Future of Scottish season needs clear plan to counter squabb

Scottish football doesn’t need fixtures to trigger warfare. Circumstances around Rangers’ financial implosion in 2012 were such that the security of legislators was a live issue and the row over where precisely the club should find itself for the next season so intense that many would now struggle to recall the outcome of that summer’s European Championship (Spain saw off Italy in the final). Administrators warned that £16m – and television contracts – could be lost if Rangers kicked off 2012-13 in the bottom tier. A doomed plan was hatched to catapult the club into the First Division w88 casino .

By October, the tune had changed. “We’ve had to reinvent ourselves but that’s happened pretty quickly and clubs have adapted,” said Neil Doncaster, chief executive of the subsequently rebranded SPL. “The SPL and the clubs have adapted remarkably well to what people really couldn’t ever see happening.” They could even see the upshot on television.



Nobody could have reasonably foreseen League Cup semi-finals taking place at the same stadium on the same day, either. Doncaster tried that trick last season before performing the kind of embarrassing U-turn that highlights why he has been at the forefront of Scottish football for more than a decade. In that period, even Doncaster must have recognised the robustness of the sport over which he presides. The Bosman ruling, 25 years ago, was a supposed death knell for Scottish football. History tells of adjustment to economic crises, social crises and world wars. Scottish football prevailed then, as it will again; whatever its form w88 mobile .

Since coronavirus forced Scotland’s season to a halt, fierce squabbling has surrounded whether the SPFL is entitled to close its setup as matters stand: dishing out titles, relegation and – zing – prize money according to final placings. This would be an affront to the ethos of league football, as is the concept of voiding a season, an idea rightly dismissed. “Any attempt to finish the season with a significant amount of games still to play impacts upon the integrity of sport in Scotland,” said the Rangers managing director, Stewart Robertson, a man fully cognisant of his customer base.

The prospect of the SPFL distributing prize money imminently from a curtailed season naturally appeals to many clubs in these grim financial times. More sensible, surely, would be for the league to provide agreed percentages of said funds now www.w88thais.com .

Amending 2020-21 – with rules clear from the outset – by cancelling the winter break, postponing the League Cup or a multitude of other options exist should the SPFL’s board have a strong enough will. Instead – and it is very 2012 – a narrative has been allowed to permeate regarding all the things the league cannot possibly do without forcing clubs towards the wall. Weirdly, it’s as if Scotland is in a unique position.