plan and then move on from there.”

In my opinion moving back to the 10 team structure would appear to be the most prudent way forward, more money to go around which is the usual concern, with the “SPL Championship” added to the end of that as mentioned in the 100 page document – see below for further details.

• The creation a pyramid structure in Scottish football
• Permitted, one-off, short-term opt-outs from the SPL’s stadia criteria
• A merging of the SPL with the SFL by inviting all 30 SLF member clubs to join a 42-club league under one umbrella banner
• The creation of a 10-team SPL league, with a 12-team Championship and two lower divisions
• The creation of an extra relegation place in the SPL through play-offs between the top two divisions
• A redistribution of money away from the top two positions in the league and reallocating it to the other eight clubs
• An obligation on all Premier League and Championship clubs to become part of the SFA Youth Initiative
• An earlier start to the season and a return of the winter shut-down

Neil Doncaster was entrusted with this task of reorganising the “Disney” league a couple of years ago, we can only hope and prey the summer time will produce more than just the nice weather and the well worded statements we have experienced so far.