What's the point/what can change?

[DH1875]

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Id have the OF voted out or have the ten other teams resign from the league, start a breakaway 14/16 team league,dont care about the OF. The money we get from being third or lower is a pittance anyway, theres no loss. Teams would still get into Europe, thats why they have the conference.
Maybe we should have a poll if we want to dump the OF, but make the poll available to other clubs.
Steve I also pray for the day they FO.

Total fantasy. At least half the other 10 wouldn't leave. Let's play ball though and say they do, what happens to the other 30 teams in the leagues below. What's that, we are asking 6 of them to join us in our super new league. They'd tell us to bolt cause guess what, they are joining rangers and celtic in the OF premier league. Falkirk, Dunfermline, Partick Thistle, Raith, Livingston, Ayr, Airdrie. All got as much chance of winning the new OF league as they do our super break away league. Aye but those game aren't gonna be appealing, wait a minute. They'll be appealing in our super new break away league if they joined us. Which league do you think would get the TV deal and the sponsorship deals.. The OF league or the breakaway league? Same goes for all the media coverage and attention. More importantly, which league do you think would get the European places? Our new breakaway league or the OF league. Your kidding yourself on if you think it would be ours.

[erin go bragh]

We are a point above Celtic in the last 20 games form table, tske that form into next season and we could be the team that breaks their dominance.

[Centre Hawf]

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We are a point above Celtic in the last 20 games form table, tske that form into next season and we could be the team that breaks their dominance.

No chance.

[BoomtownHibees]

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We are a point above Celtic in the last 20 games form table, tske that form into next season and we could be the team that breaks their dominance.

We’ve been on this tremendous run and we are still 28 points behind them

[Donegal Hibby]

I noticed the LoI mentioned on the subject . I very rarely , if ever watch the LoI . I can’t recall ever watching a game in the Welsh league and wonder how many on here actually do? I’d imagine there’s not many as there isn’t any appeal/ interest in it ! .

Take out the OF and the majority of people from England and other countries that watch Scottish football wouldn’t have the same interest in it either .

Sad as it is but they are the main attraction and that’s easy to see when you see the games Sky show over the course of the season too .

[TrinityHFC]

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I noticed the LoI mentioned on the subject . I very rarely , if ever watch the LoI . I can’t recall ever watching a game in the Welsh league and wonder how many on here actually do? I’d imagine there’s not many as there isn’t any appeal/ interest in it ! .

Take out the OF and the majority of people from England and other countries that watch Scottish football wouldn’t have the same interest in it either .

Sad as it is but they are the main attraction and that’s easy to see when you see the games Sky show over the course of the season too .

Those leagues are completely different though with different sized clubs.

Edit: A quick search shows the leaders of the Welsh league play in a 3,000 capacity stadium and the leaders in the LOI have a 3,500 capacity. It isn't a comparison.

Again though, why are we worrying too much about appeal to others? Are we getting a huge benefit from all that interest now?

We have the potential to a have a hugely competitive and very well attended league - without two teams that for various reasons that aren't really replicated anywhere else are complete anomalies.

Edit: The leaders of the Welsh league play in 3,000 capacity stadium. The LOI leaders in a 3,500 capacity. Neither of those leagues are valid comparisons.

[GreenCastle]

Old Firm will never go to England.

England don’t need the old firm either.

I would love a league without the old firm but will never happen.

Complete nonsense topic talking about them ever moving. The European super league won’t happen either as shown last time with all the fan resistance.

I don’t think anyone outside Rangers or Celtic will ever win the league again - I actually think Celtic will continue to dominate for years to come.

Hibs / Aberdeen etc will continue to play well to fight for 3rd but long term the aim has to be continuous Europe participation plus doing well domestically which as explained isn’t easy.

[Centre Hawf]

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Old Firm will never go to England.

England don’t need the old firm either.

Complete nonsense topic talking about them ever moving. The European super league won’t happen either as shown last time with all the fan resistance.

I don’t think anyone outside Rangers or Celtic will ever win the league again - I actually think Celtic will continue to dominate for years to come.

Hibs / Aberdeen etc will continue to play well to fight for 3rd but long term the aim has to be continuous Europe participation plus doing well domestically which as explained isn’t easy.

As much as I'd love it, I agree. England would never allow them in to the point of just letting them step in above Championship clubs one year, and they'd both never take anything but a guaranteed Premier League spot.

I also think for Celtic's board they've probably given up on that ever happening and are happy to get a lovely little money spinning existence of winning every trophy possible, will always be in this new Champions League format playing 8 games a season, able to flip players to top 5 leagues for 2 or 3 times the money they spent on them. If they were to bugger off to the Premier League it wouldn't be unrealistic to say they might not get European Football, let alone Champions League for a decade or two. If clubs like United/Chelsea/Spurs can make a pigs ear of it all time after time then both OF would be in for a rude awakening themselves.

