Sums it up

[rcarter1]

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I'm the opposite. I want them to lose,the European money only exacerbates the gap, cutting it off means change is more likely to happen

Fair dues, but If they get enough money they might start shopping in the Championship and the EPL, rather than in brain-dead fashion hoover up our players for relatively cheap, only to find that they don't quite make the grade at champions league level.

[whiskyhibby]

And that's a bad thing......

[whiskyhibby]

Like I say dissolving the GFA IMHO is the only way forward, even if we get promotion next year when in your opinion would Hibs be serious title contenders?, in my mind never.........we need to break the rotten mould that is Scottish football to progress

[rcarter1]

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And that's a bad thing......

How do you mean? I would love for Hibs to compete with Celtic and bridge the gap, but surely thats a stretch barring one off games.

[whiskyhibby]

keeping your best players and developing them within a team context usually ends up with a better result......

[rcarter1]

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keeping your best players and developing them within a team context usually ends up with a better result......

Sure, but Celtic at the moment come a calling every time Hibs or Dundee Utd etc get a decent player. If they could afford to buy out of the league, we might stand a chance of keeping our better players for longer.

[whiskyhibby]

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Sure, but Celtic at the moment come a calling every time Hibs or Dundee Utd etc get a decent player. If they could afford to buy out of the league, we might stand a chance of keeping our better players for longer.

Sorry don't follow your logic, surely that's what they are doing today

[rcarter1]

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Sorry don't follow your logic, surely that's what they are doing today

We must be saying the same thing..
I agree that Celtic at the moment are taking as many SPL players they can get. What I mean, is that if they had gotten into the champions league this year, with the amount of money they made, their next few signings may have been a player from the EPL instead of an SPL player.

[Eyrie]

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Sure, but Celtic at the moment come a calling every time Hibs or Dundee Utd etc get a decent player. If they could afford to buy out of the league, we might stand a chance of keeping our better players for longer.

That won't narrow the gap between Septic and the rest of us, because the only reason they would buy elsewhere is because they can get a better standard of player than in Scotland.

The solution is obvious - Septic and Sevco Huns aren't wanted in England so they have no-one else to play except the other Scottish clubs. And the sooner the other Scottish clubs realise that and join together to stand up to the Ugly Sisters the better.

[H18S NX]

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That won't narrow the gap between Septic and the rest of us, because the only reason they would buy elsewhere is because they can get a better standard of player than in Scotland.

The solution is obvious - Septic and Sevco Huns aren't wanted in England so they have no-one else to play except the other Scottish clubs. And the sooner the other Scottish clubs realise that and join together to stand up to the Ugly Sisters the better.

yep

[Pete]

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An argument I have always put forward as well is that Hibs, Hearts and Aberdeen are by no stretch of the imagination smaller clubs than the likes of Leicester, Wigan, Watford,Charlton ****ing Bournemouth and more than a few others who have graced the EPL over the years.

The money on offer down there has bloated the big clubs into global giants and a lot of ordinary clubs into something they are not. It's no wonder clubs like those listed above would be resistant to any Scottish infiltration as it would risk a smaller slice of the pie for them.

The Scottish clubs you mention are probably the three biggest "losers" in the whole episode. Big, beautiful catchment areas and a rich history means bags of potential in the right circumstances. It's a shame we've almost been allowed to rot up here, trapped in this league for decades dominated by the glasgow clubs and the "attractions" they have in following them. Where would we be now if we had been part of a British set up years ago?

People say a lot of negative things about American sports but they have got one thing right: they know that without competitiveness, the product will die. Teams over there are part of a collective first and individual entities second. Over here, we are all totally separate entities who share practically no common interest apart from the country we play in. It's total dog-eat-dog and nobody seems to care about the golden goose dying as long as they are ok in the short term.

We need something brought in like the revenue sharing formula they have in baseball. There will be two big losers and everyone else will be a winner. Without this I reckon the game up here will slowly die due to lack of interest starting at the lower levels as people will just find something else to do in this digital age.

[HappyAsHellas]

Everything about the money in the game and European competition (and I use the term loosely) is horribly wrong. A team like Hibs were a respected team in Europe although the chances of us winning anything were pretty remote. We couldn't qualify for the top competition and therefore played against similar also rans from differing countries. The playing field was pretty level, as opposed to nowadays when top teams in their own countries are "dropped" into the Europa league where they might ensure that no "minnow" club will ever again dine at the top table. Irrespective of the commonly held viewpoint, without the smaller clubs the game is well and truly ducked.
There will always be bigger teams with more spending power, but we have moved into a world of extremes nowadays with the usual suspects in every champions league being almost guaranteed to make it through to the final rounds. On a much smaller scale we look around at our own game and are too quick to write it off as inferior, whereas the figures tell us that our game is better supported per head of capita than the EPL. If only we had the right people at the top to use data like this to promote our game. Sadly the dithering clowns collectively known as the GFA have no interest apart from being subservient to the bigot brothers. I would love a league that didn't involve the OF as the competition would be intense with probably five or six clubs in with a chance of winning the league. Sadly it wont happen unless we take a leaf out of American football, where generally it is run with the view of everyone should have a sporting chance. This, of course, would require a major shake up of our game with people at the top who loved the game and wanted to see it flourish. Meanwhile, in the European backwater of football known as Scotland, the game is run by a bunch of morons who still look over the border, drooling, salivating, green faced with envy and their heads stuck up their own κωλος.

