League restructuring?

If league reconstruction is the answer, it must have been a pretty daft question.

Scottish football has been thrown into disarray by the SPL decision the day before yesterday to reject the latest proposals for league reconstruction. The SPL voted 10-2 in favour, but their rules require a majority of 11-1, so the proposals fall, before they have even been tested by the requirement for 75% of SFL clubs also voting for them.

If the reactions to this seem disproportionate – anger shown to the dissenting clubs, St Mirren and Ross County, and Aberdeen Chairman Stewart Milne looking close to tears when interviewed on television after the vote – so too were the warnings issued before it.  We were told that the package of proposals was not negotiable or divisible, that there was and could be no ‘Plan B’, meaning failure of the proposals meant reverting to the status quo, and that restructuring had to be voted through for the end of this season – it couldn’t wait for a season (which would be normal practice) to allow everyone to consider the detail and get used to the idea.

So what’s all the fuss about?

To external observers the restructuring proposals seem bizarre.  Three divisions of 12, 12 and 18, with the top two divisions splitting into three divisions of 8 each (with the points tally wiped clean) after 22 games.  It seems contrived, but it’s a copy of a model that’s been tried elsewhere (Switzerland) and abandoned for not working. The details are so bizarre that they invite the suggestion they are designed to distract attention from the details that really matter.

I think this is about money. And I don’t mean the extra payments being redistributed below the top flight, important though that is to clubs like Accies. I don’t believe that’s what Stewart Milne was so upset about. The SPL clubs desperately need a new sponsorship deal, and a lucrative TV deal with SKY. I suspect these depend upon the new structure being in place for next season, and without it, many SPL clubs will see significantly reduced income next season (and some of them are sailing very close to the wind before these cuts - including Aberdeen, Hearts, Kilmarnock and Dundee at least). This would explain the urgency about putting the new structure in place this year, and would explain why we have no information about any new sponsorship deal, nor projections of SPL income, nor any valuation of the SKY deal for next season. This is only a hypothesis, but it’s the only one that fits all the known facts.

We clearly have deep-rooted problems in the Scottish game. The long term trends are all the same, over several decades – falling attendances, falling income, poorer performances by our national team, poorer performances by our clubs competing in Europe, and fewer top-quality players being developed or exported abroad.  We are seeing clubs’ debts rising, greater incidence of insolvency events, and the threat of several clubs going out of business altogether.

We introduced a new league model in 1975, we’ve been tinkering with it ever since, and all of the downward trends have continued. When we examine these problems now, do we really think league restructuring is the answer?

Simplifying governance into a single body would be a step in the right direction (these proposals don’t actually do that, but at least they would merge the SPL and SFL, which is a start).  Reducing the number of clubs sharing the game’s funding would be another (this is what is really meant by having fewer senior clubs).  Other possibilities include considering summer football, more artificial surfaces, indoor football, greater emphasis on youth development, more family-friendly policies, and new media deals.  But before we can agree on solutions, we need to agree on exactly what the problem is we’re trying to fix. We don’t seem very close to that, despite Henry McLeish's endeavours, and as things stand, league restructuring is at best just a disguise for other reforms.

How does this impact specifically upon Accies?  Our Chairman Les Gray expressed his reasons for voting for the proposals as being about a greater share for Accies of Scottish football’s collective income from sponsorship and TV deals, and better chances for Accies to reach the top flight – in the past eight years we have never been lower than fourth in the SFL, which means we would have permanently been in the second division of 8 after the proposed split. These are good reasons for Accies to support the proposals: they clearly favour us in the short term, but are they in the best interests of the game as a whole, or indeed Accies in the longer term?

Our financial situation may be more secure than many debt-ridden SPL clubs, but it is still precarious. Les has called a summit of first division clubs for next Monday, and that can surely only mean an SPL2 proposal on the table.  Will a group of the larger SFL clubs be able to quit the SFL and form a second tier of the SPL? Will that leave the rest of the SFL cut off from any top level funding coming into the game?  Can this be accomplished without civil war breaking out in Scottish football? A lot of questions need to be answered.