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View Full Version : The SPL’s death has been quick, and it’s no less painful for that



Bohemian_Hibee
29-11-2009, 11:32 AM
Came accross this on an Irish website, thought it would be of interest to some here. Some of it is true, some not so true, but I think the most factually correct statement is when he says "the shambles that is Hearts" :agree: Anyway, feel free to give your tuppence worth...

http://www.eleven-a-side.com/blogs/viewblog.asp?bid=474

The SPL’s death has been quick, and it’s no less painful for that.


By Shane Breslin
27 November 2009, 5:09:47 PM




Celtic reached the Uefa Cup final in 2003. Rangers did the same five years later. This season, the pair have gone nine European group games without a victory, and other SPL sides have been embarrassed by some of the continent’s lesser lights. So are we witnessing the quick, painful death of Scottish football?

It’s not long ago that Scottish Premier League sides were rubbing shoulders with Europe’s best but with television money having dried up and the top sides in seemingly irrevocable decline, Scottish football increasingly resembles the old aristocrat without an arse in his trousers.

Rewind a couple of years, and the vista was so different, with Gordon Strachan courting acclaim after leading Celtic to the knock-out stages of the Champions League in successive seasons.

Strachan’s achievements were a scarcely expected improvement on the excellent record of Martin O’Neill, who guided the Bhoys to the Uefa Cup final in 2003 and helped to establish a dazzling record at Parkhead.

The 2001/02 season was Celtic’s first in the group stages of Europe’s top competition and, spurred on by the famed Parkhead roar, they won all three games in Glasgow against Juventus, Porto and Rosenborg.

In time, their failings would be on their travels but there was no sign of that during the run to the 2003 Uefa Cup final, where they beat Blackburn and Liverpool away and went to Portugal for the semi-final second leg against Boavista and took the win they needed to book a date with Porto.

Even that final, an unforgettable night when 40,000 happy Celts descended on Seville, underlined Celtic’s status as a side which could compare itself favourably with the best in Europe. Porto, whose success in lifting the Champions League trophy 12 months later was founded on Jose Mourinho’s characteristic defensive solidity, emerged on top, but only on a 3-2 scoreline after extra-time.

Over the next five years, Lyon, Manchester United, Benfica twice, AC Milan all left Parkhead chastened.

Rangers, too, have made their own splashes on European competition. By far their best campaign was 2007/08, when their Champions League results included a 3-0 win in Lyon – that’s three-nil, away to the French champions.

They failed to reach the last 16 but, parachuted into the Uefa Cup as the group’s third-placed side, went all the way to the final, knocking out Werder Bremen, Sporting Lisbon and Fiorentina before their defensive game-plan came up just short against an Andrei Arshavin-inspired Zenit St Petersburg.

Rangers and Celtic are the standard-bearers for Scottish football but all across the SPL this past 12 months, there has been ruin.

The gaping chasm between football in England and Scotland, non-existent when Celtic were regularly overcoming Premiership opposition five or six years ago, was all too evident when the Bhoys were outclassed over two legs by Arsenal in a Champions League qualification play-off.

Rerouted to the Europa League, Tony Mowbray’s side have been singularly dismal, taking just two points from their four games to date. Failure to overcome group leaders Hapoel Tel Aviv at Parkhead next Wednesday will end their European interest for this season. Even if they manage to extricate themselves from their current predicament – and that is all too unlikely – it is impossible to ignore the apathy of their fans: Parkhead, routinely shaken to its core on big European nights in the recent past, was less than two-thirds full for the visit of Hamburg last month.

As for Rangers, well, move along please. Nothing to see here. A 4-1 home defeat to Sevilla was bad enough but when it was followed by the same scoreline against unknowns Unirea Urziceni, the deathknell sounded on Scottish football.

Look below the Old Firm, and there is almost no reason for optimism. Motherwell lost a Europa League first leg to Llanelli in the summer. They were able to redeem themselves in the second leg there but bowed out after a 6-1 aggregate defeat to Steaua Bucharest.

A 4-0 first leg defeat did for Hearts against Dinamo Zagreb. Even worse, Falkirk lost to Vaduz (they’re from Liechtenstein). More contemptible still, Aberdeen went down 8-1 to the might of Sigma Olomouc, themselves spanked by Everton next time out.

With those results, the SPL’s Uefa co-efficient will slide inexorably in the future. The Scottish League was in the top 10 a year ago but is listed in 13th for next season’s competitions. Should they drop outside the top 15 – and it looks certain that they will – their number of Champions League slots will be reduced from two to one.

Where will it end? With the demise of Setanta Sports, Scottish clubs must now budget for greatly reduced earnings in television revenue.

On the financial side of things, Celtic remain prudently run – too much so for the liking of many fans spoiled by success – but will not countenance the level of spending necessary to arrest the slide, never mind build towards bridging the gap to the elite. It is all too conceivable that Strachan, whose popularity with the Celtic fans was never more than lukewarm, could see the direction in which the club was headed, and Mowbray is shouldering the burden of being in charge when the whole thing unravels.

