Pandemic pandemonium? Here’s how we save SPFL...
AT least one good thing has come out of this. Now everyone can see Mike Ashley for what he is. And every football fan in Scotland should unite with Rangers and boycott Sports Direct. It would be the only time we all sing off the same hymnsheet. Don’t worry. We’ll soon be fighting again, because nobody can agree on how to finish the season.
The answer to what might well be Scottish football’s gravest crisis is relatively straightforward, if not easy or without imperfections.
The league is wrapped up, meaning all current positions are final but with no relegation. Sporting integrity is important but not as much as job losses and more than one of our clubs nearing bankruptcy.
However, the likes of Dundee United, top of the Championship by a stretch, are promoted. It will mean the leagues being an uneven number bar League Two – sorry non-league sides, but you’re not getting the chance to get up – but I am sure we could all handle that.
You know how folk talk about the spirit of The Blitz and all that? A football team sitting out one round of fixtures every three months won’t kill us.
If the season is ended now, then Celtic, Dundee United and Cove Rangers should be declared champions because they are so far ahead at the top. A problem is League Two, where a point separates Falkirk and Raith Rovers.
Both then go up, in my plan. It will make the Championship a league of 11, while League One and Two would have nine clubs.
Not perfect, but then neither is someone losing their life or a loved one through a cough. Football is great and all, and I am well aware livelihoods are at stake, but in such unprecedented times, we need to accept that strange solutions are the order of the day.
Rangers will get over Celtic being handed a title they were never going to win. Hearts might not recover from a relegation. They had that doomed look about them, but reaching a play-off was hardly an impossibility.
It wouldn’t be too difficult to tweak promotion and relegation so that by the following season everything is back to normal. I have also seen an idea not dissimilar which would see the following season going to three leagues of 14 which is worth thinking about.
This will require maturity, and Scottish football supporters are not great at that. Rangers supporters will talk of ‘tainted titles’ – it’s already begun – and that will give way to whataboutery as contagious as to make what is happening right now seem like a bit of a cold going about the office.
Or, and this is my preferred option, the final games, the three Scottish Cup matches as well, take place whenever football begins again, and the following season is cut accordingly.
My idea is the Premiership, with 13 teams, play each other twice, that’s 24 league games, and there is a split like always – six at the top and seven at the bottom – which takes us to 29 and 30 games and that’s not far off a full season.
There are many holes to pick but when the country is in lockdown, people are dying and hospital staff are forced to work 80-hour weeks, there isn’t a perfect solution out there. For anyone. For anything.
The Euros get killed. Forget moving them to next summer. We might need more weeks and months in 2021. The plan to play it all over the continent was a rotten one anyway.
Clubs, both top-flight and part-time, are in trouble. Some more than others. Prize money should be handed out now. Emergency loans from the SPFL and SFA would help. Oh, and see the big telly companies, the ones which boast about billionpound contracts? They could chip in. It’s not as if they can’t afford it.
And don’t blame the SFA or league. It might be fun to point the finger at Hampden but if there had been a plan in place to cope with a pandemic, it would be hard not to believe they were behind all of this!
We need compromise and leadership from Ian Maxwell, Neil Doncaster and every one of our clubs. Let’s quit the petty politics. The fans need to do their bit as well.
For me, in terms of our national game, the most important factor is we don’t lose any of our clubs, although what this shutdown has highlighted is that 42 senior clubs is way too many for a country of our size.
Our clubs pay too much on wages compared with countries our size and bigger, the over-reliance on gate money is prehistoric, and we do bad mistakes better than anyone else.
A large part of Hearts’ problems is that the main stand, which was supposed to cost £9million, ended up with a £22m bill. And it’s not any good. Archibald Leach must be birling. Whenever I spend £22m, I want what I buy to be good.
But if a decision is made which sees Hearts go down, please spare me this legalaction nonsense. Ann Budge ought to concentrate on paying her staff, not making wealthy lawyers even richer.
Oh, and try to hire people who when charged to build a new stand would have enough about them to remember to buy some seats.
This time out, hopefully, will be used by all to do a lot of thinking. Even clubs with no debt, Aberdeen for example, are months away from seeing all the savings go. All that hard work and investment gone.
I have a hunch that when thing get back to normal, and they will, the Scottish football scene will look very different.
The Euros get killed. Forget next summer