[Hibbyradge]

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We have the potential to a have a hugely competitive and very well attended league - without two teams that for various reasons that aren't really replicated anywhere else are complete anomalies.

Are you sure?

We just had one of the most important weekends in our league, Europe places at stake, top 6 and relegation all being contested, and only 41000 people attended games not involving The Rangers or Celtic.

Around 15000 attended Championship games that same weekend.

That's a total of 56000 between 8 games, an average of 7000 per game.

Meanwhile, Celtic had 59000 on their own.

Over the season, and even with 3 home games against Rantic, half the Premiership clubs have average attendances of 7000 or less. Ross County are just above 4000.

https://www.footballwebpages.co.uk/s...ip/attendances

[ancient hibee]

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Id have the OF voted out or have the ten other teams resign from the league, start a breakaway 14/16 team league,dont care about the OF. The money we get from being third or lower is a pittance anyway, theres no loss. Teams would still get into Europe, thats why they have the conference.
Maybe we should have a poll if we want to dump the OF, but make the poll available to other clubs.
Steve I also pray for the day they FO.

Total fantasy. A good description of the end of professional football in Scotland.You really think a breakaway league would be acceptable to UEFA

[Donegal Hibby]

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Those leagues are completely different though with different sized clubs.

Edit: A quick search shows the leaders of the Welsh league play in a 3,000 capacity stadium and the leaders in the LOI have a 3,500 capacity. It isn't a comparison.

Again though, why are we worrying too much about appeal to others? Are we getting a huge benefit from all that interest now?

We have the potential to a have a hugely competitive and very well attended league - without two teams that for various reasons that aren't really replicated anywhere else are complete anomalies.

Edit: The leaders of the Welsh league play in 3,000 capacity stadium. The LOI leaders in a 3,500 capacity. Neither of those leagues are valid comparisons.

They are on a smaller scale though the LoI last season was as competitive as it’s been in many a year with 3 or 4 teams fighting for the title , European places up for grabs but I still didn’t watch it as in truth I had absolutely no interest in it whatsoever..

Take the OF out of our league and for the majority of viewers the interest is gone too . Whatever benefits we are getting now from Sky ,sponsorship etc ..

as well as the revenue from gates they bring also for smaller clubs that are willing to give them 3 stands in helping them financially I do think we’d end up much worse off without them in the long run financially and the league would end up on a downward trajectory …

None of the rest of us can compete the way they do in Europe either so we’d probably in time suffer on that too .

English League 1 ? We’d be lucky if our league didn’t end up like League 2 or worse without the OF sadly IMO .

[danhibees1875]

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Are you sure?

We just had one of the most important weekends in our league, Europe places at stake, top 6 and relegation all being contested, and only 41000 people attended games not involving The Rangers or Celtic.

Around 15000 attended Championship games that same weekend.

That's a total of 56000 between 8 games, an average of 7000 per game.

Meanwhile, Celtic had 59000 on their own.

Over the season, and even with 3 home games against Rantic, half the Premiership clubs have average attendances of 7000 or less. Ross County are just above 4000.

https://www.footballwebpages.co.uk/s...ip/attendances

The 41k number excludes Aberdeen fans (and to a lesser extent Killie) under your methodology. An impact, if not a material one.

Per capita, excluding the OF, we'd still be one of the best supported leagues in the world (7th by my calculations).

[Hibbyradge]

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The 41k number excludes Aberdeen fans (and to a lesser extent Killie) under your methodology. An impact, if not a material one.

I realise that.

It would add another game to the calculation. If it was Killie v Aberdeen, it would most likely lower the average. (They had less than 7000 when they played Aberdeen on Boxing Day).

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Per capita, excluding the OF, we'd still be one of the best supported leagues in the world (7th by my calculations).

I'm not sure how you calculated that, but while it's a nice statistic, it's meaningless financially. Our per capita figure is currently about 3 times that of England. Our wealth is about a million times less (roughly 😁).

[Centre Hawf]

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They are on a smaller scale though the LoI last season was as competitive as it’s been in many a year with 3 or 4 teams fighting for the title , European places up for grabs but I still didn’t watch it as in truth I had absolutely no interest in it whatsoever..

Take the OF out of our league and for the majority of viewers the interest is gone too . Whatever benefits we are getting now from Sky ,sponsorship etc ..

as well as the revenue from gates they bring also for smaller clubs that are willing to give them 3 stands in helping them financially I do think we’d end up much worse off without them in the long run financially and the league would end up on a downward trajectory …

None of the rest of us can compete the way they do in Europe either so we’d probably in time suffer on that too .