[JimBHibees]

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Everything about the money in the game and European competition (and I use the term loosely) is horribly wrong. A team like Hibs were a respected team in Europe although the chances of us winning anything were pretty remote. We couldn't qualify for the top competition and therefore played against similar also rans from differing countries. The playing field was pretty level, as opposed to nowadays when top teams in their own countries are "dropped" into the Europa league where they might ensure that no "minnow" club will ever again dine at the top table. Irrespective of the commonly held viewpoint, without the smaller clubs the game is well and truly ducked.
There will always be bigger teams with more spending power, but we have moved into a world of extremes nowadays with the usual suspects in every champions league being almost guaranteed to make it through to the final rounds. On a much smaller scale we look around at our own game and are too quick to write it off as inferior, whereas the figures tell us that our game is better supported per head of capita than the EPL. If only we had the right people at the top to use data like this to promote our game. Sadly the dithering clowns collectively known as the GFA have no interest apart from being subservient to the bigot brothers. I would love a league that didn't involve the OF as the competition would be intense with probably five or six clubs in with a chance of winning the league. Sadly it wont happen unless we take a leaf out of American football, where generally it is run with the view of everyone should have a sporting chance. This, of course, would require a major shake up of our game with people at the top who loved the game and wanted to see it flourish. Meanwhile, in the European backwater of football known as Scotland, the game is run by a bunch of morons who still look over the border, drooling, salivating, green faced with envy and their heads stuck up their own κωλος.

Quite simply a fantastic post. The utter nonsense of failed champions league teams dropping into another competition where some teams have been playing since June is absolutely laughable. Completely agree re Scottish football also if we didn't have the authorities and a lot of the press telling us how poor it is maybe more people would go.

[Waxy]

Start with banning live scottish league matches unless we get significantly more money for it.

[Weststandwanab]

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I'm the opposite. I want them to lose,the European money only exacerbates the gap, cutting it off means change is more likely to happen

Ditto from me.

[whiskyhibby]

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Start with banning live scottish league matches unless we get significantly more money for it.

Agree

[Eyrie]

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People say a lot of negative things about American sports but they have got one thing right: they know that without competitiveness, the product will die. Teams over there are part of a collective first and individual entities second. Over here, we are all totally separate entities who share practically no common interest apart from the country we play in. It's total dog-eat-dog and nobody seems to care about the golden goose dying as long as they are ok in the short term.

We need something brought in like the revenue sharing formula they have in baseball. There will be two big losers and everyone else will be a winner. Without this I reckon the game up here will slowly die due to lack of interest starting at the lower levels as people will just find something else to do in this digital age.

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Sadly it wont happen unless we take a leaf out of American football, where generally it is run with the view of everyone should have a sporting chance. This, of course, would require a major shake up of our game with people at the top who loved the game and wanted to see it flourish. Meanwhile, in the European backwater of football known as Scotland, the game is run by a bunch of morons who still look over the border, drooling, salivating, green faced with envy and their heads stuck up their own κωλος.

The comparison with the US is inaccurate. The NFL for example has 32 teams in one league that has no competition, so it is possible for it to be run for the overall good of the sport.

In Scotland we have 12 teams in the top league and 42 teams overall. But they aren't just competing with each other, they're competing for players with teams in England (common language and similar culture) and even throughout Europe. There are some measures that can be introduced (eg compensation for the home team in a TV game, fairer split of prize money) but others (eg a salary cap) are impractical because of the outside competition.

[grunt]

Jim Spence weighs into the discussion

http://www.thecourier.co.uk/sport/fo...inner-1.897287

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The Scottish Premiership needs to be won by a club outwith Parkhead soon or the game might wither and die of serial boredom. In the 30 years since Aberdeen last won the top division in 1984/85 season, the top title has ended up in one of two Glasgow trophy cabinets every season, the other being at Ibrox. That is damaging and unhealthy for the game and is evidence of absence of ambition from other clubs.

Not sure about that last part of the last sentence.

[Smartie]

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Jim Spence weighs into the discussion

http://www.thecourier.co.uk/sport/fo...inner-1.897287



Not sure about that last part of the last sentence.

It's a good article and I think the highlighted part isn't unreasonable.

