The Celtic Star published an article on Friday morning. https://thecelticstar.com/third-time-lucky-why-a-livingston-v-celtic-re-match-is-on-the-cards/. It pointed out the likelihood of Celtic having to play teams such as Livingston or Hibs three times this season on their home patch while only playing them once at home.
This situation of course isn’t new. It is simply the imbalance of a league campaign that runs for 33 games before breaking into a relegation and championship groups for the final 5 games. Those 5 games get to decide who goes down, who heads for the play offs and which teams get European football the following season. It is also designed to make the ‘race’ for the league title more exciting. That however hasn’t quite worked out. Whether we like it or not the dreaded ‘Split’ is about to return.
The split was first introduced in 2000/01 when the league was increased from 10 to 12 clubs. The primary reason was to increase competition within the league and reduce the number of meaningless mid-table clashes. In theory it also meant clubs going for the championship or Europe, and those attempting to retain their SPL status, face the same opponents in the run-in, which ensures a sense of balance and fairness and dare I say it, it was intended to add excitement.
It was also designed to get round are issues with fixturing in a 12-team league there. The idea there being, a total of 33 games would be imbalanced and too few games, while if clubs played each other four times the total would be 44 games, which was deemed as being too many. The split, therefore, provided a solution to this or at least is was meant to.
As Clubs cannot move outside their half of the table after the split it is possible for a club finishing in, say, seventh place to end up with more points than a team in the top half. It’s a strange old concept but we’ve kind of got used to that.
What we have struggled with and what looks to be effecting Celtic this year is the issue in parity of home and away fixtures. This has never really been addressed. The issues arise for clubs every year and it’s the part that fans have never really accepted.
The Holy Grail was of course, to try to ensure that clubs finished the season having played 19 home games and 19 away games. What happens often in practice one club playing 18 at home and 20 away or vice versa. That was something all clubs were aware of prior to introducing the system of course but every year it opens up the question of how it’s worked out, is it fair?
Any self-respecting league would more than likely start a league campaign on the premise there was parity of games home and away distributed throughout the campaign. That simply doesn’t happen in Scotland. It is possible that some clubs may have three home games and one away match-as is likely to happen with Celtic and pointed out in The Celtic Star article last week- or the other way around, against a certain opponent. Such instances were of course expected to be rare, but only happening sometimes is still too often when it comes to winning titles or being relegated.
So for nearly 20 years now we’ve been running with this league system. Surely it is time for change.
Well The Celtic Star article and a subsequent debate started on the Celtic Noise Forum put forward problems and perceived solutions to league reconstruction and the debate grew legs.
So I thought it would be worth taking that debate to a wider audience and see if we can get some feedback from The Celtic Star readers on their own thoughts, ideas on what is wrong with the current set up and some solutions. E-mail the Celtic Star at editor@thecelticstar.co.uk and we’ll get your ideas published.
Back to the debate on The Celtic Noise. The original poster was well-known member Imatim and he titled his article ‘Corruption and Fixture manipulation’. The title itself tell you the sense of frustration around the current system and the OP’s belief that the system may be benefitting those from ‘the’ Rangers more than ourselves.
As the debate developed some interesting solutions were put forward and we’ll outline some of those to get you started. You can also join in the debate on The Celtic Noise. It takes barely a couple of minutes to get registered and you can join this and many other discussions. It is a brilliant and welcoming fans forum.
First up regular contributor Kelly had this to say “Won’t matter it will fall on deaf ears, the same as every year they seem to play the bottom 6 teams from the previous year first and mostly at home”.
Well known member Chico67 also joined in: “Up to this Saturday Celtic have played 15 home games and played top 6 all twice away from home and the Rangers have played 17 home games plus have played top 6 once away from home just checked fixtures from start of season”.
Another long standing member BillCowie1958 though had a counter argument with this slant on the perceived imbalance.
“But ARE they benefitting the Rangers? I can clearly see how they might possibly be intended to help the Zombies but after having lost to the bottom 2 Clubs in the league as well as Kilmarnock who are currently in 7th position it would appear that whoever dreamed up such skullduggery is in grave danger of being drummed out of “The Ludge” All of this adds to the adage “What goes around comes around”.
From debates over fairness we moved on to some possible solutions. I posted myself that, “I’d prefer we had a sixteen team league played each other twice (30 games), Had the top 6 play a Super Six play off (like Rugby League do so well) and draw in some more sponsorship and make the League Cup an early season tournament to get rid of pre-season friendlies and get it out the road. Under the current make up no-one plays on a level playing field”.
And this led to the post that really kick started the debate from well-known member and also a previous contributor to The Celtic Star, Spherical Planet:
“League reconstruction is only part of the overall problem in senior Scottish football.
The days of provincial clubs carrying 10,000+ gates were gone by the 70’s. It might not be attractive to the die-hard fans of many clubs, but it is mental for a city like Dundee to have two professional clubs. When you counter in Perth, Arbroath, Forfar, Brechin and Montrose all being within a 25-mile radius and also all having senior clubs – it just doesn’t make any logistical sense.
That’s just one region, the same occurrence appears throughout Fife, Central and Ayrshire regions.
It’s difficult to argue the relevancy of Scottish football to outsiders when the clubs themselves are all but trying to make themselves irrelevant.
There was once an era when both Dundee clubs reached the semi-finals of the European Cup. That is never ever going to happen again, but one club in a city with a fairly big population and a large catchment area would at least have a chance of making an imprint domestically.
Fans of these clubs are gonna just love me for suggesting that, but it’s kinda embarrassing when a club has to open up three sides of its stadium to accommodate the visiting fans for a Scottish Cup Q/F and a side chasing a European spot. These clubs are risking their long-term survival by hanging onto a history that will just be a footnote in the archives.
League reconstruction? An absolute necessity. Amalgamations? An absolute necessity”.
Amalgamating clubs is a controversial opinion I’m sure you’d agree but is their real merit in there? I’d probably say that’s a debate worth having, but what do you, The Celtic Star readers think?
Is the system at present weighted in one direction? Do we need reconstruction, do we need as Spherical Planet alluded to, go much further than that? Perhaps you are a supporter of the Split, if so let us know your reasons.
We’ll be back with a few more of the ideas raised from the original debate and we’ll put some of your own ideas out there too.
A quick reminder you can join The Celtic Noise here https://celticnoise.com/
And you can send your own thoughts on this subject to editor@thecelticstar.co.uk and we’ll do the rest.
We look forward to hearing your ideas.
Niall J
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— The Celtic Star Editor (@CelticStarMag) March 9, 2020
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