English League 1 ? We’d be lucky if our league didn’t end up like League 2 or worse without the OF sadly IMO .

Out of curiosity, do you happen to have a LOI team or is it just something that has never clicked for you enough to bother with? I think that's the big difference I see with the LOI analogy is that many don't take up the league because they've opted to follow your Celtic (in your case Hibs) and Liverpool or Man United etc instead.

I'm not sure anyones core fan bases will suffer as a result of Celtic/Rangers leaving. We're already in an era where young kids are now more exposed to the new Mbappes quickly and playing in PSG tracksuits or Al Nassr Ronaldo tops for example.

[danhibees1875]

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I realise that.

It would add another game to the calculation. If it was Killie v Aberdeen, it would most likely lower the average. (They had less than 7000 when they played Aberdeen on Boxing Day).



I'm not sure how you calculated that, but while it's a nice statistic, it's meaningless financially. Our per capita figure is currently about 3 times that of England. Our wealth is about a million times less (roughly 😁).

What it does/could translate to in terms of finances in anyone's guess - I would argue it would be a "well attended league" though, in theory.

Unless it totally capitulated on itself with the lack of Old Firm. Then, maybe not.

[Hibbyradge]

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What it does/could translate to in terms of finances in anyone's guess - I would argue it would be a "well attended league" though, in theory.

Unless it totally capitulated on itself with the lack of Old Firm. Then, maybe not.

In a way, if we exclude all the people the old firm take with them, it brings the considered population down to about 2.5 million so the per capita figure would be even higher.

Of course, comparing our league against leagues in countries with a similar 2.5m population, doesn't make good reading!

https://www.worldometers.info/world-...on-by-country/

[GreenCastle]

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We are a point above Celtic in the last 20 games form table, tske that form into next season and we could be the team that breaks their dominance.

No - Yan Dhanda

[erin go bragh]

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We’ve been on this tremendous run and we are still 28 points behind them

We were 30 odd points behind them, bottom of the league before we went on our run.
Had we started the season how we started our run, we would be giving them a challenge.

[danhibees1875]

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In a way, if we exclude all the people the old firm take with them, it brings the considered population down to about 2.5 million so the per capita figure would be even higher.

Of course, comparing our league against leagues in countries with a similar 2.5m population, doesn't make good reading!

https://www.worldometers.info/world-...on-by-country/

Good point!

[Donegal Hibby]

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Out of curiosity, do you happen to have a LOI team or is it just something that has never clicked for you enough to bother with? I think that's the big difference I see with the LOI analogy is that many don't take up the league because they've opted to follow your Celtic (in your case Hibs) and Liverpool or Man United etc instead.

I'm not sure anyones core fan bases will suffer as a result of Celtic/Rangers leaving. We're already in an era where young kids are now more exposed to the new Mbappes quickly and playing in PSG tracksuits or Al Nassr Ronaldo tops for example.

Finn Harps would be my LoI team who are currently in the 1st division and a part from watching them an odd time I generally don’t bother with any other games , cup finals etc basically due to the standard being poor ..

Most folk here support Celtic or one of the top English teams and there is a fair amount of them that are nothing more than glory hunters who probably don’t have any interest in the LoI at all .

I’m not so sure about anyone’s core fan base not suffering from the OF leaving as we have seen clubs trying to financially gain from them by giving them 3 stands , even Dundee Utd have supposedly upped the prices of a ticket to £42 quid for there game against Celtic .

I think there’s a loss in revenue to be considered here as well as everything else that goes with losing them in tv , sponsorships etc …

Take all this into account and giving we are already struggling to compete with clubs for players in the lower leagues of England it could see this getting even harder …

You also got the bonus of when trying to get a player to come to our league the attraction of the big games against OF too ….

Don’t get me wrong in I hate the OF too and see the gap growing all the time were it’s getting harder to win silverware but I am of the opinion that the negatives without having them in the league outweigh the ones in having them .

[WestStandWillie]

Celtic fans are only interested in the OF games and Europe.

Mind in 2012/13 season, the 2-2 game at Celtic Park where Clancy and Cairney scored - there were at least a dozen Celtic fans sitting reading newspapers behind the goal. They were bored rigid.

You only need to watch highlights of their games to see how muted their celebrations are. There were a couple of cracking goals scored against Kilmarnock and it was a quick clap then sit back down.

It's crap that we won't win the league any time soon but there's no point putting yourself into a financial black hole to try.

[marinello59]

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It's not an issue of ambition though. Sadly, we live in a country where it matters more to follow a club based on sectarian/political lines than it does based on where a person is from. As long as hoards of buses are going towards Parkhead or Ibrox each week from Inverness and Dumfries, nothing is going to change. These clubs will forever hold a significant advantage over the rest of us. The only real chance any club has of competing with them is if some mad man comes in and starts throwing his dodgy cash around and we seen how well that ended with our neighbours.