However unsatisfied Celtic fans may be, they can be thankful that they’re not Rangers; the Ibrox side is much worse off. There were reports last month that their lenders would consider placing the club in administration due to debts which are estimated at £30m. Indeed, Rangers were effectively deemed worthless, with the bank seeking the sale of the club at precisely the amount of its existing loans.

And yet, the Old Firm still dominates the domestic league. They are first and second going into this weekend, like they have been almost every weekend for years.

Dwarfed by their rivals, none of the chasing pack – not Hibernian or Dundee United, for all their promise, not traditionally proud Aberdeen, not the shambles that is Hearts – is in a position to take advantage.

So what’s the opposite of a rising tide lifting all boats?

Part/Time Supporter
29-11-2009, 11:38 AM
What you've got here is that a lot of journalists Old Firmers are conflating the "standard of the Old Firm" with the "standard of Scottish football".

Scottish football has been pish for the last 20+ years. If anything the general standard of the Scottish player is slightly higher now than it was 10 years ago. The point is that the Old Firm were immune from that because they were able to pay as much (if not more) than big clubs in England and elsewhere in Europe. There's no point in rabbiting on about how "Celtic reached Seville" (due to Larsson, Sutton, Hartson, etc), "Celtic beat Man Utd" (thanks to a Nakamura free kick), etc, because that's not going to happen any more.

They're now experiencing the same as the rest of us and there is supposed to be some sort of shock or surprise about it?

:confused:

scott7_0(Prague)
29-11-2009, 11:42 AM
Remind me or him, when did Scottish Football peak?

sahib
29-11-2009, 11:57 AM
remind me or him, when did scottish football peak?


1952.

The_Todd
29-11-2009, 12:24 PM
His guy has no clue what he's talking about. There was no gap between English and Scottish top flights 6 years ago? Aye, right.

It's funny how Scottish footballs only in crisis when the OF are in trouble. Maybe we should write a report on Irish football to put things in perspective.

Phil D. Rolls
29-11-2009, 12:33 PM
What you've got here is that a lot of journalists Old Firmers are conflating the "standard of the Old Firm" with the "standard of Scottish football".

Scottish football has been pish for the last 20+ years. If anything the general standard of the Scottish player is slightly higher now than it was 10 years ago. The point is that the Old Firm were immune from that because they were able to pay as much (if not more) than big clubs in England and elsewhere in Europe. There's no point in rabbiting on about how "Celtic reached Seville" (due to Larsson, Sutton, Hartson, etc), "Celtic beat Man Utd" (thanks to a Nakamura free kick), etc, because that's not going to happen any more.

They're now experiencing the same as the rest of us and there is supposed to be some sort of shock or surprise about it?

:confused:

We are getting closer to the time when a non OF club takes the title again. The OF cannot pay 10 x the wages that the rest can any more. Of course, they see that as a slip in standards.

Baader
29-11-2009, 01:08 PM
Seems the Old Firm are the yardstick for Scottish Football - heard all about the decline of the game on Jim Traynor's programme yesterday from fans of the big two. Funny how they weren't saying that when Rangers reached the UEFA Cup Final the other year or when Celtic were getting Champion's League spots without the qualifiers - the plight of other league clubs wasn't mentioned then. Now because they aren't as far ahead of the pack as they would like, our game is in terminal decline. We all know the standard has been pretty poor for a long time but for us, Dundee Utd, Motherwell and Aberdeen this looks like our most exciting season, in prospect, for a good while. Don't hear complaints from those clubs like the whinging Old Firm and their glory hunting fanbase...

wee 162
29-11-2009, 01:10 PM
We are getting closer to the time when a non OF club takes the title again. The OF cannot pay 10 x the wages that the rest can any more. Of course, they see that as a slip in standards.

They actually can, but the fact is that the players they sign for maybe 20-30k a week are now their top earners. And the players who are on that sort of wage are not guaranteed to be top players who will be much better than the sort of players Hibs can sign at maybe 3-4k a week. Celtic are probably paying Fortune 7 or 8 times what Hibs are paying Stokes. Is he really a much better player?

Top players go to England, Spain, France, Italy, Germany, or Russia. You'll earn more money at all the clubs in the top flight of England & Germany than you can get in Scotland. Top half of all the other leagues mentioned will be the same. That's about 80 clubs who can pay more than either of the OF. Add in the other clubs in the reasonably sized leagues (Olympiakos, Ajax, Porto, Benfica etc) who will be able to pay comparable or better wages and you can probably get up to around 100 clubs. Say they have around 20 players each on more money than the OF can pay. That's around the 2000 top players in the world who are not available to play for them due to being able to earn more elsewhere. Just to put that number into perspective, there will be around 750 players or so going to the World Cup. About the same number as that will play in the Champions League.