I've long been irritated by talk of being "best of the rest" and "splitting the Old Firm".

Whilst the OF have a massive financial advantage and you would expect them to dominate I don't think it's that unreasonable to expect someone else to maybe grow a team from youth players and give them a push at least once in thirty years.

We were probably as close to growing a team to challenge them as anyone with our "Golden Generation" but as a club we were more interested at that time in being a real estate project than a football club so it came to nothing. I'd put that down to a lack of ambition.

Hearts have occasionally shown ambition but unfortunately it was wrapped up in delusion, fantasy and atrocious financial planning that but for a stroke of luck might have cost them their very club's existence.

Too many of the rest (see comments from twats like the Killie chairman) are just parasites who are only interested in hanging off the coat tails of the Old Firm.

It would be brilliant to see Aberdeen push them and pip them this year. If they don't then it'll just revert back to a media frenzy about when/ how The Rangers are going to get back challenging them. And let's be honest, that utterly tedious 2 horse race bigotfest bunfight isn't any more appealing than the status quo and any new fans that Aberdeen, Dundee United, Hearts, Dundee etc might have made will probably drift away again.

[grunt]

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... I don't think it's that unreasonable to expect someone else to maybe grow a team from youth players and give them a push at least once in thirty years.

Yes but any time a team is grown, the OF just buy the best players. How many times have we lost our home grown talent to Celtic or Rangers? You might say that accepting their money shows a lack of ambition, but there are economic realities about needing money to keep the club going.

[Smartie]

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Yes but any time a team is grown, the OF just buy the best players. How many times have we lost our home grown talent to Celtic or Rangers? You might say that accepting their money shows a lack of ambition, but there are economic realities about needing money to keep the club going.

I think it is almost inevitable that players will be lost to the OF. The trick is to ensure that you get top dollar for those players and invest it wisely, and also to ensure that the player goes at the right time. Losing your best players for peanuts at the first sniff of interest is self-defeating. When a player can achieve no more with you and needs to step up a level at a time when there is good money on offer - that's when/how to sell. The smaller clubs aren't always the "victims" in these deals - sometimes it is the bigger club who pays over the odds for what they receive. We've done well out of some deals, been stung on others (at this stage I think the Scott Allan deal for example represents brilliant value for us).

I'm not saying this "growing a team" stuff should happen all the time - but I don't think once every 20 years or so is too much to ask. The lack of ambition and acceptance of the status quo in Scotland just gets on my nerves. Alex Ferguson at no point accepted the domination of the Old Firm as being an inevitability - there haven't been enough idealists prepared to challenge the idea of domination of the big two.

[NAE NOOKIE]

As I recall Hibs were one of the clubs who backed home clubs keeping all the gate money back in the day, as things stand I cant see that stance changing when you look at some of the attendances in the Premiership at the moment compared to what we get even now. There is no chance of getting Celtic to agree to this either, they are all consumed by the Champions league and will do nothing to threaten their position at the top domestically and I highly doubt Hearts or Aberdeen would go for it for the same reasons as us.

IMO the only way to improve the finances for us and the rest is a bigger sellable Premiership packed with local derby matches and games like Aberdeen v Dundee Utd, Hibs v The Rangers, Hearts v Celtic and for there to be a much fairer distribution of the TV money, with every club getting an equal share .... that is the one concession the SFA / SPFL should be forcing the OF to accept for the good of everybody.

The thing the SPFL and their predecessors never seemed to have thought of is the distribution of fixtures. What is the point of for example playing all derby matches on the same weekend forcing the TV companies to chose one over the other .... these are our most sellable games.

Hibs v Hearts
Celtlc v The Rangers
Dundee v Dundee Utd
ICT v Ross County
Motherwell v Hamilton
Aberdeen v Celtic / The Rangers
Hibs v Celtic / The Rangers
Hearts v Celtic / The Rangers
Dundee Utd v Celtic The Rangers

None of these matches should be scheduled for the same weekend, meaning the TV folk will always have a big match to show.

There are other tasty fixtures like Dundee Utd v Aberdeen, Dundee v St Johnstone, Hibs and Hearts v Aberdeen and Dundee Utd that make good fillers.

[rcarter1]

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As I recall Hibs were one of the clubs who backed home clubs keeping all the gate money back in the day, as things stand I cant see that stance changing when you look at some of the attendances in the Premiership at the moment compared to what we get even now. There is no chance of getting Celtic to agree to this either, they are all consumed by the Champions league and will do nothing to threaten their position at the top domestically and I highly doubt Hearts or Aberdeen would go for it for the same reasons as us.

IMO the only way to improve the finances for us and the rest is a bigger sellable Premiership packed with local derby matches and games like Aberdeen v Dundee Utd, Hibs v The Rangers, Hearts v Celtic and for there to be a much fairer distribution of the TV money, with every club getting an equal share .... that is the one concession the SFA / SPFL should be forcing the OF to accept for the good of everybody.