That's not strictly true. Outside of the central belt the vast majority of Old Firm supporters follow those two because they are the most successful. We saw the same thing happening with Aberdeen in the 80's, they attracted a huge amount of new supporters because they were the best team in the country by a considerable margin and were beating the Old Firm on a regular basis.
If the Old Firm were to start playing in a bigger league outside of Scotland then it would be the same effect but on steroids, they would attract even more support. It's never going to happen though so we have to find solutions with them still a part of our league. I mentioned ambition earlier, I don't just mean the ambition of individual clubs but of Scottish football as a whole.
With the European prize money giving the top clubs in several European leagues an advantage that increases every season then it's time for those leagues to band together and lobby for more of that money to be given to the leagues themselves.
We could maybe look at sharing gate receipts for league games again. We may never see a fifty fifty split again but maybe the away teams should get a percentage of what's taken in. There are ways to level the playing field a bit but it needs to be fought for.

[Victor]

The only way it will change is when people start supporting their local teams rather than following teams because of what they represent. Over 600,000 people live in central Scotland, putting it up there with Edinburgh and Glasgow in terms of population. But support for the myriad of teams in that area will be about 100+. That’s the problem.

[Eyrie]

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That's not strictly true. Outside of the central belt the vast majority of Old Firm supporters follow those two because they are the most successful. We saw the same thing happening with Aberdeen in the 80's, they attracted a huge amount of new supporters because they were the best team in the country by a considerable margin and were beating the Old Firm on a regular basis.
If the Old Firm were to start playing in a bigger league outside of Scotland then it would be the same effect but on steroids, they would attract even more support. It's never going to happen though so we have to find solutions with them still a part of our league. I mentioned ambition earlier, I don't just mean the ambition of individual clubs but of Scottish football as a whole.
With the European prize money giving the top clubs in several European leagues an advantage that increases every season then it's time for those leagues to band together and lobby for more of that money to be given to the leagues themselves.
We could maybe look at sharing gate receipts for league games again. We may never see a fifty fifty split again but maybe the away teams should get a percentage of what's taken in. There are ways to level the playing field a bit but it needs to be fought for.

If some football fans want to be glory hunters then they won't get that following Celtc or the Huns in England or wherever they end up unless they are regularly winning. Instead there's a fair chance those fans will do what they did in the 80s and support whichever team is doing well in Scotland.

[Hibbyradge]

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If some football fans want to be glory hunters then they won't get that following Celtc or the Huns in England or wherever they end up unless they are regularly winning. Instead there's a fair chance those fans will do what they did in the 80s and support whichever team is doing well in Scotland.

Not a single chance.

Celtic losing to Aston Villa wouldn't persuade anyone to follow Hibs, Aberdeen or anyone else.

Would you dump Hibs if we were in the English league and Edinburgh City were doing well?

Glory hunters or not, no-one would abandon Rantic for an SPFL team.

I don't recall anything of the sort happening in the 80s either.

[Eyrie]

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Not a single chance.

Celtic losing to Aston Villa wouldn't persuade anyone to follow Hibs, Aberdeen or anyone else.

Would you dump Hibs if we were in the English league and Edinburgh City were doing well?

Glory hunters or not, no-one would abandon Rantic for an SPFL team.

I don't recall anything of the sort happening in the 80s either.

At my age I've long since accepted that being a Hibs fan is a life sentence.

But if I was a glory hunter looking for a team to support then I don't have that commitment to abandon.

[marinello59]

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If some football fans want to be glory hunters then they won't get that following Celtc or the Huns in England or wherever they end up unless they are regularly winning. Instead there's a fair chance those fans will do what they did in the 80s and support whichever team is doing well in Scotland.

They’d wouldn’t have to be winning on a regular basis. The glamour associated with playing the biggest teams in England on a regular basis would be attractive enough on its own. That’s where kids still to decide which team they support would be looking.

[WhileTheChief..]

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We are a point above Celtic in the last 20 games form table, tske that form into next season and we could be the team that breaks their dominance.

This is where I’m at.

No point blaming Celtic for anything here. They’ve done exactly what they should be doing, it’s up to the rest of us to find a way to close the gap.

They were crap before Fergus arrived. Maybe the BKs will have a similar impact on us.

[WhileTheChief..]

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Ross County are just above 4000.

https://www.footballwebpages.co.uk/s...ip/attendances

That would probably be their TV audience for most games too.

When their own fans don’t even go to games, it’s crazy to think there’s a potential TV audience for them out there.

[WhileTheChief..]

If you really want to shake things up, introduce a handicap system to the league.

Win the league by 10 points, start next season on -10.

Start with that and take it from there!