To be able to sign top players, both Celtic & Rangers would probably have to at least double what they are paying now their top earners now. They can't afford to do that. And everyone else will get closer because it's a comparative thing. Which has been what's happened in leagues like Holland (where for the first time in nearly 30 years neither Ajax, Feyenoord, or PSV won the league).

A non OF team will win the SPL in the next 5 years (and I personally think that it will be sooner than that). Hibs are in one of the strongest positions to be that team.

Phil D. Rolls
29-11-2009, 01:29 PM
They actually can, but the fact is that the players they sign for maybe 20-30k a week are now their top earners. And the players who are on that sort of wage are not guaranteed to be top players who will be much better than the sort of players Hibs can sign at maybe 3-4k a week. Celtic are probably paying Fortune 7 or 8 times what Hibs are paying Stokes. Is he really a much better player?

Top players go to England, Spain, France, Italy, Germany, or Russia. You'll earn more money at all the clubs in the top flight of England & Germany than you can get in Scotland. Top half of all the other leagues mentioned will be the same. That's about 80 clubs who can pay more than either of the OF. Add in the other clubs in the reasonably sized leagues (Olympiakos, Ajax, Porto, Benfica etc) who will be able to pay comparable or better wages and you can probably get up to around 100 clubs. Say they have around 20 players each on more money than the OF can pay. That's around the 2000 top players in the world who are not available to play for them due to being able to earn more elsewhere. Just to put that number into perspective, there will be around 750 players or so going to the World Cup. About the same number as that will play in the Champions League.

To be able to sign top players, both Celtic & Rangers would probably have to at least double what they are paying now their top earners now. They can't afford to do that. And everyone else will get closer because it's a comparative thing. Which has been what's happened in leagues like Holland (where for the first time in nearly 30 years neither Ajax, Feyenoord, or PSV won the league).

A non OF team will win the SPL in the next 5 years (and I personally think that it will be sooner than that). Hibs are in one of the strongest positions to be that team.

Brilliant post mate. :top marks

It was the case of Alkmaar that had me thinking that things don't have to be the way they are forever. I agree Hibs are in a very strong position to challenge.

One of the other things worth considering is that - with competition from the English Championship, and even league one, the OF can't even be guranteed to buy players from the rest of the SPL, just to stop them playing.

I agree that on their wage structure they can't attract much better players than we can produce. The other thing about them is that - until their supporters get a grip- they won't sign players from lower league sides (like say Jonesy). Instead they will always go for a slightly tarnished star from teams that are bigger than them (or in their eyes competitors).

Keith_M
29-11-2009, 03:31 PM
This really is just the same as the media reporting over here.

The OF are sh*t in Europe this season and, for once, arent miles ahead of the other sides. This, in their minds, equates to the downfall of the whole SPL, instead of just the current decline of the OF.

The European results of Scotlands other teams this year arent anything out of the ordinary as, sadly, non OF sides have been pretty much doing nothing in Europe for years.

Killiehibbie
29-11-2009, 03:44 PM
We just don't understand what the rest of the world knows the weegies are all that matters in Scottish football and if they're not 30 points clear in the league the whole games ****ed.

Lets hope it's that way for an awful long time.

Horse
29-11-2009, 09:05 PM
I read an Irish newspaper article recently that described the OF as "the saviours of Scottish football" but went on to describe how the decline of the OF is leading to the death of Scottish football.

It's funny how people outside Scotland see the OF as our saviours yet real Scottish football fans see the OF as everything that is wrong with our game - far from being our saviours they have actually ruined our game.

It's also funny how they see the OF losing their dominance in Scotland as being a disaster for Scottish football when real Scottish fans would see it as the rebirth of the game.

Let these narrow minded OF sympathisers spout their drivel whilst the true football fans of real Scottish teams revel in the misery of the OF! Long may their demise continue!

Hainan Hibs
29-11-2009, 09:11 PM
I thought the article was the usual pish especially this part "Dwarfed by their rivals, none of the chasing pack – not Hibernian or Dundee United, for all their promise, not traditionally proud Aberdeen, not the shambles that is Hearts – is in a position to take advantage."

Not in a position to take advantage? Hibs are now equal on points with Rangers, and in a far better position to spend in January, with Rangers almost guaranteed to be selling and not buying.

I think it will be the usual Old Firm 1 and 2, but to say we're not in a position to take advantage is lazy and pish journalism.

Onceinawhile
29-11-2009, 09:51 PM
The important thing is not just to win the league and fade away e.g Deportivo La Coruna, but to stay in a position where that is sustainable. We are one of the teams along with Dundee united who right now look like it could happen.

Can it?

Don't see why not.

Cabbage East
30-11-2009, 09:45 AM
It could be worse, it could be in the same state as the Irish league.