The thing the SPFL and their predecessors never seemed to have thought of is the distribution of fixtures. What is the point of for example playing all derby matches on the same weekend forcing the TV companies to chose one over the other .... these are our most sellable games.

Hibs v Hearts
Celtlc v The Rangers
Dundee v Dundee Utd
ICT v Ross County
Motherwell v Hamilton
Aberdeen v Celtic / The Rangers
Hibs v Celtic / The Rangers
Hearts v Celtic / The Rangers
Dundee Utd v Celtic The Rangers

None of these matches should be scheduled for the same weekend, meaning the TV folk will always have a big match to show.

There are other tasty fixtures like Dundee Utd v Aberdeen, Dundee v St Johnstone, Hibs and Hearts v Aberdeen and Dundee Utd that make good fillers.

I like this idea, although not knowing how it currently works, not sure if some teams would benefit more than others?

I think the Old Firm would most benefit by creating their own league, and play each every other week. They could hardly blame each other for their subsequent European failures.

[majorhibs]

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I am not so sure about not able to win any cups, there are many examples recently where less fashionable EPL teams have won something, it's the access to funds that's key, one thing for sure Hibs will never ever again be the force they were in Europe that they were in the 50/60/70's in the current GFA set up.

I,would happily lose the Scottish national side over a Hibs team being a major European force, Scotland are a diminishing power and to be honest due to the mismanagement and institutionalised bias of the GFA I am unlikely to see them qualify for a major tournament again in my lifetime

Sorry, but just speak for your self here, & don't come across with this self centred drivel about what "you" want from Football. Sorry again, but all these zoomers who keep going on about what "they" want or don't want from National Football make my blood boil. It's got zilch to do with self centred individuals & everything to do with the actual supporters who attend. Not rocket science. Not for you? Try cricket or something. Please. Plenty genuine supporters bored with this casual dissing from afar from the net mafia who don't go anyway but tune in on TV.

[CockneyRebel]

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Sorry, but just speak for your self here, & don't come across with this self centred drivel about what "you" want from Football. Sorry again, but all these zoomers who keep going on about what "they" want or don't want from National Football make my blood boil. It's got zilch to do with self centred individuals & everything to do with the actual supporters who attend. Not rocket science. Not for you? Try cricket or something. Please. Plenty genuine supporters bored with this casual dissing from afar from the net mafia who don't go anyway but tune in on TV.

I think he was speaking for himself, that's what this forum was set up for, to give your viewpoint and say what you'd like to see happen . Your reply seemed just as self centred as his post If you only want to hear stuff you agree with you have to open your own forum and only accept posts from yourself.
By the way, I don't agree with anything he says - just his right to say it.

[whiskyhibby]

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Sorry, but just speak for your self here, & don't come across with this self centred drivel about what "you" want from Football. Sorry again, but all these zoomers who keep going on about what "they" want or don't want from National Football make my blood boil. It's got zilch to do with self centred individuals & everything to do with the actual supporters who attend. Not rocket science. Not for you? Try cricket or something. Please. Plenty genuine supporters bored with this casual dissing from afar from the net mafia who don't go anyway but tune in on TV.

Sorry if it offends you but that's my opinion, and in my eyes Hibs come before a National team, who have done next to nothing for the last 30y

[whiskyhibby]

And ps I have attended Scotland matches in the past

[Scouse Hibee]

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Sorry, but just speak for your self here, & don't come across with this self centred drivel about what "you" want from Football. Sorry again, but all these zoomers who keep going on about what "they" want or don't want from National Football make my blood boil. It's got zilch to do with self centred individuals & everything to do with the actual supporters who attend. Not rocket science. Not for you? Try cricket or something. Please. Plenty genuine supporters bored with this casual dissing from afar from the net mafia who don't go anyway but tune in on TV.

Bit strong, the guy is giving his opinion, he could just as well turn your post around and say if reading folks opinions on the net is not for you, try reading a book and leave the internet alone.

[whiskyhibby]

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Sorry, but just speak for your self here, & don't come across with this self centred drivel about what "you" want from Football. Sorry again, but all these zoomers who keep going on about what "they" want or don't want from National Football make my blood boil. It's got zilch to do with self centred individuals & everything to do with the actual supporters who attend. Not rocket science. Not for you? Try cricket or something. Please. Plenty genuine supporters bored with this casual dissing from afar from the net mafia who don't go anyway but tune in on TV.

And WTF has cricket got to do with it, or are you a typical SNP troll?

[Pretty Boy]

Guys calm it down eh?

We don't need people calling each other zoomers, trolls or whatever else.

We're all adults so lets act like it and debate our points sensibly. Cheers.